n.
In Jewish folklore, a disembodied human spirit that must wander restlessly, burdened by former sins, until it inhabits the body of a living person.
Belief in such spirits was common in eastern Europe in the 16th17th century. Individuals thought to be possessed by a dybbuk were taken to a baal shem , who would carry out a rite of exorcism . The mystic Isaac ben Solomon Luria helped promote belief in dybbukim with his doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The folklorist S. Ansky depicted such a spirit in his classic Yiddish drama The Dybbuk ( 0441; 1916).