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Through intensive, close reading of the works of An-sky, Kafka, and Kantor, discover how their artistic visions developed a powerful current in modern Jewish literary sensibility and became a key element in European literary modernism before WWII and in its half-life in post-War Europe and America.

S. An-ski’s play The Dybbuk, a story of possession set in a shtetl (think The Exorcist meets Fiddler on the Roof), is the foundation of modern Jewish drama. This talk by scholar Gabriella Safran explores its roots: in Jewish folklore, the scandalous blood libel trial in Kiev in 1913, and the political passions of Russian-Jewish revolutionaries.

Overview of highlights from the collections of the YIVO Archives.