Miriam Camerini’s *The Dybbuk*

Black magic, mysteries, ghosts—the word *dybbuk* (an evil spirit or soul capable of possessing the living) immediately conjures up that unsettling world of demons and magic often found in Yiddish literature, such as in many of I.B. Singer’s stories. Shloyme An-Sky’s *The Dybbuk* (1920) is no exception, yet it is also a powerful love story—the kind that moves the heart and transcends time—making it perfectly suited for this year’s European Day of Jewish Culture, which is dedicated to the theme of love.
It was fitting that, in the introduction to her performance-concert “A Dybbuk for Our Times” last Tuesday (September 8), Miriam Camerini described An-Sky’s text as a sort of Yiddish *Romeo and Juliet*, frequently referencing the Shakespearean drama throughout the evening. In a sense, the plot does indeed appear similar (as it is to countless tales of love and death across all cultures and eras), though here, instead of two rival families, we have two friends so close that they seal a pact binding their unborn children for eternity—a minor spoiler regarding a detail revealed only at the end of the original play, which I mention here because Miriam Camerini disclosed it right from the start. The 1937 Yiddish film by Polish director Michał Waszyṅski achieved a similar effect; brief clips from it were screened throughout the evening, alternating fascinatingly with the live performance—as if Miriam Camerini (vocals), Angelo Baselli (clarinet), and Gianluca Casadei (accordion) were characters who had stepped out of the film to act, play, and sing in our community center. Another extraordinarily effective moment was the first appearance of the *dybbuk*, when it truly seemed to everyone present that Miriam Camerini was speaking with a powerful male voice.
The introduction—helpful for orienting audience members unfamiliar with the plot amidst the dialogue, music, and songs—was also highly engaging, as it offered us greater insight into the author of *The Dybbuk*: his life and, in particular, the significant ethnographic research he conducted to document Jewish community life in the Russian Empire of that era. It is also interesting to note that An-Sky held socialist views and was active in the Bund—something that might seem surprising for the author of a work about magic and ghosts; however, we should bear in mind that the failure of the two lovers to marry while alive was due to the culpable arrogance of the woman’s wealthy father.
Since we, too, live in a city rich in mysteries and magical legends, it is worth recalling that it was a musician from Turin, Lodovico Rocca, who composed an opera based on An-Sky’s play in 1934—titled, fittingly, *Il Dibuk*.

Anna Segre