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Photo colorisée d'Hanna Rovina dans le rôle de Léa prise lors d'une représentation du Dibbouk à Berlin, 1926

Cologne, Universität zu Köln

The Dybbuk. Phantom of the lost world

From 26 September 2024 to 26 January 2025

In popular Jewish culture, a dybbuk refers to a wandering soul that takes possession of a living person, according to a belief that developed in Eastern Europe from the 18th century onwards. The dybbuk is one of those supernatural creatures that have gone beyond the realms of superstition to become a theme that inspires artists past and present. The mahJ is the first museum to explore the subject in a rich exhibition combining theatre, film, music, literature and popular culture.

It all begins with Shlomo An-ski's play Between Two Worlds. The Dybbuk (1915), a tragedy about the thwarted loves of Lea and Hanan, the new Romeo and Juliet of Yiddishland. The story owes much of its success to its supernatural character, evoking a traditional world where souls seek each other after death. Alternately performed in Yiddish by the Vilner trupe in Warsaw and in Hebrew by Habima in Moscow, in productions that would become milestones in theatre history, the play immediately met with international success, from Paris to Buenos Aires and New York.

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Screenshot of the film "The Dybbuk" where Lea is embraced by death
Légende

Michał Waszyński, Der Dibek, Poland, 1937, 98 min

Production : Warsaw Cinematographic Office Phoenix

© Lobster Films Collection  

Michał Waszyński's 1937 adaptation established itself as the most popular film in Yiddish cinema, reaching audiences far beyond the Jewish public. While the Holocaust engulfed the European Jewish world, interest in the dybbuk did not disappear. It moved to the United States in the 1960s, where the figure of the dybbuk embodied the return of the repressed. During the Mossad's hunt for Adolf Eichmann
the Mossad, "dybbuk" was used to describe the Nazi criminal. In Poland from the 1980s onwards, Andrzej Wajda and then Krzysztof Warlikowsky staged new productions of the Dybbuk, who had become the ghost of a country without Jews, haunted by its past. 

Featuring around a hundred works, the exhibition explores the figure of the dybbuk through a journey that combines painting, theatre, film, music, literature and popular culture, from the presentation of 18th-century amulets to the screening of extracts from films by Sidney Lumet or the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, not forgetting works by Marc Chagall, Nathan Altman, Leonora Carrington, Michel Nedjar and Sigalit Landau.

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New York City Ballet dancers on stage performing "Dybbuk" (music: Leonard Bernstein / choreography: Jerome Robbins)
Légende

Martha Swope (photographer), Patricia McBride and Helgi Tomasson in Dybbuk  

Music: Leonard Bernstein Choreography: Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet, 1974

Inkjet print Courtesy of The New York City Ballet Archives

Exhibition of national interest

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Logo Exposition d'intérêt national

With the support of

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Logo FMS
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Logo Fondation Pro mahJ
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Logo Dilcrah
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Fondation du judaïsme français

Media partnership

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Logo Troiscouleurs
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Logo Transfuge
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Logo Les Inrockuptibles
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Logo Radio Nova
2024-09-26T11:00:00
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Location

Exhibition

Rates and reservation

MahJ ticket to permanent collection and exhibitions:

Full rate: 10 €
Reduced rate: 7 € (18-25 year non European Union residents) / 5 € (18-25 year European Union residents)
Free access: Friends of the mahJ, under 18. See more

Online booking is recommended, including for free ticket holders, Paris Museum Pass holders and Friends of the mahJ.

 

Purchase your entrance ticket:

Online ticketing*
On site, at the ticketdesk, during museum opening hours
By phone, (33)1 53 01 86 57 (Tuesday and Wednesday from 10.30 am to 1 pm)
* Secured payment by credit card with a surcharge of €0.50 per ticket.

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