A dybbuk comes to Pittsburgh

A little dybbuk visited the archive the other day, folded into an envelope.

A dybbuk is a Jewish spirit wandering between worlds, held back by unfinished business. This spirit was the program from a production of the S. Ansky play “The Dybbuk” by Habima Moscow Art Theater at the Nixon Theater in June 1927. It lists the cast and crew, and provides an act-by-act synopsis, both in Yiddish and in English.

“The Dybbuk” is a mystical play and its journey to the archive also had a note of higher ordination. A local woman had been cleaning her house in preparation for a move, and she found the program slipped between the pages of one of her late husband’s books.

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Ansky was a restless spirit himself. Questioning his religious upbringing in Vitebsk, he veered into the Haskalah, and then onto socialism and Russian populism.

The emerging Yiddish literary scene drew him back to Jewishness. He led the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition from 1912 to 1914, creating a massive archive of the folkways collected firsthand from Jewish villages throughout the Pale of Settlement.

In these folkways, Ansky sensed a new Torah. This is slightly less heretical than it sounds. “The Oral Tradition consisting of all manner of folklore-stories, legends, parables, songs, witticisms, melodies, customs and beliefs — is, like the Bible, the product of the Jewish spirit; it reflects the same beauty and purity of the Jewish soul, the same modesty and nobility of the Jewish heart, the same loftiness and depth of Jewish thought,” he wrote. These traditions could be the wellspring for a Jewish cultural revival.

“The Dybbuk” modeled this idea. It was a simple Jewish folk story blown outward to contain all manner of religious, spiritual, mystical and mythical traditions.

Ansky never saw “The Dybbuk” performed. As presented by historian David G. Roskies, Ansky wrote the play in Russian for the Russian public. A planned debut by the Habima Moscow Art Theatre was canceled amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution.

Ansky fled to Vilna disguised as a priest. He adapted the play into Yiddish for a debut by the Vilna Troupe in Warsaw in December 1920 but died a month before it opened. Hayim Nahman Bialik soon translated the play into Hebrew for the exiled but persistent Habima Players, who ultimately performed the play in Moscow in 1922.

An English adaptation came to America in December 1926 with a blockbuster run on Broadway. Even our local papers covered it, yearning for a production in Pittsburgh.

Could they have known what they were summoning?

With the exception of Purim shpiels, no Jewish play has had a more extensive legacy in Pittsburgh than “The Dybbuk.” Over the past century, it has visited here more than 25 times through readings, performances and screenings, including three of the most ambitious Jewish theatrical experiences ever produced by our community. No play has tugged at our Jewish spirit more relentlessly or more forcefully than “The Dybbuk.”

In the final days of the Yiddish press in Pittsburgh, the Jewish Indicator noted that the upcoming production of “The Dybbuk” was the talk of local Zionist and Hebrew circles and that all art lovers were expected to attend the production.

“The Dybbuk” in Pittsburgh
Corinne Half was born in Chicago. She studied and then taught drama at Northwestern University before marrying a Homestead merchant in 1909 and moving here. She brought along her love of theater, arranging community plays and recitals for the Pittsburgh section of the National Council of Jewish Women and other local groups.

In late November 1926, three weeks before “The Dybbuk” opened at the Mansfield Theater on Broadway, Half staged an “interpretive reading” for an NCJW luncheon at the Young Men’s and Women’s Hebrew Association on Bellefield Avenue in Oakland. She recited the entire play, performing all the characters herself, not only the erstwhile lovers Channon and Leah but also the righteous exorcist Rabbi Azrael.

Explaining the power of the play, she told the 200 women in attendance, sitting at tables decorated with chrysanthemums and autumn flowers, “In every human heart, acknowledged or unacknowledged, one finds a yearning for love and mysticism.”

A few weeks later, S. H. Clarke of the University of Chicago gave a one-person performance of “The Dybbuk” to an audience of more than 750 people at the YM&WHA. The Y Weekly reviewed it kindly, but Anne X. Alpern provided a dissent.

“There were those who in their enthusiasm went so far as to say, ‘Why it was better than seeing the play acted!’” she wrote. “Oh no. To one who hasn’t seen The Dybbuk on the stage this ancient legend would no doubt prove an interesting enough tale, full of poignant, haunting beauty. But one misses much of the essence of the play in hearing it read. This mystical romance melodrama, woven out of ancient legends and intense spiritual suffering was merely glimpsed in the reading. Seen on the stage in it is a play of strange fascination. The dusty synagogue dimly lighted by flickering candles, seedy bearded Jews at their prayers, the scrolls, the robes, the wailing chant of the mourners — all give the play a deeper meaning and a strong spirituality. Against this background the exquisite love motif — a love so strong that after death it can drive itself into another’s body — becomes a thing of moving, memorable beauty. The terror and intensity of the struggle between the Dybbuk, speaking through the frail body of his predestined bride and the old rabbi, and the final exorcism of the Dybbuk are unforgettable.”

The yearning for a full local production grew. The non-Jewish president of the Pittsburgh Center of the Drama League wrote a public letter in early 1927, calling on the Habima Players to bring their production of “The Dybbuk” to Pittsburgh. The Y Weekly echoed by calling on local Jewish leaders to help make this suggestion a reality.

It worked.

H. Malkin and Hendel Theater Enterprises secured the Habima Players for a two-night run at the Nixon Theater during the first days of June 1927. A reception committee representing all the major Jewish organizations of the city at the time welcomed the troupe to town on Wednesday afternoon. That evening, the players performed H. Leivyk’s “The Golem.” The following evening, they performed Ansky’s “The Dybbuk.”

Why did the printed program have a synopsis in Yiddish and in English? Because the play contained neither language. The Habima Players performed “The Dybbuk” in Bialik’s Hebrew. As the local Jewish Indicator noted, “Though there were many in the audience who perhaps gave expression for the first time to the wish that they understood the Hebrew language, yet without understanding the words, one was moved beyond expression… The words, the gestures, the music — everything was deeply harmonious — and in all that burns the great wisdom that only art and talent can light. Does a symphony need words? Does sculpture need to be interpreted? Such is the Habima!”

Every Jewish source here described “The Dybbuk” as an expression of the Jewish spirit. Only the non-Jewish press connected the play to the times. An anonymous reviewer wrote in the Pittsburgh Press: “The pogroms of Prague, Bohemia, were brought home to Pittsburgh Jewry last week at the Nixon by those who lived amid similar ones in Russia, and who are now touring the American stage centers presenting two plays that make one grateful for the great tolerance of religious freedom in America.”
With that, the Habima Players left town. The play remained, as we’ll see. PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org or 412-454-6406.