The Dybbukast

Dr. Jennifer Wells, former Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, takes us through the social, economic, and political landscape of Elizabethan England as Aaron Henne, the writer and director of our latest work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad, and artistic director of theatre dybbuk, illuminates that history's impact on our interpretation of Shakespeare's Merchant.

This episode is presented in collaboration with the George Washington University Department of History. 

This is the third and final episode in our series connected to concepts that intersect with The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other.”

This illuminated lecture brings together work from Dr. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, Visiting Scholar at Portland State University and scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, with readings of excerpts from Shakespeare's Merchant and other related materials. Dr. Pollack-Pelzner takes up the question: “Why perform The Merchant of Venice?" and discusses its production history, scholarship related to the work, and his own personal relationship to the play. 

This episode is presented in collaboration with the Shakespeare's First Folio: 1623-2023 Festival at Portland State University and was recorded live as part of the festival on October 26, 2023 during theatre dybbuk's residency in Portland, Oregon.

This is the second in a three episode series connected to concepts that intersect with theatre dybbuk's most recent theatrical work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other.”

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

In this episode, presented in collaboration with the George Washington University Department of History, we examine the history of the word “ghetto" and look at ways that ideas contained in Shakespeare's play overlap with and deviate from that history.

Dr. Daniel Schwartz, Professor of Jewish History at GW, guides us through this exploration, sharing some of the concepts contained in his book, Ghetto: The History of a Word.

This is the first in a three episode series connected to concepts that intersect with theatre dybbuk's most recent theatrical work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other."

In the concluding episode of our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and of our third season, we investigate the ways in which students respond to Jewish sacred texts. Throughout the episode, we present readings from the Torah and accompanying responses from students.

Dr. Ziva Hassenfeld, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor of Jewish Education, discusses her work in studying how children develop interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, sharing about both the tensions and the opportunities that exist within learning environments.

In this fourth of our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, we explore The Book of Tahkemoni, a collection of tales written in Hebrew in the early 13th century. Authored by Yehuda Alharizi, who was born in Toledo, Spain in the middle of the 12th century, the book uses the structure of the Arabic literary form known as maqama.

Dr. Jonathan Decter, the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, discusses the history of Jews in medieval Spain and shares about the cultural influences and experiences present in Alharizi’s work.

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

In this third of our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, we continue to explore the diverse interests of the NEJS Department by looking at a text from the beginnings of Christian monasticism in the Byzantine period. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is a collection of short stories and sayings from and about monks centered in Northern Egypt in the fourth century CE that were recorded in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Dr. Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies, takes us through the ways in which the collection was developed, the influence it has had, and its intersections with various faith traditions.

In this second of our five-episode series with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University (NEJS), we explore "The Imagined Childhood,” a short story originally published in Hebrew in 1979. Written by the prolific 20th-century Iraqi-born Israeli author Shimon Ballas, the story served as an epilogue to a collection of short stories whose narratives intersect with the author's early life in Baghdad.

Dr. Yuval Evri, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies, takes us through the author's immigrant history and his multilingual engagement in Arabic, Hebrew, and French throughout his body of work.

In this first of our five-episode series with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University (NEJS), we explore a satirical text from 1897 titled The Chronicles of the Rabbis: Being an Account of a Banquet Tendered to “Episcopus” by the Rabbis of New York City upon the Anniversary of his 70th Birthday. Written by J.P. Solomon, the editor of a popular Jewish newspaper, under the pseudonym “Ben F. Rayim,” the text spoofs the banquet thrown that year on the occasion of the 70th birthday of New York’s foremost Reform rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Gustav Gottheil.

Intercut with readings from the satire, Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, takes us through the text, translating the tensions it presents of a rabbinate on the cusp of change and its intersections with the popular culture of its time.

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

In this special guest episode from the American Academy of Religion, Dr. Geraldine Heng discusses the obstacles in conceptualizing race in premodernity and the evidence for racialized thinking in the European medieval period. Dr. Heng is professor of English and comparative literature, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and women’s studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the founder and director of the Global Middle Ages Project.

In this interview, she talks with Dr. Kristian Petersen about the research in her book The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won AAR's 2019 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of Historical Studies.

In this episode, presented in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Maryland, we share selections from a speech by Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, which was given at the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1937. Portions of this speech are featured along with excerpts from his unpublished autobiography in an article from the Museum's journal, Generations, titled “Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not.” A prominent and nationally known leader affiliated with the Reform movement, Morris Lazaron served as rabbi for Baltimore Hebrew Congregation from 1915 through much of 1946, and, later, as rabbi emeritus.

Rabbi Lazaron’s words and work serve as an entry point for us to explore the American Council for Judaism: a non-Zionist, anti-nationalist organization that he co-founded with a group of Reform rabbis in 1942.

Dr. Matt Berkman, visiting professor at Oberlin College in Ohio, takes us through the history, philosophy, and formation of the American Council for Judaism while Rabbi Andrew Busch, current rabbi of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, and Peggy Wolf, Rabbi Lazaron’s granddaughter, share about the rabbi’s life, work, and legacy.

In this episode, presented in collaboration with the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, we investigate the life and work of the poet Chaya Rochel Andres, who emigrated as a young woman in 1921 from Poland to Dallas, Texas, where she spent most of her adult life. Her story serves as an entry point for us to explore some of the social, political, and cultural dynamics of Jewish life in the South.

Throughout the episode, a variety of poems from Chaya Rochel's body of work are intercut with information about the circumstances of her life, the time in which she lived, and the organization with which she was involved, the Arbeter Ring, which many people now know as the Workers Circle.

Scholarship from the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life includes expertise from Dr. Josh Parshall, Director of History, who discusses Chaya Rochel's work and its connections to the Yiddish speaking world, as well as Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the South, and Nora Katz, Director of Heritage and Interpretation, who speaks about how Chaya Rochel's story intersects with the Jewish history of migration to and within the Southern United States. Also featured in the episode is an interview with Chaya Rochel from 1981, courtesy of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, in which she shared about her writing and her personal history.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.