Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism PDF
Preview Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism
\ B etween u W oreds D ybbuks, Exorcists, and Early M odern J udaism J. H . C hajes Between Worlds JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman, Series Editor Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport-Albert David Stern A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Between Worlds Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism J. H. Chajes l*KNN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Koret Jewish Studies Publication Program. Copyright © 2003 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper io 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chajes,J.H. Between worlds : dybbuks, exorcists, and early modern Judaism / J.H. Chajes. p. cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-8122-2170-1 1. Dybbuk. 2. Spirit possession. 3. Exorcism. 4. Mysticism— Judaism. 5. Spiritual life—Judaism. 6. Future life—Judaism. I. Title. II. Series. BM729.D92C53 2003 296.3W6— dc2i 2003044763 To my mother and mother-in-law, Annette Chajes and Karin Fenz, and in memory of my father and father-in-law, Julius Cha jes z'V and Professor Emanuel Fenz Contents Introduction 1 The Emergence of Dybbuk Possession 2 The Dead and the Possessed 3 The Task of the Exorcist 4 Dybbuk Possession and Women’s Religiosity 5 Skeptics and Storytellers Arrival Appendix: Spirit Possession Narratives from Early Modern Jewish Sources Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments Reb Nachman laughed and said, “If scholars let one dead man step foot into their studies, all their work would be null and void!” — Sihot ha-Ran, §226 Introduction What therefore is the locus that authorizes me, today, to sup pose that I can speak the other better than all of them? Lodged like them in knowledge that attempts to understand, with respect to the possessed I am reiterating the position— now with a few variants which must be evaluated— that for merly belonged to the demonologist or the doctor. — Michel de Certeau\ In the early 1540s, a Jewish boy in the Galilean— and, for nearly a generation, Ottoman— village of Safed, was possessed by the soul of a sinner, a dybbuk.l Furious that the boy’s father had killed the dog in which he had formerly been lodged, the soul sought vengeance by killing the man’s son. The eminent sage who was called upon to exorcise the spirit, having forced it to speak with threats of excommunication, discovered that there was little he could do but rescue the boy by removing the in truder and banishing him to the wilderness. This he accom plished by intoning a classic Hebrew liturgical formula, though with a magical twist: the rabbi recited the words both forward and backward. More cases were to follow. Safed would again be the locus of possession episodes in the early 1570s, as would, to a less dramatic extent, cities in both Christian and Muslim worlds: Ferrara, Ancona, Pesaro, Venice, Damascus, Prague, Cairo, Tituan, and Turin. The possessed Jews of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen turies were not alone. Convulsing, tearing off their veils, bleating like sheep, and climbing trees like cats, the nuns of Wertet, in the country of Hoorn, Brabant, were possessed in large numbers in 1550. So too the nuns of Xante, Spain, in 1560. Communities of nuns were overwhelmed by devils in Milan in 1590, in Aixen- Provence in 1611, in Lille in 1613, in Madrid in 1628, and, fa mously, in Loudun in 1634. Hundreds of accounts report the possession of individuals beyond these monastic communities as well. The dramas of spirit possession episodes, macabre and in many cases sexually charged, have long been of interest to histo rians and lay readers. The fascination of the latter hardly requires explanation; by the sixteenth century, authors of the surviving ac counts had realized that their tales would tantalize the reading public. Sharing this affection for colorful narratives, historians have made frequent use of possession accounts, recognizing the extent to which they communicate significant features of early modern culture. Exorcism rituals have also been subjected to a fascinating array of exegetical strategies and probed for their sug gestive encryption of patterns of mentalite and theological suppositions. Whether used as indicators of shifts in the polit ical and ecclesiastical realm or as signs of sexual and religious anxiety among the folk, materials related to the proliferation of spirit possession have been analyzed in various innovative ways by the conspicuously creative historians of early modern Europe. Any attempt to treat spirit possession historically is chal lenged by the fact that it is a near-universal phenomenon of human culture.^ One need only take a cursory glance at the an thropological literature on the subject: a recent review article by janice Boddy cites no less than 221 studies on spirit possession amid peoples on every continent.^ Yet this universalism must not obscure the distinctive place of spirit possession in different
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