Judaism and Superstitions
Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists and Early Modern Judaism by J.H. Chajes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
A Review Essay by Frederic Krome
In
16th- and early 17th- century Safed, Kabbalistic masters
often wrote about the possession of a living body by a disembodied
soul or ghoul (referred to as a dybbuk by later generations).
Such narratives about demonic possession, and related stories about
ecstatic prophecy, were relatively rare in medieval Jewish history.
At the heart of Chajes’ study is, therefore, a simple question:
why did stories about possession become a prominent concern in
early modern Jewish life? In order to set the stage for answering
this question, Chajes marshals an impressive array of documentation,
from classical and Talmudic sources relating to magic, demons (shedim)
and spirit possession, to medieval commentaries on Gilgul (the
doctrine of reincarnation). At the epicenter of this study are
the Kabbalistic texts produced at Safed, and their subsequent redactions
and re-redactions, which provide the narratives of demonic and
spirit possession that would spread to other parts of the Jewish
world. It
is one of the paradoxes of early modern European history that the
same era that witnessed the advent of the scientific revolution
also produced the worst excesses of the witch craze (1550-1650).
Indeed, the same technology that helped spread the works of Copernicus — the
printing press — insured that the fear of maleficia (evil
magic) and demonic possession would also be widely disseminated
among European elites whose obsession with rooting out “Servants
of Satan” would terrorize the continent for over a century.
As
a graduate student in a class on the witch craze I was struck by
the similarities between the so-called “witches’ Sabbath” — in
which Satan’s minions gathered to eat the flesh of Christian
children and drink the blood of the innocent — with the Blood
Libel against the Jews, already 400 years old by the 16th
century. It was also striking how few historians even speculated
on the relationship between an anti-Semitic canard and the fear
of a satanic conspiracy involving women. On the obverse side, a
comparative approach to the relationship between Jewish and Christian
approaches to magic and beliefs about witches and demons did not
appear on the agenda of historians of early modern Jewish history.
Those who have investigated Jewish-Christian interaction have tended
to focus on the Jewish contribution to scientific developments,
a symptom of modernity, rather than on questions about magic and
demonic possessions, wildly perceived as medieval holdover.
Rather
than operate on the assumption that Jewish society was simply influenced
by Christian and Islamic trends, Chajes’ work is part of
a relatively recent movement in Jewish historiography, which operates
under the assumption that Jewish society interacted, to some degree,
with the wider European cultural milieu. This is an important trend
as previous work often served the cause of filiopietism — what
I call the “look who is Jewish school” — which
often sought to edit out the less desirable aspects of Jewish society
on the eve of modernity by charting such things as Jewish participation
in the scientific revolution. It is not too surprising that the
general European witch craze has a Jewish equivalent, although
it was fortunately not as violent as its Christian counterpart;
what scholars have needed is a study that recognizes the wider
historiographic issues. It is a pleasure, therefore, to see that
Chajes introduces himself as “an avid reader of the historiography
of the early modern European witch-hunt” (4): a comparative
analysis of the other, perhaps less admirable, trend in early modern
history; the proliferation of belief in magic and possession upon
Jewish society is vastly overdue.
In
more than 20 years of research, historians of the European witch
craze have come to realize that one causal explanation of the phenomenon
was increased religious tension, which exploded into the open with
the European Reformation of the 16th century. The most intense
witch panics occurred on the borderlands of the Reformation, where
religious passions were elevated. Chajes adroitly points out that
it is also not too surprising that Safed would be the focal point
of Jewish obsessions with magic, demons and possession, for in
the 16th century Safed sat at the borderlands of the Jewish
world. The community was a nexus in which Ottoman Jews, refugees
from the expulsion from Spain and Ashkenazi pietists met. The
cultural and intellectual ferment produced Isaac Luria, perhaps
one of the greatest Kabbalists in Jewish history. Luria and his
disciples would influence the development of Jewish life to the
present. In addition to the heterodoxy of the population, Chajes
argues that the physical setting was conducive to the development
of spirit possession. The hilltop town of Safed is situated in
such a way that its ancient cemetery literally interacts with the
population, providing a physical metaphor for the interaction of
the living and spirit worlds.
A
major theme in Chajes’ book is the social function that spirit
possession plays in the community, whether it was by evil spirits — ibbur — or
the souls of the deceased — nefesh. To this end
he spends a great deal of time throughout the book dissecting the
narratives of demonic and spirit possession. The student of the
history of magic and related subjects will particularly enjoy Chajes’ examination
of the rites of exorcism. Indeed, an examination of these rituals
provides a window not just into magical incantation, but into communal
relationships as well. Over 50 years ago Gershom Scholem proclaimed
that women neither generated Kabbalistic texts nor participated
in mystical association. While it is true that women may not have
generated such writings, an examination of the diaries of men such
as R. Hayyim Vital (a disciple of Luria’s), reveals that
women played an active part in mystical life by being the victims
of possession. In particular, when analyzing (in Chapter 4) the
famous case of the possession of a young girl, the daughter of
a prominent rabbi, in Damascus at the beginning of the 17th
century, a startling picture of the Jewish community emerges. According
to the narrative from Vital’s diary, while possessed by the
spirit of a deceased Jew, the young girl proceeded to reveal the
seamier underside of communal life. In addition to illicit sexual
relations, the breaking of kashrut and the sanctity of Shabbat,
the possessed girl revealed a growing level of unbelief among some
members of the community. Superficially such revelations might
make little sense, or be interpreted as an example of women’s
expression of power in a world where they are disenfranchised.
Yet if we consider again the cultural milieu not only of Safed,
but of the early modern world that produced the witch panics, a
different interpretation emerges. Safed was a community struggling
to achieve an intense level of piety. Such intensity meant a concomitant
increase of temptation, as even the smallest infraction of the
commandments is regarded as a potential major sin. Chajes argues
that such revelations serve as a means of social control. One example
is the case of a widow who was a victim of possession. The narrator
of the story revealed that the widow engaged in an illicit sexual
relationship, which made her susceptible to possession. The sins
committed by the nefesh when alive were also recounted.
The widow’s death — whether from the effects of possession
or the attempted exorcism is not clear — play out as a kind
of morality play providing the narrator of the story with a chance
to ruminate on the multiple transgressions of the entire community. Such
stories, Chajes argues, “cast in bold relief the values and
aspiration of the rabbinic writers who crafted the account, if
not broader sectors of the cultural environment. Sexual licentiousness
and popular skepticism emerge in the account, as in others we have
examined, as fundamental threats to communal leadership struggling
to establish a community on the basis of pietistic ideals.” (54-55)
Thus,
the narratives of demonic possession and exorcism serve, at least
in part, as a reminder of one’s proper path by revealing
what happens to those who follow the evil path. Such conclusions
again demonstrate Chajes’ debt to the general historiography
of European beliefs, which interprets one of the causal triggers
for witch panics as being the advent of new social, intellectual
and scientific developments. The discovery of the new world, which
biblical scholars sought to reconcile with sacred texts, and the
Copernican theory, which removed the earth from the center of the
universe, prompted doubt regarding the veracity of revealed truths.
In both the Christian and Jewish worlds scholars sought to re-assert
the primacy of revealed religion; they did this in part by describing
the threat possessed by the spirit world and Maleficia.
After all, if the devil exists, then so must the divine. Therefore,
stories of possession — demonic and other — cannot
be understood as paradoxically occurring at the same time as the
scientific revolution, but as the obverse side of the coin of the
advent of modernity.
Chajes’ final
chapter, “Skeptics and Storytellers,” takes the story
from Safed to Amsterdam and focuses on Menasseh ben Israel’s Nishmat
Hayyim (Soul of Life), which is a collection of stories about
dybbuks; indeed Chajes maintains it is the largest anthology
of such stories until the late 20th century. Chajes argues
that this book must be understood in the context of the mid-17th-century
intellectual ferment that was unique to Menasseh’s
community of former conversos, as well as the general pan-European
surge in unbelief. One of the most hotly contested debates in the
Amsterdam community, and other parts of the Christian world, was
on the question of the immortality of the soul. In this context,
stories about possession were utilized by religious authorities — such
as Menasseh ben Israel — to prove that there was, in fact,
life after death. After all, spirit possession and ecstatic visions
required the presence of the soul of someone who had departed this
earth. The existence of possession was a proof-text for life after
death. The Nishmat was therefore “a ‘native’ Hebrew
version of a variety of treatise that was becoming increasingly
significant in the mid-seventeenth century — an attack on ‘atheism’ grounded
in a demonstration of the existence of the demonic.” (125)
There
are a number of reasons to recommend this book. The author’s
mining of both Jewish and general European historiography enables
it to be read profitably by specialists in both fields. On another
level, it is nice to read a book that an author found fun to write.
Throughout the text Chajes reveals a keen sense of humor, as when
analyzing the nature of spells used in exorcisms: “Like the
mysteries revealed when spinning a vinyl Beatles album in reverse,
reciting a sacred text backward was bound to unleash its fullest
energies.” (69). Through the use of such humor, Chajes reminds
us that even our own scientific age has its superstitions.
Frederic Krome is managing editor of The American Jewish Archives Journal and an adjunct professor of history & Judaic studies at the University of Cincinnati.