The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Lowe, Mari. Aviva vs. The Dybbuk. Levine Querido. 2022. Kindle.

Aviva vs. The Dybbuk is a middle-grade novel. It is narrated by the protagonist, Aviva, in first-person present, though the prologue, “Before,” is narrated in first-person past. In that prologue, Aviva ran away from home at just nine years old. Her mother, Ema, had become depressed and agoraphobic ever since her father’s death, and Aviva wanted to incite Ema to leave the home and come find her. However, Aviva was disappointed when the neighbors found her instead. She resigned herself to living forever with her depressed mother and never expecting any change.

In the narrative present, Aviva is eleven years old and in the sixth grade. She and her mother live in a small apartment over the mikvah, which is a religious pool where Jewish women come to cleanse themselves. After Aviva’s father died, her mother was given the job and the apartment. Aviva does not like thinking about her father’s death, and she does not remember it, but she does remember the first time she swam in the mikvah because it was also the first time she ever saw the dybbuk—a ghost in Jewish folklore who causes mischievous trouble. Aviva is the only one who can see the dybbuk who haunts the mikvah, and she is always trying her best to clean up his messes before anyone else sees them.

Aviva goes to Beacon Torah Day School, but she does not feel like a good student because she has trouble concentrating. The other girls think she is annoying because she is disruptive in class. Her best friend, Kayla, stopped talking to her after her father’s accident, and Aviva only feels like she belongs while playing machanayim. When their teacher, Morah Miller, tells the class that the school is switching the annual Bas Mitzvah Bash to a mother-daughter event rather than a father-daughter event, the whole class gets angry and blames Aviva. She goes out to recess and plays machanayim, but she gets into a fight with Kayla on the court, and both girls are sent to Principal Axelrod’s office. As a punishment, the girls are forbidden from trying out for the machanayim team, and they are assigned the task of planning the Bas Mitzvah Bash together.

When Aviva goes home that night, she notices someone has carved a strange symbol in the wet cement outside the shul. Later that night, she wakes up to see police sirens outside and learns that the symbol is a swastika. The police try to calm the community down and insist it was just a prank by teenagers, but everyone is unsettled the next day at school. That afternoon, Kayla comes over to start planning the party. After Ema goes to sleep, the girls sneak into the mikvah and go for a swim. They find a secret door under the water.

The next day at school, the girls meet with Principal Axelrod, who agrees to give them another week to plan for the party. They plan a sleepover for later in the week. When Kayla comes over, they work on their math homework, and Kayla speculates that maybe the dybbuk is the ghost of a dead boy who is buried under the mikvah. The girls decide to wait until Ema is asleep, and then they sneak back into the mikvah and drain the pool. While they wait, Kayla explains that her father is sick with cancer, and she says this is the reason she stopped talking to Aviva. Once the water is drained, they go inside the secret passage, but then the dybbuk locks them inside.

The girls walk through the secret passage and come to the genizah, a storage place for old holy books. From there, they take the stairs up to the shul and look around for a key to the mikvah so they can get back inside without waking up Ema. They run into the shammas, who is the caretaker of the shul. He takes them back to the mikvah and lets them in, but Aviva has a panic attack because her father used to be the shammas. Kayla comforts Aviva and holds her hand.

The next day, the girls tell the principal that they want to design a scavenger hunt at the arcade for the Bas Mitzvah Bash. Principal Axelrod agrees to secure prizes for the winning team. Afterwards, Aviva and Kayla go outside to play machanayim at recess. Kayla’s new best friend, Shira, gets jealous and tells Aviva that she is lying about the dybbuk and then says that Ema only got the job at the mikvah because everyone felt sorry for her. Aviva starts to cry.

That weekend, Aviva goes to shul and runs into Shira and Kayla. Shira’s aunt invites Aviva to come over, and Aviva agrees, but when she asks Ema, Ema gets upset. Aviva pretends to have a stomachache so she can stay home with Ema because she does not want her to be upset.

Aviva and Kayla continue working on the plans for the party. On the night before, they make Jell-O cups, but the dybbuk sabotages them by leaving them out of the refrigerator. Aviva gets mad at him, and Kayla suggests they perform Kaddish to put his soul to rest. The girls go into the shul to try it, but the dybbuk gets upset, and Aviva stops the prayer. They go back to the mikvah to continue preparing for the party, but the dybbuk does not return. Aviva and Kayla go back to the shul several hours later to look for the dybbuk, but they find that someone has vandalized the shul. Again, the police refuse to believe that it was a hate-crime and instead say that it was probably just teenage pranksters.

The next day, Aviva and Kayla set everything up at the arcade. Aviva goes home to change, but Ema is in a depressed state. Aviva says she wants to stay home with her, but then Mrs. Eisenberger and Mrs. Leibowitz come over and force Ema to get up and come to the party with Aviva.

Although it is difficult for Ema at first, everyone has a great time. However, when Aviva and Ema return home, they find that Mrs. Leibowitz broke her leg after a bookshelf fell on her. Aviva goes into the shul to see if she can find the dybbuk, but when she goes into the tunnels beneath the shul she is attacked by an antisemitic man. Luckily, she escapes, and the police arrest the man.

Ema reveals that the dybbuk is not real—Aviva invented him after her father was killed in front of her during an antisemitic attack when she was only six years old. Ema and Aviva decide to go visit her father’s grave for the first time. Ema announces she is going to go see a therapist, and Aviva says goodbye to the dybbuk.

The Jell-O cups that the dybbuk left out of the refrigerator give some of the girls on the machanayim team food poisoning, so Principal Axelrod invites Aviva and Kayla to play. They do, and they have a lot of fun together.