 First edition | |
| Author | Ellen Galford |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Satire, fantasy, Jewish folklore, lesbian fiction |
| Published | Virago Press, 1993 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| ISBN | 9781853814495 |
The Dyke and the Dybbuk is a 1993 novel by Ellen Galford.
The novel is a satirical story based on Jewish folklore, in which an ancient dybbuk – a malicious possessing spirit – returns to haunt a modern-day London lesbian.
Two hundred years ago, Anya's lover, Gittel, betrayed her and married a Torah scholar. Anya, bent on revenge, conjured up a curse according to which Gittel and every first-born female descendant for 33 generations would be possessed by a dybbuk and bear only daughters. The dybbuk Kokos gets assigned this job by the Head Office, but runs into trouble when the family gets help from her nemesis, the Sage of Limnititzk. The sage drives Kokos out of Gittel and traps her in a tree. Two centuries later, a bolt of lightning releases Kokos, but she has a hard time adjusting to the 20th century. Kokos, who is facing dismissal by the Head Office - now a multinational high-tech corporation - tracks down Gittel's descendant, Rainbow Rosenbloom, a political, lesbian film-critic and taxi driver. Rainbow, however, turns out to be far from an easy soul to haunt. If the dybbuk's job is to drive the possessed person mad, Kokos is at a loss as to what to do with a person who is already considered more than a little crazy by her friends and family. The approach Kokos chooses is to remake Rainbow into the ultimate "Nice Jewish Girl". Rainbow, who is now falling for a beautiful, and straight, orthodox woman, now even considers marrying a man and getting back to her religious roots to be close to her - a plan Kokos is pleased with, because it will give her future generations to possess.
According to Mary Keller, "The book is a lesbian exploration of permeability, porosity, identity within contemporary Judaism". She writes that the name of the novel intentionally refers to the famous play and film " The Dybbuk " by S. Ansky, in order to appropriate the Jewish tradition which in itself rejects the lesbian identity and the novel's core concept of a dybbuk, to harness its transgressive nature, for "the promise of transformation" desired by contemporary feminist writers. [1] Howard Schwartz emphasizes the transformative nature of this choice as well, noting that in the contemporary version, as exemplified by Galford, the dybbuk emerges as a sympathetic character, unlike the original tale. [2]
The novel was warmly received by the LGBT community and the literary community in general. Kirkus Reviews called it "A fun, feisty, feminist romp through Jewish folklore", and lauded its "craft, camp, and chutzpah". [3] The Goodreads review calls it "hilarious", [4] and the Jewniverse culture review termed the novel a not-to-be-missed "feisty romp through gay and Jewish history". [5] The Times called it a "highly entertaining farce". [6]
The novel was first published in the UK in 1993 by Little, Brown Book Group and Virago Press. It was published in the US the following year, by Seal Press, who issued a new edition in 1998.
The novel was translated into Hebrew by Dana G. Peleg, as "הדייקית והדיבוק" (Hadaikit ve Hadibuk) in 2000, published by Shufra Publishing, Tel Aviv. [9]
Dykes to Watch Out For was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.
In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being exorcised.
The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds is a play by S. An-sky, authored between 1913 and 1916. It was originally written in Russian and later translated into Yiddish by An-sky himself. The Dybbuk had its world premiere in that language, performed by the Vilna Troupe at Warsaw in 1920. A Hebrew version was prepared by Hayim Nahman Bialik and staged in Moscow at Habima Theater in 1922.
S. An-sky, born Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, was a Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, written in 1914, and for Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish socialist Bund.
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Ellen Galford is an American-born Scottish writer. She was born in the US and migrated to the United Kingdom in 1971, after a brief marriage in New York City. She came out in the mid-1970s. She has lived in Glasgow and London and now lives in Edinburgh with her partner. She is Jewish. Her works include four lesbian novels:
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