Over the weeks as I’ve written these reviews, I’ve noted coincidences such as sequential stories that have similarities. Today’s review of a story about Jewish folklore just happens to be the one that falls on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Originally published as a chapbook in 2005, Sonya Taaffe’s “The Dybbuk in Love” is a look at a traditional part of Jewish folklore.  Not as well-known as the golem,  which traditional states was created by Rabbi Judah Loew in sixteenth century Prague, the dybbuk dates to the same period and refers to the soul of a dead person that possesses a living person in order to achieve an unfinished goal.

The story opens with Clare, a bookstore employee, on a first date with Brendan. Everything seems to be going well until suddenly she realizes that she isn’t talking to Brendan  anymore. Instead, she is talking to Menachem, a dybbuk, the spirit of a man who died of typhus in 1906 in the Pale of Settlement in Russia. Although this is a unique experience for Brendan, who won’t remember that he was possessed, it is all too familiar an experience for Clare, who Menachem has been reaching out to through various people for years.

The  story focuses on Clare trying to live her life when at any moment this stranger, who she has come to know, could appear in the guise of a customer or someone else. Even if Menachem wasn’t possessing someone, any twist in the conversation that was unexpected would make Clare think that she was dealing with the dybbuk rather than the person in front of her.

While most stories of possession tend to focus on the horror aspect of the event, Taaffe takes a different view, first exploring  the feeling of paranoia and persecution that Clare naturally feels and then turning around and attempting to portray Menachem the dybbuk in more sympathetic light, allowing him to tell his story to Clare and looking at why he is trying to communicate with her.

Taaffe’s decision to pivot so many times in the story, offering depth to Clare, Menachem, and even Brendan, who makes a return appearance, lifts “The Dybbuk in Love” above a traditional ghost story. Taaffe looks at a woman seeking romance, and finding a connection both to the long-dead Menachem as well as a potential connection to the modern, and somewhat confused, Brendan, who doesn’t understand his role in the fuller story, nor what went wrong on his date that makes Clare avoid him.

 

 

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference six times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.