dybbuk, in Jewish folklore, a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person. Belief in such spirits was especially prevalent in 16th–17th-century eastern Europe. Often individuals suffering from nervous or mental disorders were taken to a miracle-working rabbi (baʿal shem), who alone, it was believed, could expel the harmful dybbuk through a religious rite of exorcism.
Isaac Luria (1534–72), a mystic, laid the grounds for Jewish belief in a dybbuk with his doctrine of transmigration of souls (gilgul), which he saw as a means whereby souls could continue their task of self-perfection. His disciples went one step further with the notion of possession by a dybbuk. The Jewish scholar and folklorist S. Ansky contributed to worldwide interest in the dybbuk when his Yiddish drama Der Dybbuk (c. 1916) was translated into several languages.