Dari on The Dybbuk

Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 11:32:17 -0800 (PST)
From: Dari Yudkoff 
Subject: Special Report - "A Dybbuk"
To: whseminar@dept.english.upenn.edu

Dari Yudkoff
"The Dybbuk" - Special Report

	From 1912 until 1914, From S. Ansky (1863-1920), one
of the most famous writers of Yiddish literature,
conducted an ethnographic study of Jewish communities
in Eastern Europe.  Ansky recorded stories, songs,
rituals and superstitions, which later provided
material for his own writing.  Like other Yiddish
writers Ansky wrote in both realistic and supernatural
veins; the latter style a simplified version of Jewish
mysticism, or Kabbalah.  Ansky had easy access to the
basis of Kabbalistic literature, because the Jewish
Chasidic movement of the late nineteenth century had
already changed the incredibly complex stories of the
Kabbalah to make them available to an uneducated
public.   
	Tony Kushner's adaptation of Ansky's "A Dybbuk"
explores the themes of lust and desire, of worship and
holiness, and corruption and sin.  "A Dybbuk" is a
story of a shtetl romance, in which a young student,
Chonen, falls in love with the daughter of the richest
man in town, Leah.  Sender, Leah's father, will never
accept the impoverished Chonen as a husband for his
daughter.  Chonen endeavors to reach heaven by sin
instead of virtue, following an article by a creative
Cabalist, and possesses Leah's soul as a spirit, a
dybbuk.  A prolific rabbi attempts to exorcise the
dybbuk, excommunicating his soul from the Jewish
community.  Apparently Chonen is the son of an old
friend of Sender.  With a characteristic stinginess
Sender abandoned his impoverished friend.  In order to
exorcise the dybbuk Sender must ask forgiveness of his
old friend.	
	The story is set against a backdrop of great violence
and tragedy; the shtetl has been ravaged by the
pogroms of Russian Cossacks.  The foreyard of the
synagogue is a graveyard, housing the graves of a
massacre that took place during the wedding, in which
even the bride and groom were killed.  Chonen
challenges the accepted, traditional faith in God and
strict adherence to conventional Jewish law.  Chonen,
as a proponent of the Kabbalah, is set against the
rest of the community.  Rabbi Azriel, the rabbi who is
called to exorcise the dybbuk, uses a minyan, a quorum
of men as his greatest weapon.  Traditional faith in
God is associated with the teachings of the Talmud,
which Chonen describes as "deep and broad and
marvelous enough, but earth above and earth below and
you can't rise up with the Talmud.  The Kabbalah…is
different."  The Talmud is straightforward and
logical, while the Kabbalah is mystical and enigmatic.
 Faith in God confirms that the world is holy, because
God created the world.  Yet sometimes it is difficult
to have faith that a world of pogroms is so holy.  The
most respected religious figure, Rabbi Azriel admits
to his deceased grandfather, a famous rabbi,
"Sometimes, Grandfather, I don not entirely trust
God."  The holiest document in the Torah is the Ten
Commandments, and the holiest word in the Ten
Commandments is the unutterable name of God.  God is
both all-powerful and unreachable.  	
	While it is not clear if God takes an active role,
humans must fight for justice.  As Rabbi Azriel
states, "Every injustice destroys the world."  Sender
represents corruption and economic inequality. He is
hugely wealthy because he sells vodka to the Cossacks,
and lends money at high interest rates.  The trial of
the dybbuk becomes a moral evaluation of Sender. 
Rabbi Azriel pronounces him "joyless," he is greedy
and without morals.   His punishment: he must give
half of his earnings to the poor.  Sender's punishment
seems to be Kushner's most obvious political statement
in the play, a Socialist victory.  
	Sender is never able to cash in on the economically
beneficial marriage of his daughter Leah, whose soul
finally merges with Chonen in an enigmatic stage
direction "the two become one."  The outsider has won
against the community; even a minyan was unable to
exorcise Chonen's soul from the body of his lover. 
Sensuality, love and the needs of the individual
prevail over public expectations.  Still, the largest
theme of the play is not the individual versus the
community but humanity's relationship with God, and
its responsibility to question God's power and
holiness.  At the end of the trial Rabbi Azriel says,
"the more he gives us to doubt, the stronger my faith.
 We will always find him, to deliver our complaint." 
Humanity must continue to question injustice, to
demand social change.