The Ibbur's Tale

By Lenny Abelson

Professor BENJAMIN Dinerstein is more than a little surprised to find someone in his home when he returns from class. As he notes, "I was even more startled, because I realized that she was one of my former students. However, I was far more taken aback when I remembered that she had died a few weeks earlier."

MIRIAM explains that she is an ibbur. She has come to seek his assistance with the task, a last mitzvah, she was unable to complete in her short lifetime.

The skeptical professor soon finds himself drawn into a remarkable family saga that began in a shtetl on the outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire shortly before World War One. Miriam's family has been unaware of a shonda: the sister of Miriam's great-grandmother had an illegitimate child. Moreover, her Uncle Isidore (aka "IKE") has stumbled upon evidence that this child might somehow have become a Nazi war criminal, and that the entire family may be in grave danger. Can Benjamin help the ibbur overcome a curse?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pleiades Productions
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223312468

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Preface: Notes to

The Ibbur’s Tale

Some of my early readers confused the ibbur with the more familiar dybbuk. The latter is perhaps best known from The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, a drama by S. Ansky, who presented a possessive spirit toward which the audience might feel at least some sympathy. Nevertheless, the dybbuk is a malevolent being by definition. In the Ansky play, the pious Khonen was not necessarily evil, but he felt betrayed by Leah’s engagement to Menashe, took possession of his intended, and had to be exorcised by Rabbi Azriel (with the inevitable tragic consequences).

The ibbur, on the other hand, is an entirely benevolent spirit, often one left with a task or mission to complete or some mitzvah to perform. We again see possession of some sort, but it is often with the voluntary consent of the living person, although sometimes the latter is completely unaware of the possession.

With the exception of The Warsaw Anagrams, by Richard Zimler, I cannot identify any novels or novellas that involve such legendary entities. Thus, I felt the time was right to add another ibbur to the canon.

Some of my details of ibbur possession have no precedent. As I am (chronologically) far removed from legends of the shtetlach, I felt it was appropriate for me to suggest a few newer and more modern possibilities. Thus, Miriam (in this novella) bears strikingly little resemblance to Dr. Erik Cohen (the protagonist in the Zimler novel), and she may also be perceived as more accessible and human.

Miriam had willingly committed herself to work toward the solution of a family mystery her uncle (Isidore, or Ike) had left behind, but then she, too, died. Nevertheless, she felt a moral imperative to complete her mission, to which end she sought the assistance of the totally secularized and skeptical Benjamin Dinerstein, her former English professor.

Two of my beta-readers raised an objection at this point. They felt that such a selection, though presumably arbitrary, was nevertheless suggestive. Had the professor and his former student been romantically involved, and/or (worse still) was there in fact some implicit hint of possible spectrophilia? I certainly did not intend to lead readers astray, but it is sometimes difficult for an author to anticipate the inferences that people may draw. Thus, I turned to the Yiddish theater for precedent and eliminated this minor problem.

I allude specifically to God of Vengeance, the 1907 play by Sholem Asch. The drama involves the ill-fated attempt by a Jewish brothel owner to arrange a marriage between his daughter and the son of a rabbi. His efforts go for naught, as the daughter falls in love with one of the prostitutes working for her father. The play stirred immense controversy, and its 1923 Broadway production and was quickly shut down. In fact, the producer and cast were all subsequently convicted of obscenity.  

Times have changed. Nevertheless, I had no desire to interpolate love scenes within the narrative, and with this simple contrivance (i.e., that the ibbur had been a lesbian) I hope to have deflected any possible misinterpretations.

* * *

This novel draws upon history as well as legend. The horrors of World War Two and the Holocaust include accounts of a number of Mischlinge—mixed Jews, including half-Jews, quarter-Jews, some with still less of the taint—of whom perhaps as many as 160,000 served the Nazi military machine, even while it destroyed the six million. Benjamin and the ibbur discuss this topic more extensively during the course of the narrative.

The ill-fated Hauptmann (later Major) Yosef Müller in the present work was a half-Jew but completely unaware of his ancestry. Such people did indeed serve in the Wehrmacht and/or SS.

* * *

I would be categorically remiss if I neglected to mention two autobiographical elements. The first relates to a family scandal; the other arose from historical records.

A Slow Train to Budapest is the title of an unfinished novel left behind by my late mother, Ann Abelson, whose surname I used for this project. I have thus far been able to salvage only the first two segments of the narrative, both of which are available in digital format. In the 1970s, we learned that my mother’s aunt had had an illegitimate child, and some of that story is loosely parodied in the present work. [The child was adopted by a Jewish family and almost surely did not survive the Holocaust.]

Some relatives on my maternal grandfather’s side of the family remained in Dolhinov, which is now in Belarus. We know that the Nazis sometimes herded Jews (and others) into wooden buildings: schools, synagogues, and various municipal structures. The victims were then locked inside, and the edifices were put to the torch. It is likely that most of the kinsmen living in Dolhinov when the Wehrmacht invaded suffered death in this fashion—a method used by Hauptmann Müller et al. in our narrative.

* * *

I had written one earlier tale involving an ibbur. The last case solved by the world’s most famous detective (cf. Sherlock Holmes and the Mysteries of the Chess World, Russell, 2022) required the assistance of a rabbi (a member of the Watson clan, of course!). With that story behind me, I felt ready to attempt a lengthier venture. I hope this novella will not disappoint my readers.

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Lenny Abelson

27 January 2023

Chapter One: The Intruder

(1 October 2002)

"I was even more startled, because I realized that she was one of my former students. However, I was far more startled when I remembered that she had died a few weeks earlier."

––––––––

We are bound together by invisible threads, and some of us must inevitably be drawn into the webs woven by fate and other people. All the while, some bizarre, mystical dance continues around us, yet we are unaware of the reality beyond the veil. We seek, but we do not find; we look, but we do not see; we listen, but we do not hear.

The fall semester had begun uneventfully enough, although I was becoming steadily more aware of a harsh reality. Each year my students seemed a little younger!

Thanks to a fluke, I was able to teach all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This two-day work week was my reward for having gone so far above and beyond the call of duty during the preceding semester. When the chairman of the department had become incapacitated, I assumed many of her administrative responsibilities while maintaining a full course load, A grateful dean had let me reap the benefits: a modicum of additional pay and a two-day schedule in the fall.

That Tuesday evening, October 1st, I taught my seminar on the British novel and met with two students during my office hours after class. It was almost 11 PM by the time I opened the door of my townhouse, yet I still felt reasonably alert. And then...

Then, as I stepped across the threshold, I was startled to see a woman standing at the entrance to my kitchen.

I was even more startled, because I realized that she was one of my former students.

However, I was far more startled when I remembered that she had died a few weeks earlier.

For a moment, we just stared at one another. Finally, I regained the power of speech. Miriam? Miriam Zonenshayn? I asked timidly. I felt no fear and in fact seemed remarkably calm.

Yes, Benjamin. Please do not be alarmed. I intend you no harm. In fact, I am in desperate need of your help.

She was dressed casually: a blue T-shirt, black slacks, and sneakers. The weather was already getting somewhat brisk at night—I certainly needed my sweater—but a quick glance around the room revealed no sign of another garment.

I swallowed nervously. Uh...excuse my callous observation, but unless all accounts were fabricated, you have been quite beyond my assistance for almost two months.

She smiled. That is certainly true in one sense. What you read was correct; I was killed in an automobile accident on August 7th, seven weeks and six days ago.

I shrugged. So, you expect me to believe that there really are ghosts?

"I am not a ghost. I am an ibbur. Surely, the professor who taught The Dybbuk: Or Between Two Worlds is familiar with the term."

I tried to remember. I was fairly sure I had taught the Ansky play during Miriam’s senior year, spring term of 1992. One of my best students ever, she graduated that semester, and her age had been listed as thirty-two in the obituary notice. I quickly considered the possibilities.

Of course, a home invasion was not out of the question, but Miriam would have been the least likely perpetrator, even if she were on this side of the grass. The person in front of me certainly looked like her, and I had seen her as recently as late March, when she dropped by for a visit.

Miriam was not the sort of person who would have staged her own death. Moreover, I had sent a condolence card to her parents, and they had acknowledged the gesture with a handwritten note, thanking me for all the help I had given their daughter and mentioning how she always thought the world of [me].

Could this have been someone who looked exactly like her? If so, how much did this double know about the curricula on my syllabi?

Ah, but you surely remember the Shakespearean passage I discussed the preceding term, I challenged.

My visitor smiled. You answer me with Horatio’s skepticism—‘So have I heard and do in part believe it’—do you not?

She remembered! I had indeed taught Hamlet in that Shakespeare seminar. "Well, if the Bard’s characters had trouble with a ghost, you will surely excuse me if I am baffled by your presence as an ibbur."

I needed more proof—at least one more test. Miriam smiled, as though anticipating my next question.

"You might ask me something about Medea, unless you prefer to shoot into the 20th century and discuss Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I am sure you remember my research paper on the Euripides tragedy."

That would suffice. This creature, whether living or dead, certainly knew the drama seminar I had taught during her last semester, and that final detail was convincing.

I nodded. "All right. You look like Miriam, and you probably remember our classes better than I do. You claim you are an ibbur, and I suppose I must believe you. Now, how can I be of help?"

And then it happened. She simply disappeared right in front of my eyes, yet even before I