Dybbuks on Screen

Abstract

Abstract This chapter surveys the trajectory of dybbuk possession in world cinema over the past nine decades, from Michał Waszyński’s 1937Dybbuk to contemporary horror films and documentaries. In Jewish tradition, the dybbuk is the soul of the dead that enters a living body. Popularized by S. An-sky’s modernist drama The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (1914), the dybbuk has evolved from a figure rooted in Jewish mysticism into a malleable transnational trope. This chapter classifies dybbuk films into five categories—traditional adaptations, radical adaptations, kabbalistic dybbuks, quasi dybbuks, and metonymic dybbuks—revealing how the trope’s metaphorical significance has transformed across cultures and genres. From a Yiddish film classic showcasing modernist Jewish culture, through Israeli films grappling with secular-religious tensions and Polish films confronting Holocaust memory, Jewish past and present, to American mainstream horror and Indian cinema’s use of Jewish symbolism, the dybbuk serves diverse purposes: cultural exploration, sociohistorical reflection, psychological metaphor, memory and art politics, exotic signifier, and more. This taxonomy reveals a consistent pattern: As films move further away from An-sky’s source text, the dybbuk increasingly loses its cultural specificity. The dybbuk’s global popularization simultaneously expands and hollows out its symbolism, mapping a process of cultural diffusion that ranges from adaptation and innovation to exoticization and exploitation. Finally, through its malleability, the dybbuk figuratively reflects on the modern human condition, ensuring its lasting appeal on screen.