Ghosts & Spirits ยท Jewish diaspora
Dybbuk
A possessing spirit in Jewish folklore, often understood as a restless dead soul requiring ritual response.
Legend File
A dybbuk is a cleaving spirit, a dead soul that attaches to the living and disrupts ordinary life. In Jewish folklore and dramatic tradition, possession is not just horror but a crisis of memory, sin, grief, and ritual repair. The haunted body becomes a courtroom where the unfinished dead must be answered.
Source Framing
Jewish folklore around the dybbuk: restless disembodied human spirit, often from sin or unfinished life, cleaving to a living person through possession, especially in Ashkenazi tradition and later Yiddish literary-dramatic treatment.
