Jewish Magic and Superstition: 4. Man and the Demons

Occasional remarks seem to minimize the danger. Thus one writer informs us, "They are more God-fearing than men are . and should you ask why they do so much harm, they harm no one without good cause; if a man does not provoke them . . . he need have no fear." Prime provocation consisted in forcing them to do one's will, by means of conjurations, amulets, and the like. This was the strongest practical argument against demon-magic, and we hear it reiterated time and again—the man who enters into dealings with evil spirits will not escape them unscathed. Again there is the ingenious polemic according to which the non-monotheistic faith of "two certain peoples" lays them peculiarly open to demonic attack, "but unlike theirs is the portion of Jacob, who believe in the one God." But the implacable enmity of the spirits toward all mankind was an axiom of demon lore.3 Superstition supported this belief with a wealth of instance. Many anecdotes tell of unprovoked physical attacks by the spirits; the man who is dogged by ill-luck is the special prey of demons; the etiology of folk-medicine was primarily demonic. The harm done by ill-chosen words and curses was traced ultimately to the demons, as was the working of the evil eye. Demons were believed to be the active agents in malevolent sorcery. In these ways did folk-belief express its conviction that most of the evil that man suffered was the work of his mortal enemies.

Man was in constant peril. If he dared to promenade alone he took his life in his hands. But the risk was greater outside the bounds of a settled community, and the requirement to accompany a traveller part of the way on his journey was explained on this score. "One should not turn back until the wayfarer can no longer be seen," read the injunction; the act of escorting him and keeping one's gaze fixed on his retreating figure as long as possible represented a sort of symbolic extension of civilization to keep him company and protect him from "the beings that rule uninhabited places." Of similar import

Night time in particular is spirit time. When the mysterious dim of the night settles over the earth the demons, dwellers in darkness, bestir themselves. Mazzikim and lilin, lutins and faes, all flutter out of their hiding places. Therefore, liquids left standing overnight must not be drunk, nor should one drink from a well at night, for the demons may have imbibed of them. Foods placed under a bed for safekeeping during the night are undoubtedly contaminated by evil spirits; to partake of them is to court trouble. Even a covering of iron (a potent anti-demonic agent) is no security against nocturnal invasion. Similarly garlic, or onions, or eggs which have been peeled and left overnight are no longer fit for consumption.

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Great as the danger was every night of the week, on two nights especially was it heightened—the eves of Wednesday and Saturday. At these times hordes of peculiarly devastating spirits were let loose upon the world. During the Talmudic period Friday night in particular was considered an unhealthy time to be abroad alone, and the rabbis required that no man be left behind in the synagogue to finish his prayers alone after the congregation had concluded the service and gone home. For then he must negotiate the distance to his home without a companion. Special prayers were instituted for the Ḥazan to recite, so that the congregation might be detained until its slowest member had caught up with it. In the Middle Ages this fear of being left behind on Friday night was not so pronounced. The commentators explained that the Talmudic synagogues were situated in the fields, where the spirits congregate, whereas medieval houses of worship were located in town, and the late homegoer was not in pressing danger. Nevertheless some medieval rabbis made it a practice to linger until the last man was through with his prayers, in order to accompany him home, even pretending to be engrossed in a book so that the laggard might not be embarrassed.6

CRISES

Eternal vigilance was the watchword; the evil spirits were everywhere, impatiently awaiting the unguarded moment when they might seize one. But at certain critical stages of life, when man's resistance was undermined, or his attention was likely to have been distracted, or when his extraordinary joy unduly excited the envy and animus of the spirit world, the danger was heightened and the safeguards were correspondingly strengthened. These were the moments in the life cycle "when man's star is low": birth, illness, death, while marriage, man's happiest moment, was an especially perilous one.7 These were the moments of man's greatest vulnerability

Midrash, "'because of the merit of circumcision your descendants will be saved from Gehinnom, for only the uncircumcised will descend thither.'" The corollary of this belief, that uncircumcised Jews would have no "share in the world to come" was exceedingly popular in the later periods, and was often voiced in medieval writings. So strong an impression did it make that in Geonic times there arose the custom of circumcising infants who died before their eighth day, at the grave, and there giving them a name. Because of the great importance attached to this rite it was feared that the forces of evil would exert their utmost powers to prevent its consummation. The night before the circumcision, therefore, was held to be the most dangerous for the male child.8

The dangers that beset the bridal pair were attributable to the savage envy and rage that man's joys aroused in the evil spirits, perhaps, too, to their desire to frustrate the act that is responsible for the propagation of human life. Gathering force throughout the period preparatory to the wedding, these dangers assumed their highest intensity on the bridal night and gradually tapered off afterwards.9

The especial susceptibility of the invalid—his ailment was probably itself merely a symptom of demonic attack—was self-evident. The dying man was pictured as surrounded by evil spirits waiting to pounce upon him; therefore his attendants were cautioned to see

10 The measures adopted to counteract the dangers implicit in death and burial provided for every one of these apprehensions.

SPIRIT POSSESSION

So long as the perpetual warfare between mankind and the demon world remained in a sense objective, that is, man's problem was to fight off attack from without, man, as we shall see, did not

This terrifying belief was especially widespread in later Jewish life. Popularized by the Lurianic Kabbalah it became a characteristic superstition of East-European Jewry. But it is found full-blown among German Jews at a time when the Lurianic concept could not yet have gained any wide popular acceptance. The initial appearance of a dibbuk is in a story included in the Ma‘aseh Book,11 which was first published in 1602, and which contains material whose origin is considerably earlier than that date. In this story the spirit which took possession of a young man was the spirit of one who in this life had sinned egregiously, and which could therefore find no peace. It had entered the youth's body after having been forced to flee its previous abode, the body of a cow which was about to be slaughtered. It is this form of the belief, possession by the restless spirit of a deceased person, which gained such popularity in later times. In essence this represents a version of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, gilgul, which the older Spanish Kabbalah developed.

In earlier times we find a purer form of the belief in the possibility of spirit possession—a form familiar in Christian legend12—that is, that the demons proper may make their homes in man's body. This view found its rationalization in the legend that the demons, created on the eve of the Sabbath, are bodiless. Since all creation is engaged in the quest for perfection, all things striving to attain the next higher degree of being, the demons, too, are perpetually seeking to acquire the body of man, their greatest desire being for that of the scholar, the highest type of human. This is why scholars in particular must be careful not to be out alone at night. But just as woman, in herself imperfect, seeks perfection through union with man, so the demons seek to unite themselves primarily with woman, who represents the next degree of creation above them. This is why

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