S. Ansky, Shloyme-Zanvel Rappaport (1863-1920), who wrote under the name Semyon Akimovich Ansky, was born in Belarus to a traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. He became a populist activist, ethnographer, and author of fiction, poetry, and drama in Yiddish and Russian. From 1911 to 1914, he traveled through villages as head of a Jewish ethnographic expedition. A story he heard during his researches became the foundation for his famous play, The Dybbuk.
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In the folklore of Eastern European Jewry, a dybbuk is a wandering soul that comes to rest in the body of a living person. In this case, the dybbuk is an impoverished student that possesses a young bride on her wedding day. She is taken to a great Chassid... SEE MORE