The Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds

First printing stated.

157, [3] p.; ill.

Original dust jacket has minor closed tearing and a chip to top edge, otherwise Very Good over a beautiful red hardcover with gilt lettering to cover and spine, top page edges in red, and illustrated endpapers. (See images.)
This aesthetic book in Fine condition was designed by Kadi Karist Tint, whose masterful calligraphy is found throughout, along with many black and white illustrations by Jennifer Coleman.

From dust jacket:

The Dybbuk is a classic story of exorcism, possession and love in a religious Jewish community of Eastern Europe. Credence is a dybbuk, the wandering soul of a dead person who can enter and control one's body, was part of the folklore and everyday belief of Hasidim, whose lives hovered between the two worlds of reality and the supernatural.
So when a pious and gentle young woman, on he eve of her marriage, speaks out with the voice of the dead cabala student who loved her, the people of her simple village are horrigied by the belief that she is possessed by a dybbuk. When efforts by the rabbi to drive out the spirit fail, and exorcism is decided upon as a last resort--an exorcism and an excommunication.
Through contact with the supernatural, it is discovered that due to a vow her father made years before, the young woman was to be the student's predestined bride. In an effort to fulfill destiny and prevent her from marrying anyone else, the youth steeped himself in the supernatural. He succeeded in preventing the marriage of his beloved for a time, but when it was announced that she was betrothed to another man, he collapsed and died--returning almost immediately to claim his rightful bride by entering her body in the form of a dybbuk.
Faith, piety, terror, and pervading mysticism are all woven together in this awesome, fascinating folk tale.

S. Morris Engel was born in Poland but studied as a rabbinical student in Toronto, Montreal, and New York. He later received degrees from various Canadian universities in literature and philosophy. He is currently [1974] a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California.

The photograph on the jacket is of a Karaite prayer-shawl bag inscribed "Shadai" in Hewbrew, a mystical name for God. Courtesy of Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, California.

From Preface:

Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, known throughout the literary world under the pseudonym of S. Ansky, was born in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1863. He led a life of wandering, roaming the cities and villages of Russia, collecting folktales and writing the tragic history of his people. The Dybbuk, which is a product of these travels, is the only complete dramatic piece he ever wrote.The play was written before the outbreak of the First World War; its first performance had to wait, however, until 1920.