Marina Nebro: Arts and Culture

A Dybbuk

A Dybbuk, Or Between Two Worlds was a theatre production sponsored by the Queens College Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance, and the college’s Center for Jewish Studies. The play ran nearly three hours, with a fifteen-minute intermission, and there was a panel discussion afterwards in which the playwright was discussed, as well as the Jewish cultural tradition in Eastern Europe of the early 20^th century.

The play is set in Poland in the 1890s. The stage is designed to encompass multiple settings – inside the synagogue, outside the synagogue, and various other places – through the use of a rotating platform in the middle. When rotated, on one side is a gnarly tree, and on the other, an ark for the storage of the sacred Torah scrolls of the synagogue/shul. I’m starting off describing the staging in an intricate manner, as I had been involved in the creation of the set. The archways on either side of the stage were to resemble similarly gnarly trees, but the intertwining branches are curved in such a manner as to create the Star of David, or the Magen David, to further heighten the Jewish folkloric tradition of the play.

The audience follows the character of Leah (Gabrielle Georgescu) as she is meant to marry Menashe (Anthony Scheer), a man of her father Sender’s (Mark Zeisler) choosing. At first, she doesn’t seem very hesitant in being part of an arranged marriage – one based on power and wealth more so than love and loyalty. The problem arises when she sets her eyes on a Yeshiva student, Chonen (Thomas Stagnitta). He is absolutely obsessed with the idea that Leah is meant for him, that she is his bashert or soulmate and is convinced that he will end up with her. He sees this destiny written in numbers and, in the second act, spells out all of the numerical connections between him and the beautiful young girl. Chonen, so knowledgeable in everything taught in the Yeshiva, becomes consumed with the idea of Kabbalah and mysticism, almost to the point of witchcraft and alchemy – he mentions the practice of turning clay into gold. This infatuation with dark magic ultimately brings his demise as he dies after twice uttering God’s unmentionable name.

Now, where can this lead now that Chonen is dead and Leah is set to marry another man, to whom she is not destined? Right before her wedding vows, she goes to the cemetery to call on her deceased mother and relatives so that she can be wed in front of all her family. She also, against the will and advice of Fradde (Pam Jusino), her nurse, invites the spirit from an unmarked grave, and as she calls upon him, she faints. At this point, the soul of that dead man, Chonen, enters her body as a dybbuk: a soul, innocent or evil depending on interpretation, that enters the living body of another, hoping to fulfill something that it couldn’t in its previous life, or hoping to escape the grasps of hell.

Leah’s father seeks out the very virtuous Rabbi Azriel (David Little) who is a great tazddik, a person well versed in spiritual matters. The Rabbi quickly gets to the bottom of the matter of why Chonen has taken possession of Leah’s body. It turns out, that Sender had been friends with Chonen’s father back during his Yeshiva days during which time they had made an oath that if one of them bore a girl, and the other a boy, that the two offspring would be married. However, shortly thereafter they lost touch with each other. The oath, obviously, was never fulfilled, and years later Sender sought to marry his daughter to a rich man. The outcome of the rabbinical court that ensued – after the dybbuk, Chonen, accused Sender of murder – was that the oath was never finalized in the material world, but it was recognized by God and that is why Chonen had such a desire to be with Leah. Their union was written in the stars, it was destined. The play ends with Leah’s death as she follows Chonen’s voice into the world beyond and they ascend together, pure souls, into heaven.

Before addressing what was discussed during the panel conversation, I would like to critique the performance. Examining the play now, after having listened to the panel, in a more analytical and a more appreciative sense, there were facets of the production that I found distracting and unnecessary. One such distraction was the music. The play is not a musical, and hence, I found the brief outbursts of song strange, awkward, and out of place. Were these musical interludes written in, or were they unique to this production? I didn’t find any problem with the instrumentation between scenes, or as quiet background noise, but when the accordion, violin, clarinet and flute, and especially the vocalist interrupted the flow of the performance, I was let down. Another flaw in this play was its length. It was unnecessarily long and after talking to a few people, I found that the time that it took to develop the plot plus the two hours and forty-five minutes to its conclusion really detracted from the piece as a whole. Because A Dybbuk depended so strongly on its Eastern European, Jewish cultural aspect, I found that it alienated those in the audience that didn’t have a connection to that culture – it didn’t invite them in. For those who did understand the culture, there were certain things that could have been blocked better. For example, in Jewish tradition, whenever the ark is open with the Torah inside or out, everyone stands. There were many times when the ark was open, the Torah present, but people still remained seated. There was also a moment when the Torahs were being removed from the ark – the way they were being handled was not realistic to how heavy and sacred they actually are.

As I’ve said before, and I will continue to say, I believe that a “talk back” or panel discussion following any play or film is really informative and enhances the audience’s perception of the story and the playwright’s intentions. This panel consisted of Professor Elissa Bemporad, of the history department here at Queens College, Rabbi Shur, and Dr. Thomas E. Bird, professor of Russian language and literature (and who happened to have taught my mother’s Russian classes when she was a Queens College student in the early ‘80s). Professor Bemporad enlightened us on the history behind the original playwright, S. Ansky who grew up in a Jewish family in Russia, but rejected his Jewish heritage in favor of a more nationalistic and socialist identity in an emerging communist Russia. He was also very involved with the populist ideal, and because of this, went around the country helping to educate the peasants, the folk. In doing this, he recorded folk stories and traditions of all of the different people. He reintroduced himself to his Jewish identity through recording such folklore, and in writing A Dybbuk and other plays; he attempted to preserve these traditional cultures. The play was originally written in Russian and translated into Yiddish later on. Its first performance was in 1920 in Moscow and was performed in Yiddish rather than the original language. He wrote the play in Russian to reach out to the secular Jewish, as well as the non-Jewish community of his motherland, hoping to educate the masses on this different, yet harmless, culture. The play has spread to many different areas in Europe and has been translated into a variety of different languages.

The adaptation presented tonight, however, is not the original play written by S. Ansky. Tony Kushner, also the screenwriter of the upcoming Steven Spielberg film Lincoln starring Daniel Day Lewis, took Ansky’s play and introduced new characters and brief scenes to foreshadow the upcoming Holocaust. One such scene is when the students of the Yeshiva get off a train and proclaim how great the new invention is. I will paraphrase here, but they basically say that nothing bad could ever come from Jews riding trains. This particular scene, as many others, brings the image of the Holocaust to the forefront. This allusion further heightens the idea of the Jewish identity even more.

I want to leave you with a thought. There was a character in the play, a very important character in fact, which I neglected to mention: the messenger (Shaunette Wilson). The messenger may have been in almost every scene, and always seemed very knowledgeable of what was going on – almost more knowledgeable than the involved characters themselves. There was a line spoken by the Rabbi asking if the messenger had delivered his message. At that very moment, I thought to myself, was the message delivered? If so, what was the message? Perhaps the messenger was S. Ansky himself. Perhaps the message being delivered was the play. What should we take from this message? Should we watch the play and take it for what it is – a story about two lovers who end up together, if that is even what the play is about at its core? Should we debate about the dybbuk – were its intentions good or bad? Should we analyze the lines and connect the story to stories written in the Torah and other such scriptures? Or should we see the play as a form of art that is preserving the traditions and cultures of the Russian Jews? It is up to us to decide.

A Dybbuk, Or Between Two Worlds
October 31-November 11, 2012
Goldstein Theatre, QC CUNY

Marina B. Nebro