Shabbat Shalom! This week’s focus of fantastic beings is dybbuks. Dybbuks are
sometimes confused with demons or generic ghosts, but they are something in
between. The word dybbuk comes from the Hebrew verb “davek” – to cleave or to
cling. Among the demonology and stories of various types of spirits roaming the
world found throughout the Talmud and Kabbalistic literature, there are stories
of human souls who cling to this world when their body dies and who cleave to
the soul of a living body. In the folklore of European Jews from the 17th century on, the phenomenon of a person’s possession by a clinging
soul came to be blamed on the being known simply as a dybbuk, and was generally
considered a bad thing.
Having grown up in a haunted house, I know that not all clinging spirits are
malicious. True, my grandmother’s ghost did not try to possess anyone as
dybbuks are known to do, but she did once appear in a fiery image outside the
window overlooking the backyard to tell my cousin’s boyfriend to get out of her
house. My cousin broke up with the guy shortly thereafter. For context, Grandma
Irene wasn’t being a dramatic dybbuk with the fire thing; she did actually die
in a fire in the backyard. For about one week straight in January 1998, our TV
kept turning itself on for 6:00 news, though no one in the family remembered
setting the timer. That would be about when we were sitting down for dinner,
and no one wanted the TV on then. My parents made a few attempts to ensure
there was no timer set or to turn it off. The last time the TV turned itself
on, the news was reporting a large fire in our town. It had started in a
beloved family-owned bakery downtown and ended up damaging several Main Street
businesses. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but it seemed Grandma Irene wanted us
to keep up on fire-related news in town. There were other, more mundane signs
that maybe on their own wouldn’t be so obvious, but coupled with the distinct
fire-related hauntings led us to still imagine them as acts of Grandma Irene’s
soul clinging to the house in which she had raised her children, lived for many
years, and where she had died, and where her youngest daughter was now raising
her own children. For years, three different family dogs, owned separately,
would sit down at the foot of the stairs and stare up expectantly around the
time Irene would be getting ready to go to work if she were alive. A few years
ago, my dad was home alone and doing some housework. He swears he very
distinctly felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped a foot in the air, turned off
the vacuum, and looked around, but there was no one there. The house was quiet,
and there have been no more spooky happenings since then. We think Irene was
saying thanks to her son-in-law for keeping up her house and taking care of her
family, and saying goodbye. My sibling and I had already moved out of the house
and were more or less grown, and she didn’t need to look after us anymore. We
wondered if she went to Phoenix to keep tabs on her great grandchildren, but we
haven’t heard any stories from my cousins out there. We assume and hope that
her soul finally let go of its grip on this world, and returned to its maker.
Hopefully, Irene is no longer a dybbuk.
The stories of the Talmud and Kabbalah claim that dybbuks can be created by
malicious souls that linger in this world because they are so sinful they do
not want to return to the Creator, or they can be created by pure souls that
are wronged somehow and they cleave to the one who wronged them. Maybe some
stick around out of love, an unwillingness to leave their families, a desire to
stick to the souls that they felt connected to in life.
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Lech L’cha, we are told that Abram and
Sarai leave Haran with a caravan, taking with them to the Promised Land their
nephew Lot and his family, and “all the souls they made”, as well as all their
“possessions”. The most common Midrashic explanation of this line is that they
converted all their servants to monotheism and made their souls as if new with
the love of God. But we know that Abram and Sarai are known and will later be
blessed for their hospitality. In my experience, being proselytized to is not
very welcoming, no matter how friendly the person seems when they’re trying to
“save your soul.” What if, rather than converting servants and hauling them
along this journey that’s really not for them, Abram and Sarai were actually so
open and welcoming that the people who dwelled among them clung to their souls
like a dybbuk. I’m not necessarily saying that all the “souls” Abram and Sarai
brought to the Holy Land were ghosts, but I’m also not saying that none of them
were. Either way, what I’m really saying, is that love is a very effective glue
to stick one soul to another. I’ve never been haunted by a dybbuk that cleaved
to this world out of malice or hurt, but I spent all my childhood with one that
clung on in love. As a living person, I know anger can feel haunting, but it
generally passes and does not consume the soul, yet unconditional love lasts
and connects two souls forever. I hope I’m not inviting in a host of ghosts to
the synagogue by saying this, but how beautiful would it be to create a
community so open and welcoming, so filled with unconditional love for each other,
that our souls clung to one another, cleaved to Ner Shalom, and stuck around to
help make this synagogue the best it could be for as long as we could. May your
homes be ghost-free, but your lives filled with love and souls that cling to
yours in joy. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.
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