(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
The weird scenes of “The Dybbuk”, the internationally known drama of Jewish life by S. Ansky, were enacted in real life in Jerusalem on Thursday when ten rabbis of the Yemenite Jewish community performed the cremony of casting out a Dybbuk.
A Jewish girl, Miss Mazli, who was born in Bagdad and is now a resident of Jerusalem, was the heroine of this drama. The parents of the girl, who has become mentally unbalanced since the death of a young man, Ezekiel, their neighbor, applied to the rabbis to cure their daughter. On Thursday, the rabbis, after a full day’s fast, assembled in the Yemenite synagogue to perform the ceremony which lasted several hours.
Black candles were lit, the Shofar was blown and the prescribed texts recited, invoking the Almighty’s name in ordering the evil spirit of the dead man to “leave the body of the virgin”. The girl had repeatedly complained, her parents asserted, that “the soul of Ezekiel, the youthful neighbor, had settled in my body, causing me torture.”
Following the ceremony the parents declared that their daughter no longer suffers from the evil spirit, and that she is now cured.
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