The Dybbukast

The Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian is the earliest documented Jewish play, thought to have been written in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century BCE.  From the fragments that remain, we know that it tells the biblical Exodus narrative in the style of a Greek tragedy. In 2016, theatre dybbuk combined the extant 269 lines with modern-day stories of refugees, immigrants, and other voices from the American experience to form a new adaptation, titled exagoge, that relates the ancient story to contemporary issues.

This episode, presented in collaboration with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, features performances from exagoge intercut with a conversation recorded at the annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in March 2022 between theatre dybbuk's artistic director, Aaron Henne, and Dr. Miriam Heller Stern. Dr. Stern, the Vice Provost for Educational Strategy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and founder of Beit HaYozter/the Creativity Braintrust, studied theatre dybbuk’s process alongside Dr. Tobin Belzer during the creation of the adaptation.

This episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

In our seventh episode of the season, we explore Sound in the Silence, a historical education project that uses the group creation of performance to personalize remembrance on-site where history happened. The project has largely centered on spaces connected to the Holocaust, partnering with a variety of organizations working with young people and community members from throughout Europe. This episode features performed readings from a script created by students as part of the project's first edition in 2011.

Intercut with readings from that script and other related texts is an interview with Sound in the Silence Co-Founder and current Artistic Director Dan Wolf, an artist who works with rap, theater, and personal narrative. He discusses how his own family history intersected with the creation of this project, while also sharing about the work’s long-term impact and the ways in which its collaborative process engages with remembrance.

This episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and was conceived of as a result of a research trip supported by Asylum Arts.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

On October 12, 1958, in the midst of the civil rights movement, a bomb was detonated at The Temple – a synagogue in Atlanta, GA. In our sixth episode of the season, presented in collaboration with The Temple, we explore The Temple Bombing, a play written by Jimmy Maize about the events surrounding that bombing. The play premiered at the Alliance Theatre in 2017 and was inspired by the book of the same name by Melissa Fay Greene.

Featuring readings from the play alongside interviews with Maize as well as Dr. Catherine M. Lewis, Assistant Vice President, Museums, Archives & Rare Books and Professor of History at Kennesaw State University, and Janice Rothschild Blumberg, author, historian, and widow of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild (the leader of the congregation at the time of the bombing), this episode covers the history of Jews in Atlanta and the ways in which the bombing overlapped with issues of belonging, assimilation, and civil rights.

This episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

In our fifth episode of the season, presented in collaboration with Lilith magazine, we explore the Yiddish short story “The New World,” written by Esther Singer Kreitman in the first half of the twentieth century. The English translation by Barbara Harshav, which you can hear excerpts from in the episode, was published in Lilith in 1991.

Dr. Anita Norich, Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, takes us through the story, while also discussing the author’s life and the ways in which her work speaks to the themes and complexities in Yiddish literature. She also touches on the role that societal assumptions about gender have played in the lack of awareness around Yiddish fiction written by women.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

In our fourth episode of the season, presented in collaboration with The Mervis Chair, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University Bloomington, we explore a series of letters which document a moment in the late 1860s when opposing viewpoints caused a split in the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas.

Dr. Laura Leibman, Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College shares about the history of Jews in the Caribbean, and Dr. Judah Cohen, the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor in the Study of Jewish Culture and Professor of Musicology and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, discusses Jewish life on St. Thomas, the circumstances surrounding the split, and the ways in which this story relates to the complexities of communal identity.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

In this episode, presented in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, we investigate Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons, written by David Slucki and published in 2019. The title of the book references "Di Shvue" – the anthem of the Jewish Labor Bund. Dr. Slucki, the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at Monash University, shares with us about his family’s history with the Bund and discusses the ways in which that history speaks to a variety of cultural and societal considerations in Australia and beyond.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Episode 2 of Season 2, presented in collaboration with the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), explores The Book of Job, the biblical text which tells the story of a man who experiences great personal loss. The book has served as a source of contemplation about the nature of life and death, as inspiration for the creation of a variety of artistic works, and as a departure point for theological debates.

Dr. Greg Salyer, President of PRS, takes us through the text, discussing its structure and content, as well as the ways in which it has been interpreted and how those interpretations may have, at times, obscured or misrepresented its meaning. In addition, he illuminates the book's relationship to fundamental human questions about existence.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

The second season of The Dybbukast begins with an episode about the life and music of Samy Elmaghribi, presented in collaboration with the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Born Salomon Amzallag to a Jewish family in Morocco in 1922, Samy became a major star in his home country and throughout North Africa performing, composing, and recording both traditional and popular music, and later became a cantor and community leader in Montreal. His life’s journey moves through a broad spectrum of time and space, giving us glimpses into moments in history that shaped generations.

Yolande Amzallag, a professional translator and the founding president of the Samy Elmaghribi Foundation, shares about her father's life and legacy as Dr. Christopher Silver, the Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture at McGill University and curator at Gharamophone.com, offers insights into Samy's musical history and Dr. Aomar Boum, Professor and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA, discusses the political and cultural experiences that intersected with Samy’s life.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Bovo-Buch is Elia Levita's 16th century Yiddish treatment of the popular Italian chivalric romance Buovo d’Antona. Chivalric romances, popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe, are narratives which celebrate courtly love and manners and most often feature the adventures of heroic knights going on quests. Bovo-Buch, which was extremely popular among Ashkenazi Jewish communities of the time, adopts and adapts this form to its own purposes and is an example of the convergence that occurs when a narrative is introduced into a new cultural context.

Dr. Erith Jaffe-Berg, Professor of theatre at the Department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production, University of California at Riverside, explains the cultural collision inherent in the book and illuminates its historical context. 

This extended episode is a reimagining of a three-episode series titled “Bovo-Buch: Chivalric Romance, Cultural Collision,” which we originally presented in September 2020 on Judaism Unbound.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Written in Italy in the 16th century by Jewish dramatist Leone De' Sommi Portaleone, who also wrote what is considered to be the oldest extant Hebrew-language play, the poem "In Defense of Women" touches on the role of women in drama and reveals a great deal about the cultural considerations and power dynamics of this time when women were coming to the fore on the theatrical stages of Northern Italy, Rome, and Venice in the professional world of the commedia dell’arte.

Intercut with selections from the poem and other works of the era performed by theatre dybbuk actors, Dr. Erith Jaffe-Berg, Professor of theatre at the Department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production, University of California at Riverside, guides us through the text's meaning and its relevance to both historical and contemporary issues of equity and belonging.

The live recording from which this episode was created was presented on May 20, 2021 in collaboration with San Diego Repertory’s Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival (JFEST), with scholar and student participation from the Department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production at the University of California, Riverside.

This episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.