Table Of Content\
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
