Talk:Dybbuk

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I'd think that An-ski's play is better known than Antonelli's story, no disrespect to Antonelli, so is probably deserving of a place in the main 'references' list.

The paragraph on Landers' book strikes me as inappropriate. It should be listed in "Dybbuks in Fiction" (and possibly have its own entry). Bd8v (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can somebody please provide a footnote for this? This is too bold an assertion to just leave hanging. Aniboker —Preceding undated comment added 12:33, 3 March 2010 (UTC).[reply]

The 1937 fim pronounced the term (IPA) "Diːbuːk", but I typically hear it pronunced "Dɪbʊk" or "Dɪbɪk" by English speakers. If the former term considered more standard? I think it was Woody Allen who referred to a Yiddish comedy called "Dybbuk Schmibbuk" using the third pronunciation. --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 00:35, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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In the Etymology section, it's said that dybbuk "is an abbreviation of ___ or ___, which is found in man." An abbreviation "which is found in man"? What does that even mean? Kumagoro-42 (talk) 15:41, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I consulted this page to find out what a dybbuk was, and had to look elsewhere because after reading it I still didn't really know. This is an utterly useless article about what I understand to be a fairly important monster in Jewish folklore! For example, we are told: "Very precise details of names and locations have been included in accounts of dybbuk possession." Great, but what are these very precise details? The information we're actually given reads, in its entirety: "Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe (1887-1979), is reported to have supposedly advised an individual said to be possessed to consult a psychiatrist." Is this a joke?

The obsessive-compulsive mentions in popular culture list is longer than the main part of the article, and as usual, mostly worthless. Do we really need to know that the word "dybbuk" was mentioned in various movies in trivial contexts, the way gentiles might call someone a "devil" without remotely implying them to literally be a supernatural entity from Hell? Or that the Harry Potter franchise includes an elf which isn't linked in any way with Jewish folklore and has no similarity to a dybbuk other than their both being supernatural creatures, but some random person thinks it might kinda sorta be a dybbuk because its name has two syllables and begins with D? By that logic, Australia. Argentina, and Armenia are all the same country!

Looking elsewhere, I find that dybbuks are specifically the wandering spirits of people who have died but not yet been divinely judged and assigned to a particular afterlife. I also find that dybbuk possession is characterised by the dybbuk and the rightful owner of the body both being conscious and present simultaneously, so that the victim speaks in two distinct voices which may argue with each other, the dybbuk's voice usually being higher-pitched and sometimes speaking languages unknown to the person it possesses. That dybbuks are most often male spirits, and their victims are most often female. That the most distinctive aspect of dybbuk possession is a lump under the skin which moves around the body. And so on.

Of course, since the other sources I consulted weren't pretending to be encyclopedias, they didn't provide citations, so I have no idea how much reliable evidence (if any) these interesting claims are based upon. But at least they told me what a dybbuk is and what it allegedly gets up to. On the other hand, of all the sources I consulted, you're the only one to include the information that, in a rambling anecdote in a fairly obscure film made in 1997, a fictional character played by Christopher Guest reveals that his grandfather used the expression "dybbuk shmybbuk" while performing a comedy routine in 1914. Now that I needed to know! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.66.74 (talk) 15:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct that the article focuses heavily on fictional accounts and not enough on recorded incidents of dybbuk possession. Some of the most-well-known rabbis were said to have dealt with such cases. If I get around to it, I will try to find reliable sources.

As for Rabbi Teitelbaum: The statement has definitely been attributed to him, buy including it without context is misleading. He wasn't denying the existence of dybbuk. His advice was based on an assumption that this particular patient's issue was related to mental health. Yitz711 (talk) 23:01, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I plan to do a rewrite of this page and try to address all tagged issues. I tend to take a while but hope to have it finished in a few months.