Der Dibuk

This movie is based on a smash hit of the Yiddish theater in 1914. It offers a view of Judaism and the world far from the one I grew up with in my Conservative Synagogue: a dark world, still medieval, in which spirits of the dead wandered, hungry for the life they never knew. All that stood between them and their devastation of the world was the Law of G*d, the rabbinical court, and the righteousness of the synagogue. That hope for righteousness is common to all branches of Judaism, which explains why we dispute things so vehemently: get it wrong and the world crumbles.

That is why this movie seems like a court room drama to me, with questions of the Law and Halakah being decided: can two friends affiance their unborn children? That is the first question and the cause of the tsuris and tsimmis that afflicts this story, with the son of one of the fathers asserting his right to marry Lili Liliana -- whom I met backstage at a show she and my grandfather's second wife were performing in -- when the lady is in love with and to marry another man. This allows the dybbuk to enter her, and it takes the summoning of a dead man to court, a judicial decree, and an excommunication to set things somewhat aright; not that the gates to wandering spirits can ever be closed, once opened.

The scenes of the rabbinical court, with Avrom Morewski as the rabbi asserting the Law is utterly foreign to me, and to most modern audiences, although I have seen the prayer shawls, and even the fur-trimmed garments the players wear. It awakens within me the same sort of emotions I feel on the High Holy Days, when we pray for G*d;'s forgiveness and righteousness; not for our own sake, but for the World's.