tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-305777782024-03-07T02:16:23.487-06:00Jewish Myth, Magic, and MysticismJEWISH MYTH, MAGIC, AND MYSTICISM is devoted to all aspects of Jewish esoteric traditions and occult lore.
It is the official blog for the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism.
The JMMM has been recognized as one of the top 50 Jewish blogs on the internet in 2010Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.comBlogger225125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-57066087718513835892016-05-12T12:10:00.004-05:002016-05-12T12:10:50.557-05:00My second book, <i>Sefer ha-Bahir,</i> is in process to be published in the coming year! The cover design is beautiful.<br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-81530959947276554532015-03-19T21:30:00.000-05:002015-03-20T10:56:20.827-05:00Mystery Guests on the Seder Plate: Charoset, Lettuce and Egg<a href="http://desiretoshare.com/sederplate.gif" style="font-style: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://desiretoshare.com/sederplate.gif" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 207px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 206px;" /></a> The complex ritual of the Seder provides many opportunities for occult interpretations (see my earlier entry, <a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/04/ritual-mysticism-and-magic-of-passover.html" style="font-style: normal;">The Ritual Mysticism and Magic of Passover</a> ). Rabban Gamliel, for example, requires at a minimum that we explain the symbolism of three objects at the seder: The Pesach (shankbone) Matzah (unleavened bread) and Maror (bitter herb). But there are many more objects and gestures that get little or no explicit explanation. These are the "objects that don't know how to explain themselves."<br />
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<span style="font-style: normal;">For example - we always say the <em>charoset</em> (the fruit and nut compote) represents the mortar with which our ancestors set the bricks during their slavery. Yet this interpretation feels a little contrived. Why would the mortar binding us to misery be sweet? Art Waskow finally offered a <em>drash </em>on <em>charoset </em>that makes perfect sense to me. Waskow posits that the ingredients are drawn directly from foods mentioned in the Song of Songs - apples, wine, nuts, and spices. Since the early mystics understand the S of S to be God's inner thoughts at the time of Exodus, this garden of metaphors signifies the divine passion ("Your kisses are sweeter than wine") for the people Israel. The <em>charoset </em>then is not a reminder of concrete, but a concrete reminder of God's love for us at the time of Pesach. I think this insight is the right one and reaches back to the true roots of this </span><i>minhag</i> (custom). </div>
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Then there is the lettuce (<em>hazeret</em>)<em>.</em> People are forever puzzled as to why there needs to be a second herb on the seder plate besides the horseradish. While a Mishna on the seder mentions <em>hazeret</em> as well as <em>maror</em>, many treated the terms as synonymous. Early seder plates only had five spots, while virtually all made today have six to accommodate this second herb. The lettuce has its roots in Sefardic mysticism, which insists on this added component. Why? In order to better represent the <em>sefirot</em>, the mystical divine structure. By having the lettuce as well as the horseradish, there are then ten components (three <em>matzot, zaroa, carpas, maror, beitzah, charoset, hazeret </em>and the seder plate) to the seder that parallel the ten sefirotic elements (<em>Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Gevurah, Hesed, Tiferet, Hod, Netzach, Yesod</em>, and <em>Malchut</em>). </div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">Finally, there is the roasted egg. Forget the "symbol of spring" or "cycle of the year" explanation. Even the "It symbolizes the birth of a nation" interpretation is a latecomer, though it makes me smile. The actual origin is not really esoteric. It's there to remind us of (that's why it's roasted) but not replace (that's why it's an egg, not a lamb) the </span><i>Chagigah</i> (festival) offering made in the Temple at Pesach. Don't confuse that offering with the Pesach lamb once eaten as part of the seder - in ancient times lambs were offered both at home and in the Temple. </div>
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But the egg in particular seems to attract funky and novel interpretations. A new drash I've heard is on the widespread Ashkenazi custom of starting the Pesach dinner by dipping a boiled egg in salt water and eating it. Earlier explanations I have heard is that it meant to remind us of Sodom, for the city was supposedly destroyed in the month of <i>Nisan</i> (yeah, I don't quite get it either). Then this year someone assured me it was a "Kabbalistic ritual" in commemoration of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. While we started out walking on dry land, as the Torah and Midrash says, according to this new explanation, the sea started to rise again until the Israelites had their male genitalia dipping in the salty waters. </div>
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I had to have that one explained to me twice. The person was quite insistent that this was the true meaning of the ritual. My first reaction was, "...and this is supposed to teach us -- what?" The question I should have asked was, "Since it's an egg, isn't it commemorating how the salty waters touched the genitalia of our <em>female </em>ancestors?" But there you have it - yet another Jewish ritual that seemingly neglects the female experience.*</div>
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<span style="font-size: 180%; font-style: normal;"><strong>Zal g'mor</strong></span> - To learn more consult the <em style="font-style: normal;">Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism</em>: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050" style="font-style: normal;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: normal;">*For the record, I do not think for one moment this is the correct explanation. I have yet to find any evidence in the Mesorah or the Kabbalah that we dip our boiled eggs in honor of our ancestors' eggs, male or female.</span> <span style="font-size: 85%;">But now that many Jews understand that Kabbalah is built around an erotic theology, it seems some folks see sex everywhere in Jewish tradition. I welcome any source material that would further expand on the esoteric nature of the seder. One reader suggested it's a <i>Purim drash, </i>a silly homily composed during the prior holiday of Purim, where farce, satire, and the outrageous reigns. That works for me. There is always someone out there who seea a parody and mistakes it for documentary. </span></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-43306528359842479672014-04-02T07:30:00.000-05:002015-03-20T11:10:59.904-05:00Tzohar: Gem of Noah, Light of Heaven<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTI-kffUS5RDuC3jZ2nsPgntJmynh-QLRXUBx-dDdg6Qu-Uo5oL1JVI12gDugXtcfN8oEsspeb0dtRv-BVmIBgUYw8VpsfjddzWIiZJGfq3wyvxa0Aam_3lxqq4fjILdGZ74n8/s1600-h/Top_of_homepage_Stained_Glass.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTI-kffUS5RDuC3jZ2nsPgntJmynh-QLRXUBx-dDdg6Qu-Uo5oL1JVI12gDugXtcfN8oEsspeb0dtRv-BVmIBgUYw8VpsfjddzWIiZJGfq3wyvxa0Aam_3lxqq4fjILdGZ74n8/s400/Top_of_homepage_Stained_Glass.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255251312303438290" style="cursor: hand; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
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So what was that glowing, explosive rock stuff in Aronofsky's film <i>Noah</i>? Was it just a a lazy author's device of convenience, or does it actually have some authentic roots in Noah traditions? Based on it's movie name, <i>zohar,</i> I suspect it's the screenwriter's adaption the similar, but linguistically distinct <i>tzohar, </i>which actually APPEARS IN GENESIS. In Gen. 6, God instructs Noah to illuminate the ark by <em>tzohar taaseh/ "</em>A "brightness you will make." This term, (transliterated as either <em>tzohar </em>or <em>tsohar</em>),<em> </em>which literally means "Bright/glittering/noon light" (The Hebrew word for noon, <em>tzohoriyim, </em>is derived from the same root), is not further defined in the Hebrew Bible. Some translate this simply as "window." Jewish esoteric tradition, however, regards the <em>tzohar </em>to be a kind of luminous gemstone holding the primordial light of creation. </div>
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Much of the ambiguity and the imaginative use of the word tzohar is grounded in its status as a <i>hapax legomenon,</i> a word that appears only once in the Bible, and therefore lacking any further point of comparison for the purpose of fixing its meaning. By comparison, for example, the word <i>hesed </i>is used hundreds of times, in many different contexts, in many books of Bible, allowing philologists to observe all its semantic nuances. All we have to go on with <i>tzohar</i> is one context, and that context is Genesis 6:16. In this verse it seems at first glance to refer to a structural feature. Based on this, some translators propose “roof.” Others use “window,” “skylight,” or simply “opening.” Each translation presents a problem in that we already have elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures other words for these objects. There are also logic problems: why put an opening in a structure that will subject to torrential rain for 40 days? And since the day and night provided little or no natural light during the Flood (Gen. 8:22; Gen. R. 25:2, 34:11), what would be the purpose? All this invites speculation the tzohar was something as unique as the word itself (Genesis Rabbah 31:11).<br />
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The fact that the word for “noon/zenith,” tzohoriyim, shares the same root, but especially because of its linguistic similarity to the word<i> zohar</i> (“shine/radiant”), triggered an assumption that it is a form of light source rather then an aperture to let light in.<br />
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Targum Yonatan may be the first source to claim the tzohar was a luminous stone, pulled from the primordial river Pishon (T. Y. Genesis 6:16). This is elaborated on in Genesis Rabbah 31:11:<br />
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<em>During the entire twelve months that Noah was in the Ark he did not require the light of the sun by day or the light of the moon by night, but he had a polished stone which he hung up – when it was dim, he knew it was day, when it was bright, he knew it was night.</em><br />
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Another version of this idea appears in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 108b:<br />
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<em>“<b>Make a tzohar for the ark.</b>” R. Johanan said, The Blessed Holy One instructed Noah: 'Set there precious stones and jewels, so that they may give you light, bright as the noon [in Hebrew, this is a play on words between tzohar and tzohoriyim].</em>The same idea is reiterated in the medieval Midrash Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 23.<br />
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The matter might rest there, but elsewhere in the Talmud, there is another tradition that Abraham also had a miraculous stone:<br />
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<em>R. Shimon b. Yochai said, Abraham had a precious stone hung round his neck which brought immediate healing to any sick person who looked on it, and when Abraham our father left this world, the Blessed Holy One hung it from the wheel of the sun.</em> (Baba Batra 16b) </div>
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This naturally led to speculation that that the stones of Noah and Abraham were one and the same. And given Genesis Rabbah’s allusion to the river Pishon that flowed through the Garden of Eden, the logical origin for this tzohar would be with there, where God hid the supernal light of the first day for the sole use of the righteous:</div>
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<em>It was taught, the light which created in the six days…cannot illumine by day, because it would eclipse the light of the sun. Where is it? It is stored for the righteous in the messianic future...He set it apart for the righteous in the future</em> Gen. R. 3:6</div>
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<em>The Holy Blessed One created many things in His world, but the world being unworthy to have the use of them, He hid them away...the example being the light created on the first day, for Rabbi Judah ben Simon said: Man could see with the help of the first light from one end of the world to the other.</em> Ex. R. 35:1</div>
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(also see Talmud Hagigah 12a; Lev. Rabbah 11:7, Gen. Rabbah 41:3 and Zohar I:31b, all homiletically based on Gen. 1:3, Ps. 97:11 and Job 38:13).</div>
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Those who possessed the tzohar not only had illumination, but access to the secrets of the Torah and all its powers. Thus the "chain" narrative that emerges from this various threads is that God created it, but then hid it away for the sole use of the righteous. The angel Raziel gave it to Adam after the Fall. Adam gave it to his children. It passed to Noah. While in the passage we read, Abraham returned the tzohar to heaven and hung it on the sun, other traditions track its continued use by the righteous of each subsequent generation: Joseph used it for his dream interpretations. Moses recovered it from the bones of Joseph and placed it in the Tabernacle. <br />
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A text known today as "The Queen of Sheba and Her only Son Menyelek," translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge includes this verse: </div>
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<em>"How the House of Solomon the King was illuminated as by day, for in his wisdom he had made shining pearls which were like unto the sun, the moon and the stars in the roof of his house." </em></div>
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Even that is not the end of the matter. The Zohar claims that Simon Ben Yochai possessed it in the Rabbinic era (Sanh. 108b; B. B. 16b; Lev. R. 11; Gen. R 31:11; Zohar I:11; Otzer ha-Midrash). </div>
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For a related entry, go to: <a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/04/sapphire-heaven.html">http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/04/sapphire-heaven.html</a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 180%;">Zal G'mor: To learn more, </span>consult the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a> </div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-1163180485797583892014-04-01T11:28:00.000-05:002015-03-20T11:11:34.591-05:00Spawns of Satan, Children of Cain<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/1600/scan.0.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/320/scan.0.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a> One of the least known but very persistent Jewish folkloric beliefs is that of “changelings,” that there are human-appearing demoniods, offspring of human-demon couplings, that move among us. Darren Aronofsky's <i>Noah </i>plays with this by suggesting the lines of Seth and of Cain are of fundamentally different kinds of humans, though he posits both to be fully human.<br />
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[<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Illustration: E.M. Lilien bookplate featuring satyr and woman]</span><br />
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This belief has its roots in a rabbinic tradition that believes demons (<em>sheidim, </em>creatures more akin to the Islam <em>djinn</em> than the earth-trembling terrors of Christian imagination) are unable to procreate without human “seed.” Thus Judaism has a robust tradition of succubae, seductive female demons who are the cause of male erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions. Adam was the first progenitor of demons:<br />
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<em>When Adam, doing penance for his sin, separated from Eve for 130 years, he, by impure desire, caused the earth to be filled with shedim, lilin, and evil spirits</em> (Gen. R. 20; Er. 18b). <br />
Since, like humans, <em>sheidim</em> are subject to death (Chagigah 16a), these “semen demons,” such as Lilith, Naamah, and Igrat, periodically re-populate the demonic realm through these sexual-spiritual assaults.<br />
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The flip side of this coin is a parallel tradition that mortal women are occasionally impregnated by incubae:<br />
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<i>Rabbi Hiyya Said: “sons of divinity”</i> (Gen. 6:2-4)<i> were the sons of Cain. For when Samael mounted Eve (</i>Babylonian Talmud, <em>Shabbat 146a), he injected [semen of] filth into her, and she conceived and bore Cain. And his aspect was unlike that of the other humans and all those who came from his side </em><i>[of the human family tree]</i> <em>were called “sons of divinity”</em> (Zohar I:37a;also see I:54a).<br />
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According to this version of the nefilim tradition, Cain was descended from an angel (Samael is called the "Prince of Heaven" in <i>Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer</i> 13) but at the same time a “bad seed,” as were his descendants. The female descendants of Eve similarly can find themselves periodic victims of a kind of “Rosemary’s Baby Syndrome,” usually unknowingly. The changelings that result from such "spirit rapes" move among us largely undetected, until their evil nature is revealed through gross crimes or other evil enterprises.<br />
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Given the spiritual source of their malevolence, it was sometimes thought necessary to combat them by spiritual means alongside the usual police and judicial methods. Thus we see in some Hebrew amulets of protection that the person seeking angelic protection against evil spirits will identify him- or herself as “So-and-So, son/daughter of So-and-So, from among the children of <em>Adam and Eve</em>…” (Sefer ha-Razim). The implication being the amulet is directed against beings <em>not</em> from among the children of <em>both</em> primordial ancestors.<br />
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This belief in demi-demon progeny persisted from Talmudic times right up to the start of the modern era, no doubt because this legend offers a ready explanation for why certain people are “bad to the bone,” much in the way we still today declare heinous serial killers and other violent criminal “monsters” (and therefore somehow not fully human).<br />
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<span style="font-size: 180%;">To learn more,</span> look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-13996724935173633312014-03-31T08:57:00.001-05:002015-03-20T11:17:22.978-05:00Dream Work Noah: The Cinematic and Jewish Greatness of the Weirdest Story Ever Told<div style="text-align: center;">
Now that Aronofsky's Noah, his decades-in-the-making auteur obsession about yet another visionary-yet- monomanical character, is in the theaters, this seems to be the time for a parable from the Zohar - the parable of the master of wheat:</div>
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[Jennifer Connelly - Naameh indeed]</div>
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This may be compared to a man who dwelled among the cliffs and knew nothing of those dwelling in the town. </div>
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He sowed wheat, and ate the wheat in its natural condition. </div>
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One day he went into town and was offered fine bread. </div>
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The man asked: What’s this for? They replied: It’s bread, to eat! </div>
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He asked: And what’s it made of? </div>
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They replied: Of wheat. </div>
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Afterwards they brought him cakes kneaded with oil. He tasted them, and asked: And what are these made of? They replied: Of wheat. </div>
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Later they brought him royal pastry kneaded with honey and oil. He asked: And what are these made of? </div>
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They replied: Of wheat. </div>
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He said: Surely I am master of all these, since I eat the essence of all of these! </div>
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And because of that view, he knew nothing of the delights of the world, which were lost to him.</div>
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So it is with one who grasps the principle but is unaware of all those delectable delights deriving, diverging from that principle.</div>
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[Translation from the Pritzker Zohar by Dan Matt]</div>
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<br /></div>
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Hopefully with all the sturm and drang settling, people are finally coming to understand that the fundamentalist critics of this film are all masters of wheat as alluded to by the Zohar. They think that in cleaving only to the bare bones of the biblical narrative, they are masters of all aspects of the story, but in fact they are, to a great extent, suffering from a kind textual indigestion, or perhaps a spiritual ciliac disorder, in which they struggle to absorb the full nutritional value of the biblical narrative (and irritable about it, to boot) because of their restrictive way of reading. </div>
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The Noah story as received is a mere one hundred verses, with little dialogue, minimal motivation, no character development or insight, no struggle; it is a skeleton of a narrative which the readers must flesh out with themselves, projecting their experiences, emotions, and conflicts, and imagination onto the scaffold of plot to fully realize its many on complex meanings and implications. The movie <i>Noah </i>steps into those many gaps and fills them with clever, and sometimes crazed, midrashic storytelling. These are serious men (that's a shout out to you, Coen brothers, two other great biblical auteurs) who took the story before them, stepped back from the cultural pablum and childish pious-Pollyanna that has adhered to the Genesis narrative in the modern mind, and rebuilt it in a way so as to reclaim all its dark, dreadful, and dread-filled potency.<br />
<br />
<i>Noah </i>is not without its flaws, but it is, all-in-all, the most daring, powerful, in some ways, <i>truest </i>bit of cinematic Bible I've ever seen. It's expansion of the story is, in many ways, extraordinarily supple. Some of most critical dialogue spoke by the characters is wording lifted directly from other parts of the Bible. At the end of the first act, an archly biblical event occurs (Spoiler Alert): the miraculous restoration of fertility to a barren woman. The wrenching second act where (Spoiler Alert) Noah concludes God wants him to slay his grandchild is appropriated from the Akedah of Isaac, making it completely biblical in spirit, and is artfully used by Hendel and Aronofsky to further their vision of Noah as a proponent of "deep ecology," the ideology that holds the earth would be better off if humans were extinct (or self-extinguished). And as for Aronofsky's insertion of "environmentalism" into the an Iron age story, well, he does no more violence to the integrity of the biblical ethos than the folks who retroject middle-class, industrial age "family values" onto the Bible, a document that regards polygamy, concubinage, and captive- and slave-brides as normative. Aronofsky's biblical hook is obvious - the world is "corrupted" by man's presence and God and Noah "conserve" all the animals, not just the ones that directly benefit humanity.<br />
<br />
Of course, what captivated me most was the fearless integration of Jewish second-temple, rabbinic, and mystical traditions into the story. The film-makers, as is the norm in Hollywood, freely adapt these things, but they are there, none-the-less, in glorious homage to Jewish folklore and esoteric tradition. These are the ones I saw:<br />
<br />
Watchers: The fallen angels, based in Gen. 6:4 and grandly elaborated on in the <i>Book of Enoch </i>and the <i>Book of Giants, </i>are a big part of the storyline; mostly cleverly, their presence explains how a family of 6 (it was 8 in Genesis) could build the greatest maritime project before the industrial age. Aronofsky elides the more lurid part to the tradition, their coupling with human women and producing giant offspring, focusing instead on their role in <i>Enoch </i>as the bringers of knowledge and technology to humanity.<br />
<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/02/nefalim-refaim-anakim-biblical-giants.html">http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/02/nefalim-refaim-anakim-biblical-giants.html</a><br />
<br />
Tzohar: The glowy-explosive substance used repeatedly in the movie is based on the <i>tzohar, </i>a miraculous gemstone that tradition tells us illuminated the interior of the ark. This concept, surprisingly, is linguistically embedded right in the middle of the Noah narrative, as you can read here:<br />
<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/10/tzohar-miraculous-light-of-noah-window.html">http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/10/tzohar-miraculous-light-of-noah-window.html</a><br />
<br />
The Sword of Metheusaleh: The miraculous demon-slaying sword gets a cameo in a flashback (literally) sequence, where we see the ante-deluvian "grandfather" wield it against evil hordes:<br />
<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/01/demon-lovers-sword-of-power-children-of.html">http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/01/demon-lovers-sword-of-power-children-of.html</a><br />
<br />
The garment of Adam: Here the connection seems the most tenuous, but I assume this is where the idea for the magical-glowing-serpent skin-arm tefillin worn by the shamanic patriarchs of Seth is derived from. In Jewish tradition, the garment is made from the hide of Leviathan. Here, it's the sloughed-off, pre-corruption skin of the edenic serpent. Though we do not see this idea developed in the movie, the garment of Adam gave one the power to command animals:<br />
<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2009/02/nimrod-mighty-hunter-king-of-evil.html">http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2009/02/nimrod-mighty-hunter-king-of-evil.html</a><br />
<br />
Tubal-Cain: The terrifying and terrified king is constructed from a single verse of Genesis where he is credited as a worker of bronze and iron, but is then fused with the midrashic King Nimrod, the power-mad tyrant of rabbinic fantasy who attacks God's messengers. His stow-away on the ark is no doubt borrowed from the midrashic biography of King Og of Bashan, a ante-deluvian giant who survives the deluge by clinging to the exterior of the ark.<br />
<br />
Of course, the big picture is all in my book:<br />
<br />
<strong style="font-size: small; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">Zal G'mor:</span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"> To learn more, consult the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism -</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050" style="color: #996699; font-size: small; line-height: 20.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a><br />
<br />
These were the most obvious mythic elements borrowed from Jewish folklore. I'm going back to see the movie again, and I'll update you with what else catches my eye. You should see it too. Weird, wonderful, fantastic in all senses of the word. </div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-52366948313410232602014-03-29T18:14:00.001-05:002014-03-29T18:14:09.817-05:00Partzufim - Divine Personas, Holy Family<div class="Default" style="line-height: 13.0pt;">
<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Partzufim: </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Aramaic, “Countenances,” “Personifications”).
First outlined in the <b>Zohar</b>, this metaphysical concept is more fully
developed by <b>Isaac Luria</b>. According to the Lurianic cosmogony, after
the catastrophe of the <b>Breaking of the Vessels</b>, the shattering of the
primeval structure of light, the <b>ein sof </b>reconstitutes the fragments of
the cosmic order into five “countenances” or “visages” that are able to mediate
between supernal and material realities in a way the primordial vessels were
not. Think of the Partzufim as analogous to a “patch” for a faulty computer
program.</span><sup><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 5.5pt; mso-text-raise: 3.5pt; position: relative; top: -3.5pt;">1 </span></sup><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 5.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM92" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 6.25pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">The biblical proof text
that Chayyim Vital offers for the partzufim is Gen. 2:4, where he reads the
compound word <i>behibaram, </i>“when they
were created,” as a <b>notarikon, </b>breaking
it up into <i>be-Hay-baram, </i>“Through ‘5’
He created them,” “them” being all of positive existence (<i>Etz Chayyim, </i>Gate III, 39). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM92" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 6.25pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">The Partzufim interact with
humanity in the work of <b>tikkun</b>. These countenances also constitute and
encompass the personal dimensions of God that are described in biblical and
rabbinic writings, since they symbolize the male and female principles operating
within the Godhead. In fact, the partzufim constitute a kind of “holy family,”
a familial metaphor for the divine pleroma. In some writings, the various
partzufim are assigned the names of biblical figures: Jacob and Israel; Rachel
and Leah. Presumably, one can map the functions of the partzufim on the
celestial level through studyingthe biographies and actions of those biblical
characters. Other partzufim get titles, such as <i>Yisrael Sava, </i>“grandpa Israel,” for Abba. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM92" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 6.25pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;"> This aspect of Lurianic thought has a complex
relationship with the sefirotic structure of classic <b>kabbalah</b>, not
unlike the “wave/particle” phenomenon in quantum physics. Thus whether the
divine structure manifests itself as the <b>sefirot </b>or as the partzufim depends
on certain conditions, but they are essentially two aspects of the same divine
force. The five countenances are: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM22" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 36.1pt; margin-right: 9.0pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -12.15pt;">
<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">Arikh Anpin</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">: The “long/great
countenance,” also called the <i>Atik Yamim</i>, “Ancient of Days.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM23" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 36.1pt; margin-right: 4.75pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -12.15pt;">
<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">Abba</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">: “Father,” the male aspect
of the divine <i>gamos </i>is linked to the sefirot of <b>Keter </b>and/or <b>Chochmah</b>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 27.25pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ima</span></i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;">: “Mother,” the celestial mother is tied to <b>Binah</b>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 13.5pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;">Zer (or Zaur) Anpin/Ben</span></i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;">: “The short/lesser countenance.”
Product of the union of <i>Abba </i>and <i>Ima</i>, it is tied to the lower six
sefirot: <b>Chesed</b>, <b>gevurah</b>, <b>tiferet</b>, <b>netzach</b>, <b>Hod</b>,
and <b>Yesod</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM92" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 6.25pt; margin-left: 36.1pt; margin-right: 4.75pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -12.15pt;">
<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">Kalah/Malcha/Bat</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">: “Bride/Queen.” The
feminine counterpart to <i>Zer Anpin</i>, she is linked to <b>malchut</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="CM77" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">The Partzufim, like their
sefirotic counterparts, are also integral to the notion of the restoration of
the <b>Adam Kadmon</b>, the cosmic human. In a kind of inverted “imitatio dei,”
all human actions that advance the cause of cosmic restoration are mimicked by
the Partzufim.</span><sup><span style="font-size: 5.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo; mso-text-raise: 3.5pt; position: relative; top: -3.5pt;">2 </span></sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">Thus humans help to
activate them and ensure the healing flow of divine energies between higher and
lower worlds.</span></div>
<div class="CM77" style="line-height: 13pt; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Illustration by Ursi Eso</span></div>
<div class="CM77" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AyyvpRw5js4HD-xdWNbuItjhzdhiiVS2OaHnvZav74X4kbUzwH7tOvaZSMjXW9O7ucCGm_ygOLp_sTjsdewjgPBfK-x5rHP8mNSMeiJzMoin7_L7zbvmasI4jD6HafsOjJ42/s1600/Ursi+Eso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AyyvpRw5js4HD-xdWNbuItjhzdhiiVS2OaHnvZav74X4kbUzwH7tOvaZSMjXW9O7ucCGm_ygOLp_sTjsdewjgPBfK-x5rHP8mNSMeiJzMoin7_L7zbvmasI4jD6HafsOjJ42/s1600/Ursi+Eso.jpg" height="320" width="217" /></a></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="CM77" style="line-height: 13.0pt; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8pt;"> 1. Scholem, </span><i style="font-size: 8pt;">Kabbalah</i><span style="font-size: 8pt;">, 140–44.</span></div>
<div class="CM87" style="line-height: 10.0pt; margin-bottom: 16.6pt; margin-left: 21.1pt; margin-right: 4.85pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Bembo;">2. Faierstein, <i>Jewish
Mystical Autobiographies</i>, 28–29. Also see Green, <i>Jewish Spirituality</i>,
vol. 2, 65–70. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-14800467486172738652013-11-21T08:48:00.000-06:002013-11-21T09:39:39.373-06:00Obama Psalm: Curses in Politics<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSgcIEg9k360MABFutrq1rRVJejAq6UdEmUnblrMmfdkSVF7pEtvrfcNaVYaHP0U3OLFAh6pJytEzyggAKUV-XYNYBDWnEEjBSvFoQuUrdqZXAAki9_CJCYkjCMI3zN1zq08l6/s1600/Obama%2520Psalm%2520bumper%2520sticker.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533210491946192034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSgcIEg9k360MABFutrq1rRVJejAq6UdEmUnblrMmfdkSVF7pEtvrfcNaVYaHP0U3OLFAh6pJytEzyggAKUV-XYNYBDWnEEjBSvFoQuUrdqZXAAki9_CJCYkjCMI3zN1zq08l6/s320/Obama%2520Psalm%2520bumper%2520sticker.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 160px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
<div>
So I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, "Pray for Obama" - a nice gesture - and is followed by the citation, "Ps. 109:8."</div>
<div>
<em></em></div>
<div>
<em>May his days be few; may another take over his position.</em></div>
<br />
<div>
Pretty funny [though pointless, as of Nov. 6th]. But then one reads the context of the verse....</div>
<br />
<div>
</div>
<em>Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.<br />Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg:<br />let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.<br />Let the extortioner catch all that he has; </em><br />
<em>and let the strangers spoil his labor.</em><br />
<em>Let there be none to extend mercy unto him:<br />neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.<br />Let his posterity be cut off;<br />and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.<br />Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD;<br />and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.<br />Let them be before the LORD continually,<br />that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
And things get considerably darker. And after a moment's reflection, another thought arises -- it that a curse? Yes it is. Turns out the Psalms, like the rest of the Bible, defies our stereotypes. The Psalms have all sorts of peculiarities. For example, Ps. 45 is neither a prayer nor a paean to God. It's a rather obsequious ode to a king. And the Psalms are sometimes just as surprising for what they don't contain. For example - the themes of<em> brit</em> (covenant) and <em>mitzvah </em>(commandment), so central to the Torah and post-biblical Judaism, are essentially non-entities in the Psalms. Virtually no psalm references these concepts as a framework for the writer's faith. Ps. 119 stands out as the exception. So does what does this imply for the centrality of Torah to ancient Israel?<br />
<br />
And curses. There are actually several Psalms that are, or contain, extended curses. Ps. 35, 58, 137, all invoke hair-raising afflictions upon the writer's enemy, and 109 is the ultimate execration text.<br />
<br />
This shocks our modern sensibilities...its seems so unreligious. But as I tell my students in my Bible as Literature course at UNT, this idea that religion only engages in the uplifting is a relatively modern rethinking of what constitutes "religion." For virtually every religion until very recently, God is expected to protect his own and punish their enemies. Truly, the idea that what God wants is the repentance of the sinner, not his destruction, is a theme already found in the Bible. But as for God's followers, well...they want satisfaction.<br />
<br />
Of course some would argue that these aren't "curses" in the magical sense, but "prayers" venting anger. Perhaps. But, as I have discussed before in this blog, the distinction between an incantation and a prayer is very fine distinction indeed. Thus we read:<br />
<br />
<em>Moses is not mentioned in the parashah [Tetzaveh]....The reason for this is that Moses said to God: 'Wipe me out from Your book [Ex. 32:32]" and the curse by a righteous person is fulfilled, even if it is made conditionally.</em> (Ba'al ha-Turim)<br />
<br />
Many modern scholars of ancient religions would eschew the distinction entirely, lumping glamors and petitionary prayers together under the category of "rituals of power," speech-acts that will lead to constructive (or in this case, destructive) results. People want their pleas to be answered and the things they ask for, come to pass.<br />
<br />
All this needs to be placed in historical context. Biblical Israel. The Psalms were written in a period of human history when most people lived either in a tribal environment, or one step away from it in farming villages or a fortified urban environment. Brutality from within and without the society was commonplace, armed conflict would visit people at least once in their lifetime, and at some point most tribes/nations fought using what amounted to atrocities directed against their rivals. The hope that one could escape persecution, plunder, or worse via the intervention of one's god was an understandable hope, and the idea that the deity would visit upon them what they planned to mete out to you was pretty appealing.<br />
<br />
So much for history. We live in a different age, with different expectations for and from our enemies. In our time, law prevails by and large, and even the worst leaders are subject to election, re-election, and term limits. The time for asking for God's wrath to fall upon our political enemies and their families seems, well, a kind of curse of its own visited on our modern body politic.<br />
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The Talmud takes a stand against curses using it's customary pedagogic strategy, a story:<br />
<br />
<i>There was a non-believer who lived near Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. This heretic would harass the sage by citing scriptural verses to prove sectarian doctrines or to challenge rabbinic traditions. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was exceedingly agitated by his troublesome neighbor and decided to be rid of this heretic. He took a rooster and tied it between the feet of a bed. With the rooster in place, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi stared at it intently waiting for its comb to pale while it stood on one foot </i>[according to an earlier comment, one can discern the time of God's anger by the color of a cockscomb].<i> Wide-eyed and waiting for the auspicious moment, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi intended to utilize that flash of divine anger and curse the heretic. At the crucial moment, however, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi dozed off, missing the opportunity to manipulate God's anger. Opening his eyes, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi concluded: "It is not proper to act so." The sage continued, citing biblical verses to buttress his conclusion: "Moreover, it is written 'His mercies are on all His handiwork' (Psalms 145:9) and it is also written 'For the righteous to punish is not good' (<a class="headupTerm" data-headup-fullname="Book of Proverbs" data-headup-snippet="http://newstopics.jpost.com/widgets/dbpedia3aBook_of_Proverbs2cSnippet2cjpost" data-headup-term="Proverbs" data-headup-uri="dbpedia:Book_of_Proverbs" href="http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Book_of_Proverbs" style="color: black; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">P</a>rov. 17:26)." Berachot 7a.</i><br />
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Put with greater brevity, Nahal Kedumim teaches, "...even if a person has good intentions, he should not allow a curse to escape his lips."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-11167480378123042252013-11-14T16:26:00.000-06:002013-11-14T17:31:22.615-06:00Herev: Mythic Jewish Swords<div align="center">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_ycXATQnyW-CWJ9n3oOgbCJdJQIk_WZxr3UDlQbz9J40Iyn_EXc46NltLJu588qF8ngxYgl3xCrQKhbq1sn3rhKAQYb6zdI5-XsigPhS-HvxsFH28EN3HjF3TfYNG44M3lSX/s1600-h/IDF_insignia.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359543701197267074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_ycXATQnyW-CWJ9n3oOgbCJdJQIk_WZxr3UDlQbz9J40Iyn_EXc46NltLJu588qF8ngxYgl3xCrQKhbq1sn3rhKAQYb6zdI5-XsigPhS-HvxsFH28EN3HjF3TfYNG44M3lSX/s400/IDF_insignia.png" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 386px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> [The sword and olive branch symbol of the Israeli Defense Force]<br />
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I just watched the new preview for the Darren Aronofksy <i>Noah. </i>I expect the Jewish mystically-inclined director will be drawing not just from the Bible, but from Jewish traditions of the world pre-flood, and I don't think I will be disappointed. Ever-so-briefly we see Noah wield a flaming sword! Could that be the sword of Methuselah? Not sure, but I'm thrilled if it is.<br />
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It the same reaction I had to the 1980 John Boorman film <em>Excalibur</em><em>.</em> When that sword pierces the surface of the lake for the first time, water streaming off it, gripped by the alabaster, fish-scale sheathed hand of the Lady of the Lake, well, the archetypal substrata of my brain grabs hold of the parasympathetic nervous system, yanks hard, and my hair still stands on end.<br />
<br />
There's just something about swords. Maybe it's Freudian, but it's definitely something. A sword, it seems, is more than just a sharpened crow bar, it's got mythic power like no other weapon. I mean, look at ZaHaL, the IDF. Nobody, and I mean nobody in the IDF wears a sword, even for ceremonial purposes. Yet no rifle, tank, or plane [weapons they actually wield] is used as the IDF's central symbol - they chose a sword.<br />
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So what roles do swords occupy in Jewish myth? A symbol of power, force, and punishment, God has a sword of judgment which is given to the angels; it makes its first appearance in the hands of the Cherubim that guard the way back to Eden (Gen. 3). this may be the same sword that is wielded by the Angel of Death. Right now it “sleeps,” but woe to the world should God ever awaken it (Mid. Teh 80:3). God will use a "mighty and hard" sword, presumably this same one, to slay Leviathan at the end of time (Isa. 27:1). This “sword” is sometimes a figure of speech, referring to Divine speech (Deut. 32:41; 3rd Enoch 32).<br />
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Magical swords in the hands of humans are much rarer. It is actually the staff of Moses that serves as the Excalibur of Jewish folklore (SEE: <a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/06/rod-of-aaron-staff-of-moses-jewish.html">The Rod of Aaron, Staff of Moses: Jewish Wondrous ...</a> ), though tradition indicates that passed through Noah's hands, also. Nevertheless, swords inscribed with divine names wielded by humans in supernatural combat are mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Children of Light will have such swords during the final apocalyptic battle against the Children of Darkness) and - and I'm hoping this is where Russell Crow and Jewish myth meet - in Midrash Abkir, Methuselah subdues demon changelings that torment primordial humanity with a divinely empowered vorpal blade (my eldest has been reading <em>Alice through the Looking Glass</em>). This sword, inscribed with divine names, might be the Jewish Jedi weapon I'm looking for. Or, maybe, Aronofsky has his own take of the <i>Tzohar. </i><br />
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<span style="font-size: 180%;">Zal g'mor</span> - To learn more consult the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-1163782358282281532013-10-29T10:07:00.000-05:002013-10-30T10:33:04.542-05:00Vampires: Jewish Goth? Bloodsuckers in Judaism<div align="left">
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/1600/vampire.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/320/vampire.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a> Jewish vampires? Sure. The existence of blood lusting monsters is yet another folkloric belief that exists across cultures. Like zombies, Americans today have totally internalized the "vampire rules" of Bram Stoker/Hollywood - rules like: vampires are the undead; they have no reflection; they shapechange into bats; garlic and crosses repel them; and they can only be destroyed via sunlight or a stake through the heart.
<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, Jewish vampire traditions do not adhere to these assumptions. Nor are Jewish vampires quite so romantic as the <em>Twilight: New Moon / Vampire Dairies / True Blood </em>heart throbs.</div>
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The earliest reference to a vampiric creature occurs in a text of Late Antiquity, the "Testament of Solomon" (this is also one of the paradigmatic texts for Jewish sorcerers, because it portrays Solomon as a kind of wizard).
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<em>Behold, when the Temple of the city of Jerusalem was being built, and the artificers were working thereat, Ornias the demon came among them toward sunset; and he took away half of the pay of the chief-deviser's little boy, as well as half his food. He also continued to suck the thumb of his right hand every day. And the child grew thin, although he was very much loved by the king. So King Solomon called the boy one day, and questioned him, saying: "Do I not love thee more than all the artisans who are working in the Temple of God? Do I not give thee double wages and a double supply of food? How is it that day by day and hour by hour thou growest thinner?"
<br />4. But the child said to the king: "I pray thee, O king. Listen to what has befallen all that thy child hath. After we are all released from our work on the Temple of God, after sunset, when I lie down to rest, one of the evil demons comes and takes away from me one half of my pay and one half of my food. Then he also takes hold of my right hand and sucks my thumb. And lo, my soul is oppressed, and so my body waxes thinner every day."</em>
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<br />
Solomon responds to this threat by constructing a magic ring with which he enslaves this demon and, subsequently, higher orders of demons. In the end, the king uses these demon-slaves to help him construct the Temple!
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Later, and very different, vampire traditions appear among the Jews of medieval Rhineland, not far from the areas where flourishing Christian beliefs in blood-sucking creatures would become the basis for Bram Stoker's story. But here again, Jews have their own ideas about the nature of vampires and how to combat them. These passages come from Sefer Hasidim ("The Book of the Pious"), a wide-ranging tract on Jewish piety that includes stories about ghosts, liliths, and other paranormal things that go bump in the night:
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<br />1465: <em>There are women that are called estrie... They were created at sunset [before the first Sabbath before creation]. As a result of this, they are able to change form. There was one woman who was a estrie and she was very sick and there were two women with her at night; one was sleeping and one was awake. And the sick woman stood up and loosened her hair and she was about to fly and suck the blood of the sleeping woman. And the woman who was awake screamed and woke her friend and they grabbed the sick estrie, and after this she slept. And moreover, if she had been able to grab the other woman, then she, the estrie, would have lived. Since she was not able to hurt the other woman, the estrie died, because she needs to drink the blood of living flesh. The same is true of the werewolf. And since....the estrie need to loosen their hair before they fly, one must adjure her to come with her hair bound so that she cannot go anywhere without permission. And if a estrie is injured or seen by someone, she cannot live unless she eats of the bread and salt of the one who struck her. Then her soul will return to the way it was before.
</em><br />
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<em>1466 There was a woman who was suspected of being a estrie, and she was injured when she appeared to a Jew as a cat and he hit her. The next day she asked him to give her some of his bread and salt, and he wanted to give it to her. An old man said to him (Ecc. 7:16) “Be not overly righteous.” When others have sinned one must not show kindness, for if she lives, she will harm people. Thus the Holy One, blessed be He created her for you [as a test]. This is similar to Amalek and Saul. Saul was punished for saving Amalek’s life. (see First Samuel 15).
</em>
<br />As we can see, the nature of these vampires is strangely indeterminate. In the beginning of the passage, they seem to be regarded as demons, as in the Testament of Solomon. On the other hand, the end of the passage suggests that this is an ordinary woman (apparently, she has a soul) living within her community. There is a little of the "She's a witch!" quality to it. Other passages in <em>Sefer Chasidim </em>convey that same idea. Perhaps the resolution of this puzzle is that vampirism was understood to be a kind of demonic possession, though this is never said explicitly. A estrie wounded while in monstrous form would die unless she was able to to acquire bread and salt from the assailant while in human form. So...not the undead. Yet.<br />
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There is also one example of a judicial proceeding being conducted against a suspected estrie. Not surprisingly, conviction results in a death sentence. Apparently killing an estrie presents no particular challenge, but there is a potential post-mortem complication:<br />
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Toldot Adam v’Havah, 28
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<br /><em>When a estrie that has eaten children is being buried one should observe whether her mouth is open, if it is, she will persist in her vampirish pursuits for another year unless it is stopped up with earth</em> (cf. <em>Sefer Hasidim</em> 5)<br />
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This measure strikes me as stereotypically Jewish - The way to destroy a Christian vampire is through the heart; for a Jew, you just have to preventing him from talking and it kills him. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 180%;">To learn more,</span> look up t</span><span style="color: red;">he Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon. </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a><br />
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<span style="color: black;">[Illustration: "The Sewing Machine" by E.M. Lilien]</span><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-1161703536544372972013-10-22T10:05:00.000-05:002013-10-22T22:12:09.169-05:00The Walking Dead: Jews, Judaism and Halloween<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/1600/Lilien_Trauer_f.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3151/3282/320/Lilien_Trauer_f.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a> So what do Jews, Judaism, and Halloween have to do with each other? Nothing, of course. Neither the holiday or the date has any Jewish connection whatsoever. None. The time when Jewish spirits come out to play is Sukkot (See <em>- Sukkot: Gathering of the Spirits</em> in the archive) and it has none of the tone of fear, terror, or deceiving the spirits that is associated with Halloween.<br />
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But that's not to say Judaism does not have a rich and vivid lore about spirits, monsters, and the undead. So I thought I'd share with you one aspect of this - Jewish lore on zombies. The term "zombie" comes out of West African tradition, but the idea of an re-animated corpse without it's <em>neshamah</em> ("soul") pops up in a few places in Jewish literature.<br />
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Director George Romero has defined how we think about zombies in the 21st Century, having set up the "zombie rules" in his movies <em>Night of the Living Dead </em>and <em>Dawn of the Dead: </em>Zombies are flesh-eating corpses who must undergo physiological decapitation (be shot in the head) to be stopped. Ok, so the Hollywood zombie is really more of a ghoul, a creature derived from Islamic folklore, but whether you call them zombies or ghouls, the walking dead are much different in Judaism.<br />
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Jewish undead traditions overlap the bigger and more prominent ideas of <em>T'chiyat Metim</em>, "Resurrection" (body and soul restored to perfected existence in the World-to-Come) and the <em>Golem</em> (an artificially animated being). Perhaps the reason there are not more than a few stories of the animated dead is that the very idea violates an aspect of Jewish law that most Jews take quite seriously - <em>kavod ha-met, </em>"showing respect for a corpse." <em>Kavod ha-met </em>is why Jews generally don't put our dead on display in open-casket ceremonies, why we don't embalm, why we are fastidious about collecting all the parts for burial (ever notice those in the films of bus bombings in Israel, the ones in reflecting vests picking through the debris? Most of those aren't Israeli CSI, they are ZAKA, a group of pious workers who ensure all parts of people get a proper burial), and why we are cautious about organ donation. Animating a corpse for the ephemeral needs of the living, even if possible, is unseemly.<br />
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Yet there are stories. According to most of the legends, animated corpses are created by an adept, rather then rising spontaneously. As in some Golem traditions, a divine name of power is used, either written on a parchment and then inserted under the tongue or sown into the skin, or inscribed on an amulet placed on the corpse (<i>Sefer Yuhasin, Shivhei ha-ARI, Meisa Buch</i>). Zombies are raised mostly so that they can talk: relating secrets about the World-to-Come, the divine spheres, or to solve a crime with knowledge known only to the deceased (<i>Meisa Buch, Meisa Nissim, Jahrbuecher</i>). In this last aspect, these traditions are also closely related to the <em>hiner bet </em>or <em>hiner plet </em>(Yiddish, "Catatonic")<em>, </em>a condition in which a person falls into a death-like state for days, or even weeks. Their only sign of life is that they speak sporadically, revealing the secret sins of people in the community, giving divine messages, or instructing us from the beyond about how we the living need to better oursleves.<br />
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So, if you are planning to attend someone else's Halloween party this year (should a Jew really be hosting his own?), a Jewish zombie is definitely an option; and its better then a run-of-the-mill zombie - they only groan, while you get to tell people off.<br />
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Also consider these Jewish costume options:<br />
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The Angel of Death (Jewish authenticity junkies go with a sword dripping gall, not a scythe)<br />
The Sar (princely angel) Metatron (fiery body with 365,000 eyes)<br />
Behemot (a gigantic ox)<br />
Leviathan (a sea dragon)<br />
Ziz (a giant chicken)<br />
Dybbuk (ghostly style, but always be sure to be clinging or hanging onto someone living)<br />
Lilith (hairy body, bald head - unless you want to do the "succubae" incarnation)<br />
Golem (clay complexion, word "Emet" on your forehead, not much of a conversationalist)<br />
Ketev Meriri, the demon "Bitter Destruction" (He is scaly and hairy and rolls about like a ball)<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 180%;">To learn more, </span>look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">[Illustration: The Mourning, by E.M. Lilien]</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-70920126769612297032013-10-12T12:28:00.001-05:002013-10-22T22:13:39.298-05:00Aronofsky's Noah: Reaching Deep into Jewish Myth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo7FtfUedLDQO6dpMOr2Xhn56aqaGoBmtzhGPoxcCv-cr8Bfw-6GsdN6oBd_EHYDrsc8OhX4cem6tFt0gMknsXgB1IhngE7GW2FIScJ7bQ3ZlX6yPtjJDcjuiY1q9Zo7KT38mS/s1600/noah_7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo7FtfUedLDQO6dpMOr2Xhn56aqaGoBmtzhGPoxcCv-cr8Bfw-6GsdN6oBd_EHYDrsc8OhX4cem6tFt0gMknsXgB1IhngE7GW2FIScJ7bQ3ZlX6yPtjJDcjuiY1q9Zo7KT38mS/s320/noah_7.jpeg" height="252" width="320" /></a></div>
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[Illustration of a fallen angel from the French comic <i>Noe, </i>part of Aronofsky's project]</div>
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So on the strength of my book and this website, I get contacted from time to time by writers, producers, and creators of books, TV shows, and feature films, who are seeking to develop projects that draw upon Jewish myth for themes, creatures, and story lines.</div>
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By far the most prestigious of these was a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a screenwriter working with Darren Aronofsky, the director and creative mind behind <i>Pi</i> and <i>The Fountain</i>, two strange and wonderful movies that integrate Jewish myth and ideas into their story lines. </div>
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Naturally, given my enthusiasm for these earlier films, I was intrigued that Ari (that's the the screenwriter) was interested in plumbing Jewish myths of the antediluvian period (Genesis chapters 1-9). There is a treasure trove of fabulous traditions.</div>
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So we discussed the rabbinic notions of the world before the Flood, a world populated with objects of power, semi-immortal humans, giants, sea monsters, centaurs, fallen angels and demon spirits. It quickly became evident that Aronofsky was envisioning a version of the Noah story that would incorporate authentic Jewish ideas and legends, and therefore more <i>Lord of the Rings</i> than <i>Ben Hur</i>. Very exciting. But that was it. The calls stopped coming, I returned to my day-job as a congregational rabbi, and <i>Noah</i> dropped from my mind. </div>
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But now <i>Noah </i>is back with a vengeance (and this time, it's personal!). The International Movie Data Base indicates the movies is set for a March release in 2014. Things are starting to pop up on fan sites, and a few photos are even appearing (Russell Crow! Emma Watson! JENNIFER CONNOLLY!).</div>
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And a lot of sturm und drang about six-armed angels. Clearly, some people don't get it. This idea seemingly so defies their expectations for a "biblical" film, it's really bugging them. They need to read their Bible. </div>
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The basis for the HUGE tradition of fallen angels that figures so large in the Christian tradition is Gen. 6:4, a cryptic bundles of ideas about the "Sons of God":</div>
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<span class="text Gen-6-4" id="en-KJV-142"><i><sup class="versenum"> </sup>There were nefilim [giants] in the earth in those days;</i></span></div>
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<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i> and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, </i></span></div>
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<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i>and they bare children to them, </i></span></div>
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<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i>the same became heroes which were of old, men of renown.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4">This was the trigger for a massive outpouring of the Jewish imagination during the Second Temple Period. Books like <i>Enoch, The Book of Giants, </i>and <i>Jubilees</i>, seized upon the notion that the "son of God" were not just lured by Bronze Age Kate Uptons, they were expelled from heaven. Hence, fallen angels. Then there are the offspring,<i> nifilim</i>, which seems to suggest "Fallen Ones" (Though linguistically that's pseudo-philology), a word that actually means "giants." Soon a whole menagerie of fantastic creatures were included, a ready biblical "explanation" for the monsters, demi-gods, and minor spirits spoken of in the mythologies of surrounding cultures. So too, objects of power - the garments of Adam, the book of Noah, the sword of Methuselah, the rod of Joseph, and tzohar gem - were all duly derived from the Genesis narrative. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4">But I digress. Six-armed angels. So naturally, when angels "fall," they lose their wings (watch your <i>Dogma</i>, people!). Or, the wings decay into mere arms. How many? Consult Isaiah chapter six:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><span class="text Isa-6-1"><span class="chapternum"> </span>In the year that King Uzziah<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771A" title="See cross-reference A">A</a>)"></sup> died,<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771B" title="See cross-reference B">B</a>)"></sup> I saw the Lord,<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771C" title="See cross-reference C">C</a>)"></sup> </span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><span class="text Isa-6-1">high and exalted,<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771D" title="See cross-reference D">D</a>)"></sup> </span></i></span><i><span class="text Isa-6-1">seated on a throne;<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771E" title="See cross-reference E">E</a>)"></sup> </span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><span class="text Isa-6-1">and the train of his robe<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17771F" title="See cross-reference F">F</a>)"></sup> filled the temple.</span> </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><span class="text Isa-6-2" id="en-NIV-17772"><sup class="versenum"> </sup>Above him were seraphim,<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-17772G" title="See cross-reference G">G</a>)"></sup> each with six wings...</span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><i><span class="text Isa-6-2"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><span class="text Isa-6-2">Get it? Six wings become six arms. Giants. Totally biblical. Or at least in keeping with biblical ideas. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><span class="text Isa-6-2">Now, I want to see Leviathan. This is going to be awesome!</span></span><br />
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><span class="text Isa-6-2"><br /></span></span>
<span class="text Gen-6-4"><span class="text Isa-6-2"><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 23px; line-height: 20.796875px; text-align: left;">To learn more, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.796875px; text-align: left;">look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon.</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books" style="background-color: white; color: #cc6600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20.796875px; text-align: left;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a></span></span></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-44234913668289223152013-09-28T17:43:00.000-05:002013-10-22T22:13:59.203-05:00Dream Incubation: Revelations of the NightToday, if you look up the word "incubation" in most modern dictionaries, the only definitions will involve the development of fetuses. But the acute reader will notice the word "incubus," or dream demon, immediately follows. In ancient times, people would seek divine or spirit guidance via dreams. The technical term for such divination: induced (deliberately sought) dream visitations by spirits, angels, demons, the dead, or gods, is "incubation."<br />
<br />
The practice of incubation has a long, multi-cultural history (See, for example, the <i>The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East </i>by Oppenheim). And methods vary greatly. In the Ancient Near East, dream incubation usually involves a preparatory ritual (often an offering or sacrifice) and sleeping in a place of known numinous power (a shrine, a temple, by a sacred water source).<br />
<br />
Incubation was widely practiced in all the societies around ancient Israel, and it should not come as a surprise that Israelites also engaged in this practice, though modern adherents to the Bible might find such a though scandalous. Yet there are multiple such events in the Bible, either described, or alluded to.<br />
<br />
The key word to look for is <i>darash</i>, "inquire," as in "David inquired of the Lord." It sounds superficially mundane, like David rang God up on the phone. In reality, <i>darash</i> is a technical word for "divined" or "performed an augury." There were several ways to do this - sacred lots (the urim and thummim), consult a living oracle (a prophet or "man of God"), or perform an incubation (See I Sam. 28:6 for the complete list).<br />
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<br /></div>
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Solomon's dream as envisioned by Mark Chagall</div>
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<br /></div>
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The most complete description of an incubation ritual appears in I Kings chapter 3, where Solomon goes to a shrine at Gibeon and, after making sacrifices, sleeps there and receives a divine promise concerning his monarchy. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There are many variations on this found elsewhere in the Bible. Jacob has an unsolicited dream vision while sleeping on the future location of an Israelite shrine [Beth E] (Gen. 28). Samuel has a comedic incubation while an attendant sleeping in the Tabernacle at Shiloh (I Samuel 3). Other likely, if not explicitly, incubations occur with Abraham (Gen. 15); Zechariah (Zech. 4); David (II Samuel 12:15-23); Nathan (II Samuel 7); and Isaiah (Isa. 6). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The practice of incubation continues into post-biblical Judaism (Flannery-Daily, <i>Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in Hellenistic and Roman Eras</i>). While the Talmudic sages did not document any methods for this (just rules of dream interpretation), the Merkavah mystics did: techniques called <i>she'elot halom, </i>"dream questions," for drawing down the <i>Sar ha-Torah</i>, "[Angelic] Prince of the Torah" and the <i>Sar ha-Halom, </i>"The Prince of Dream." Magical textbooks like <i>Sefer haRazim </i>and <i>Harba de-Moshe </i>describe similar practices. So too, the Chasidei Ashkenaz described rituals that may have been performed overnight in synagogues (<i>Sefer ha-Chasidim </i>80, 271, 1556).</div>
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Isaac Luria was an avid practitioner, and it was a familiar practice mentioned in early modern European texts (<i>Shivbei ha-BeSHT </i>1,7). And, of course, a prophetic dream (sort of), is key to the plot of <i>Fiddler on the Roof. </i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 23px; line-height: 20.796875px;">To learn more, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.796875px;">look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon.</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books" style="background-color: white; color: #cc6600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20.796875px;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-52186194604877638812013-09-02T13:49:00.003-05:002013-10-22T22:14:12.081-05:00Machnasei Rachamim and Selichot: Jewish Angel Liturgy at the High Holy Days<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Js7ZehdKyFFx3zbB512yndk_9Ii-h8PRTX2jgtmFWv6WImZgTUx0p-I5dGEu8Y-2cZzGMQNLKQOriB5aMT-cTP7_kPInHJC-O4RRiAQ-yS-VvVLbDd2UvkZQb0sHdogVmVkn/s1600/AngelRam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Js7ZehdKyFFx3zbB512yndk_9Ii-h8PRTX2jgtmFWv6WImZgTUx0p-I5dGEu8Y-2cZzGMQNLKQOriB5aMT-cTP7_kPInHJC-O4RRiAQ-yS-VvVLbDd2UvkZQb0sHdogVmVkn/s320/AngelRam.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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Whenever a congregant reads
something I have written, or I share a bit of Jewish esoteric tradition from
the pulpit, I inevitably have some say to me, rather emphatically, “Jews do not
do that!” To this I always respond, “In 3000 years, living on 6 continents,
some Jew somewhere has done everything.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
One need go no further than the
Selichot prayers for the days leading up to the High Holy Days. For here we
encounter the prayer Machnisei Rachamim, “Conveyors of Compassion.” This is a prayer petitioning the angels to
intervene with God:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Conveyers
of compassions, obtain our mercy before the Master of compassion,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Makers
of prayer, make our prayer heard before the Hearer of prayer.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Makes
of wailing, make our wail heard, before the Hearer of wailing.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Conveyers
of tears, convey our tears before the King who yields to tears.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Strive
to raise up supplication, raise up supplication and plea,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Before
the King, high and exalted. The King, high and exalted.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Whoa, stop right there. “Jews do
not do that!” Well, there is ample case that that opinion is correct. The rule
that Jews should pray only to God, and not to intermediaries, extends back to
Talmudic times: <span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“If troubles come upon a person, do not entreat the angel
Michael or the angel Gabriel. Rather, entreat Me alone and I will help you
immediately.” (T.Y. Berachot 9.1). Maimonides makes this normative, “It is only
fitting to pray to God and it is not fitting to pray to any other.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The Maharal of Prague was sufficiently
troubled that he amended the wording (<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Netivot Olam</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Netiv Ha'Avodah</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>no.12), an innovation that did not
catch on. </span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
In modern times, no less an
ultra-Orthodox authority than the Hatam Sofer wrote that at Selichot he personally
skips over this prayer (<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Orach
Chaim</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">no. 166), a shocking confession from the leader of a community that
insists ALL of the tradition is sanctified and obligatory. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i> <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The prayer has been entirely edited
out of Selichot liturgy in the modernist Reform movement. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
And yet…At least one midrash exists
that endorses the idea of angels as intermediaries of our prayers (<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Shir Hashirim
Rabba to 2:7). And many Jews worldwide recite the words “<i>barchuni l’shalom…</i>”, “bless me with peace”, when they sing the
popular Shabbat hymn, <i>Shalom Aleichem. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Here I quote a wise gentile:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #444444;">"</span><span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A foolish<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><em><span style="font-style: normal;">consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds</span></em>" – Emerson</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Some defenders have argued that this
behavior reflects our lowliness at this time of the year; we feel unworthy to
address God directly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Being historically minded, and noting that this prayer is found only in the Ashkenazi (northern European) tradition, I
suspect it was written when Jews were surrounded by a Christian culture that
emphasized the use of divine intermediaries (saints) and even had services in
honor of specific angels (Michaelmas). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Whatever the rationale, a traditional Jew
has to grapple with this odd bit of our angelic tradition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 23px; line-height: 20.796875px;">To learn more, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.796875px;">look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon.</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books" style="background-color: white; color: #cc6600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20.796875px;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-21048838219404792972013-07-07T16:43:00.000-05:002015-03-20T11:21:36.685-05:00Why Superman is a Better Jewish Messiah than a Christian Messiah: A Mythic Movie Review of Man of Steel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjramtsEEummEzgnosVCwWKXorOnbfvxA-I5tZ0ESzqM4pgNvRncKXOvmeLytwzAem1cbbnL7XXHhc0WP0Cvsfgsaxhc-ptnmCE3LDT32YNWszO8dP1Se_2ZFRNH-kdnALjqw1a/s1600/superman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjramtsEEummEzgnosVCwWKXorOnbfvxA-I5tZ0ESzqM4pgNvRncKXOvmeLytwzAem1cbbnL7XXHhc0WP0Cvsfgsaxhc-ptnmCE3LDT32YNWszO8dP1Se_2ZFRNH-kdnALjqw1a/s320/superman.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I got to see <i>Man of Steel </i>just before vacation (I stood atop a Mayan pyramid - about as close to a ziggurat as I'm gonna get, being a Jew, so that was awesome) and now I am ready to comment on it.<br />
<br />
Much has been made about the christological spin given the Superman mythology in this movie, and I found much of it quite moving, if somewhat heavy-handed (I'm thinking of the "surrender yourself" come-to-Jesus moment with the priest, where a picture of Jesus is hovering right over his shoulder). It certainly shows how a really, really good myth can be the bearer of many vectors of meaning. The screenwriter(s) foregrounded some nice elements of the Superman mythos that resonate with the Christ story. Good christ-figures fill popular culture, from Klaatu to Gandalf, and only a first-class whinger would complain about bringing together two great western mythic tales ("Chocolate!" "Peanut Butter!" "Wait, they taste great together!").<br />
<br />
I must observe, however, that the<i> Man of Steel </i>as the Prince of Peace is, IMHO, an awkward fit. The narrative proves Kal El = Christ to be something of a case of Procrustean bedding (Sorry to throw in a third mythic tradition here). And here's why I think this is so:<br />
<br />
For while the plot contrives that Kent must surrender himself for the good of humanity, he neither has to suffer death at the hands of the people he has come to save, nor does he die, crucified or otherwise, by anybody, not even General Zod (Yea, Michael Shannon!), the Prince of Darkness. Indeed, he actively works to escape his fate, and does so successfully. The only two people who willing and successfully sacrifice their lives are his father (the Joseph stand-in) - who does so for the ethically questionable principle that it is better for others to die than for his son to prematurely reveal his true nature - and the Air Force colonel who does, in fact, destroy himself for the sake of saving humanity, but in a way that is more Torpedo Squadron 8 (look it up) than Jesus of Nazareth.<br />
<br />
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Look, there is no question that the master myth undergirding Superman is a kind of<i> messianism</i>: the particular religious brand of utopianism that centers of the
special individual, gifted with unique powers, an individual who can and will
transform our reality for the better and advance all that is divine, just,
true, and right, improving the human condition. The messianic myth, writ small,
is arguable at the very root of the superhero as a genre. Fair enough, but how, then is Superman more Jewish than Christian? While the messiah is the special invention of the Jews, messianism
is also at the very heart of the Christian myth. Even so, it is useful to recognize Christian and Jewish forms of messianism as <span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">categorically</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">quite distinct. The
uniquely Christian vision of the messiah is the supernal empowered “chosen
one” who surrenders and sacrifices himself and </span><i style="line-height: 200%;">dies</i><span style="line-height: 200%;"> for the good of humanity, his death bringing salvation in a way his life could not. The Jewish messiah, by contrast, is
the empowered “chosen one” who strives and struggles, who to the very end </span><i style="line-height: 200%;">lives</i><span style="line-height: 200%;"> for the good of humanity, ultimately to triumph over
adversity and evil, but without losing himself. And so too, is Superman. While Christ-motifs will eventually appear in the long story arc of the Superman comic run (seven decades and counting), in their earliest form, and in their
overarching mythologies, all comic book heroes conquer evil by defeating its
minions, not by transcending it through their own death. Leading, fighting for, and living for humanity is an archly Jewish myth; the master motif of Superman. This Jewish myth is actually the foundational
premise of all the early superhero mythologies. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
There is a second way in which Jewish messianism is different. In Christian
thought, there is and can be only one messiah. All other contenders are
anti-christ. In Judaism, a messiah is a role and a high office, a role not
bound to one person, one time in (or even the end of) history. In point of fact,
every king and high priest of Israel was a messiah in their own time. Thus, the appearance of
multiple superheroes in a single “universe” - the Justice League of America, for example - has a more Jewish than Christian
resonance to it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There is, finally, a dark side to the Jewish Messianic/Superman myth that I take to be a curious kind of "proof" of Superman's essential Jewishness, and this is the Christian tradition of the anti-christ. It doesn't take much reading of Christian commentaries to realize that the anti-christ, as envisioned in the Revelations of John and then elaborated on by Christian tradition, is at its heart fundamentally a critique/polemic against the competing Jewish vision of the eschatological messiah. Cast as descendant of the tribe of Dan (and therefore a Jew), who triumphs and governs in this world, abet as a viceroy of Satan rather than God, the anti-christ is essentially a dig at the "carnality" of Jewish eschatological expectations.<br />
<br />
Why am I reviewing this tangential matter? Because of a revealing conversation I had with a campus minister back in the 1970s, in which he declared Superman to be a cunning pop culture avatar of the <i>anti-christ</i>, a pulp-fiction blasphemy meant to mentally prepare mankind for the coming to the real satanic savior, the <i>ubermensch</i> bearing the the "mark of the beast." This preacher, immersed in Christian myth, intuitively detected this "Jewish" cast to Superman, and then deconstructed him through his the prism of his Christian len and, whola, he is revealed to be anti-christ. Or, Superman = Jewish Messiah = anti-christ. <span style="line-height: 200%;">My experience of 40 years ago is hardly isolated; see this Washington Post article: </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/superman-jesus-figure-or-anti-christ/2013/06/27/3093f5be-df64-11e2-8cf3-35c1113cfcc5_story.html" style="line-height: 200%;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/superman-jesus-figure-or-anti-christ/2013/06/27/3093f5be-df64-11e2-8cf3-35c1113cfcc5_story.html</a><br />
<br />
So while I enjoyed <i>Man of Steel, </i>his ret-con (look it up) as a Christ figure is ultimately a triumph of marketing over innate narrative affinity. Superman is, and remains, more like <i>Menachem ben David</i>, "Comforter, son of David" rather than Christ,<br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"...</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">eternally begotten of the Father, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">God from God, Light from Light,</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">true God from true God,</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">begotten, not made,</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">of one Being with the Father. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">Through him all things were made. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">For us and for our salvation </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">he came down from heaven: </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">by the power of the Holy Spirit </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">and was made man. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">he suffered death and was buried. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">On the third day he rose again </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">in accordance with the Scriptures; </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">he ascended into heaven </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">and is seated at the right hand of the Father. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;">and his kingdom will have no end." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 23px; line-height: 20.796875px;">To learn more, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20.796875px;">look up the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism available at Amazon.</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books" style="background-color: white; color: #cc6600; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20.796875px;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-40383474095614751422013-05-28T15:53:00.003-05:002015-03-20T11:10:06.124-05:00When Adam Did Fall Did Sin We All? The Fall of Man and Original Sin [not in] JudaismOnce again recently (it happens quite a bit here in Texas), I ended up discussing the culpability of Adam and Eve in light of the death of Jesus. For traditional Christians, of course, the "Fall of Man" or the "Fall from Grace," is a massively important doctrine.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKl1kojDW8W21ZMc-PgAmhTQNQUzgVaPD1mw5_tM_5u3B-BR-oKOnItfh30OZK7b0Lno_oIlOnzQPT4hoarMCpK3BNT1Dzn7oxBX-b6eedugRl_8_UuX5-WwHjGE1fa_e5K6w/s1600/Adam+and+Eve+manuscript.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKl1kojDW8W21ZMc-PgAmhTQNQUzgVaPD1mw5_tM_5u3B-BR-oKOnItfh30OZK7b0Lno_oIlOnzQPT4hoarMCpK3BNT1Dzn7oxBX-b6eedugRl_8_UuX5-WwHjGE1fa_e5K6w/s1600/Adam+and+Eve+manuscript.jpg" height="320" width="221" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
[Eden story from a medieval Jewish manuscript]</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
This "Fall" is more than the story of the expulsion from Eden as described in Genesis, mind you. Like all religions (Jews do it too), Early Christianity, starting with Paul, attached and extrapolated all kinds of extra-biblical claims to the obvious meaning of Gen. chapter 3 (we all will die, we will have to labor for our food, women will suffer during childbirth, we hate snakes).<br />
<br />
For Christians, the two most important add-ons are that of <br />
a) "original sin" -- that the sin of disobeying God attaches not just to the first couple, but to all their offspring (i.e., us), and<br />
b) that the punishment for that is "eternal damnation," not just death in this world (as Genesis states, explicitly), but "death" in the next world, in the form of eternal exile from God into a suffering afterlife.<br />
<br />
The Christian solution, of course, is Jesus. But for Jesus to be the cure, then the illness, original sin, needs to be "real." That, it seems, includes the idea that Adam and Eve were real, historical, flesh-and-blood people. A mythic first couple won't serve. A metaphor simply cannot carry the weight of justifying the kind of real, metaphysically transformative sacrifice Christians credit to Jesus. Thus the constant kerfuffle over the historicity of Genesis.<br />
<br />
Jews, too have argued over the literal truth of Genesis 1-4, though not so much in the Modern era. While there is a small bundle of naive, anti-modernist ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jews who cling to the historicity of Genesis, the vast majority of Jews, building on our own 2000 year old tradition of metaphoric interpretation, generally view the Eden narrative as important, but not factual.<br />
<br />
Key to our relative equanimity about this is that Judaism does not have a doctrine of "Original sin." We simply do not read human nature through "Fall-colored glasses." How can this be? Well first, we don't pile on a lot of additional punishments to the ones listed in Gen. 3. Even if we assumed that Eden was a historical event, we don't think all humanity bears the guilt of past people's crimes, though we all must live with the consequences that flow from the decisions of earlier generations (who can undo the past?).<br />
<br />
Moreover, there are key linguistic features in the story that suggest that even the author of Genesis did not take the expulsion from Eden so literally. The key feature being "names." The first couple actually have none. The English Bible would have you believe they were named "Adam" and "Eve." But the Hebrew actually says, <i>ha-adam </i>"the earthling," and he first calls her <i>ishah, </i>"woman." Later he redubs her <i>chavah, </i>"live [giving]" (3:20) after she proves the capacity to be, well, life-giving. But this hardly a name, as the animals (who already showed their capacity to reproduce) are called <i>chayah, </i>"living [creature]." One letter now distinguishes her from other reproducing creatures - hardly a personal name. And "the earthling" never loses the definitive article (the) from his name, demonstrating that it is a common, rather than proper noun (it's not his name). Hebrew works exactly like English in this regard. We say "David" rather than "the David," because a proper noun is innately definite. The point? These two figures are meant to be "everyman" and "everywoman," universal "types" of humans, rather historical ancestors. That's why its no continuity problem for the author to introduce Cain's wife in Chapter 4 - it's a mythic account of a universal human experience, not a historic event.<br />
<br />
Moreover, Jews have never required the kind of metaphysical heavy lifting from the Eden story that Christianity has. There is a simple reason for that - we take our cue from the rest of the Hebrew Bible. While it's position in the first four chapters gives it great prominence, the fact is that Adam, Eve, Eden, and the expulsion get virtually no play in subsequent biblical texts. You would think that if Eden and its loss defines what it is to be human, and the true condition of human nature, that the prophets would allude to it fairly frequently, as in "You are just like your ancestors, Adam and Eve..." or "Because of what God decreed in Eden...." But no. The figures "Adam" and "Eve," <i>ha-adam </i>and <i>chavah, </i><u>never get a mention</u> throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Never (well, maybe once, just to cover my bases, but my research indicates <u>never)</u>. So much for a defining story. And Eden, well... It does get passing mention, mostly in Ezekiel, as the location of the ideal mythic past. But getting expelled? Nope. God's continuing wrath and alienation over the sin of Eden? Never.<br />
<br />
What are we to make of this silence? It means one of two things, either<br />
a) The authors of the rest of Bible don't know Gen. 1-4 (i.e., it was written only after they wrote their books), or<br />
b) they didn't think it was a big deal story.<br />
<br />
We can see a big deal story they do care about - the Exodus. The rest of the Bible: the prophets, the historical books, the Psalms, are constantly alluding to the Exodus. THAT'S the story that matters. THAT'S the story you need to teach to your children.<br />
<br />
And that, by the way, is the biggest theme that post-biblical Jews extrapolate from the Eden story - it's a foreshadowing of our exile from the promised land, our harsh work and difficult labors (in both sense of the word) in Egypt. Eden is a sign for us, but one of both regret and hope. Jews take from Eden not the notion of human "sinfulness," but that human life and human history is a series of exiles and homecomings.<br />
<br />
To read more, buy my book, <i>The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism </i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-961646536553946392012-12-23T09:54:00.000-06:002012-12-23T17:16:40.827-06:00Jewish Magical Rings of Power<div align="center">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLml4y2UiQt4mNqor6BRtDphYL_1swbgg9PXm-Nmfs2TrTjwkiLvfjJ6Ka0rVXkFNi6-tCpzXWUyY_mZ-Hnz3mwaji9tPH0eXrMPr8p-gVOZWKQphrkEjMibYuoq3A8sYLbBg/s1600-h/Rinf+Blingdomofgod.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5065900649496690018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLml4y2UiQt4mNqor6BRtDphYL_1swbgg9PXm-Nmfs2TrTjwkiLvfjJ6Ka0rVXkFNi6-tCpzXWUyY_mZ-Hnz3mwaji9tPH0eXrMPr8p-gVOZWKQphrkEjMibYuoq3A8sYLbBg/s320/Rinf+Blingdomofgod.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><span style="font-size: 78%;"> [Ring inscribed with the Hebrew "fire in his faith-he will live it", appearing at blingdomofgod.com]</span><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">J.R.R. Tolkien gave us the most famous magic ring in human
imagination, but certainly not the first. Rings and seals of power have a long
history in Jewish tradition, beginning with King Solomon.</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">According to the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Testament
of Solomon</em>, a pseudepigraphic work of late Antiquity that serves as
the basis for a whole genre of Solomonic magical lore, King Sol created a ring
using a divine name of power and inscribed it with a seal, either a pentagram
or hexagram (traditions vary). With this ring, he was able to enslave demons
and he compelled them to help him construct the Temple in Jerusalem - a mythic
illustration of the Jewish belief that there is nothing in the universe that is
irredeemable, or cannot be bent to divine service.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">But this is not the only ring of power in Jewish
literature. Josephus also mentions a magical ring used to perform an exorcism
in his native Judea (Antiquities 8).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">In the Hechalot literature, rings and seals a
recurrent theme. Both angels (Hechalot Rabbati) and adepts (Merkavah Rabbah)
use rings with seals to tap into divine forces.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">But it is Solomon’s ring that has captured the
imagination of readers over the centuries. Not only is it good for exorcisms
and demon management, but it also gives you the power to speak with animals. Discussions,
recipes, and diagrams of the ring repeatedly appear in works such as the
medieval work,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Mafteach Shlomo</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(The Key of Solomon) and is invoked on
amulets for protection against demons (Naveh and Shaked,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Magic
Spells and Formulae</em>, p. 93).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In the 17<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup> centuries, during the
height of the “Baal shems,” the wondering working shamans of eastern Europe, we
find several references to silver rings of protection of healing, so-called
“segulah rings.” They are mentioned in personal correspondence and a few
published texts, such as <i>Kav haYashar</i>.
The latter even describes the process of fabricating such a ring, these rings
were credited with controlling epilepsy and proving “security” day and night.
This may be just as it sounds, a shield against physical dangers, but also may
be a euphemism for sexual incontinence (conscious temptations, erotic dreams,
and nocturnal emissions). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<br />
To learn more about the <em>Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism</em>, visit <a href="http://dracontius.net/ragwad/ejmmm">http://dracontius.net/ragwad/ejmmm</a><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-75838476565529519492012-11-15T10:26:00.000-06:002012-11-15T10:28:06.590-06:00DIY: Do-It-Yourself Reality. One of the special delights that have evolved in my life the past few years is a new hevruta of study companions. You have the fruits of some of our studies in past entries. Currently we continue our study of <i>Kedushat Levi,</i> the Hasidic commentary to the Torah of Yitzakh Levi of Berditchev. here is the translation of a wonderful reflection of prayer and the <i>zug</i> (partnership) of God and humanity:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
[An] additional explanation: <i>Bereshit</i> - [read it as] <i>bet</i> (two/double) <i>beginning</i>. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Blessed Name bestows <i>shefa </i>[beneficent outpouring] and we through our prayers make an opening in the divine outpouring [allowing it to reach the prayer], each according to his [i.e., human] will. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
This one [for example] will make an opening by means of the letters of <i>chayyim </i>(life) for [enhanced] life; That one with the letters of <i>chokhmah </i>(wisdom) for [greater] wisdom; </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Another with the letters of <i>osher </i>(wealth) for wealth.[1] </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And thus [it is] for all goods, each [may be used] according to our will. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Look, for everything that is [found] in the [the realm] of the spirit, there is something analogous to it in the [realm of] the physical. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So look, in the physical [universe] there is sound and speech.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The sound is the matrix/container,[2] while speech is the opening [3] for the sound made through letters [to activate the<i> shefa</i>]. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Thus [for example] on <i>Rosh ha-Shanah</i>, the sound of the<i> shofar</i> is [or signifies] the outpouring<i> </i>from the Blessed Creator - it is the matrix.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And when we say the <i>malchut, zechronot, and shofarot </i>[4], it is the opening by which we shape the outpouring of the Creator through the letters/words, every individual according to his will. </div>
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[Hands-on Judaism: young Kolamites making their own shofar]</div>
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<br /></div>
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See, this outpouring matrix that flows from the Creator, it is the aspect [we know as] the written Torah [which is given to us]. </div>
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While this opening we make for the outflow through letters, this is the aspect of the oral Torah, it being the will of Israel, when they make interpretation of the written Torah [5]. </div>
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So this [is the meaning of] <i>bereshit - </i>"double beginning [to the universe]" - the [combination of] written Torah and the oral Torah [bring creation into being].[6]</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. This is based on the word mysticism of <i>Sefer Yetzirah, </i>which regards the letters of the Hebrew Alef-Bet as the building blocks of creation. Very much analogous to the periodic table, where elements can be combined to make useful compounds, it is taught that proper application of the letters and words of Hebrew allows the adept to construct reality from them. This is also a testimony to the Jewish notion of humanity dignity and power. God gives us the raw materials of the natural (and supernatural) order, but we may mold them and shape them to our needs and the needs of the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2. the translation of <i>calul </i>here is debatable. I welcome a better suggestion, </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">3. <i>Tzimtzum</i> literally means contraction/condensing. The image is a space created in the membrane between the spiritual and physical realms to allow the <i>shefa </i>to enter one's life, i.e., spoke prayer attunes us to the divine "frequency," while the words themselves serve as the access code for translating the spiritual bounty into physical reality. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">4. </span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">the three liturgies that accompany the blowing] consists of verses that refer to these three themes. Each verse is specifically selected for their upbeat message for Israel and the world. The liturgy, of course, is a Jewish creation, an addition to the purely biblical command to sound the shofar on the holiday. The significance of this will be evident at the end of the homily. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">5. Here the theme of partnership (and mutual dependency) really gets highlighted, and in a somewhat counter-tradition manner. Jewish thinkers have tended to treat all the two Torahs, the written Torah and it's on-going interpretation, as God-given. Rabbi Yitzakh unpacks that flattening, monistic thinking by reclaiming the oral Torah as a human creation, and the very thing that renders the divine gift of Torah (Torah = divine outpouring) meaningful on the physical plane. Without us and our wordy, argumentative ancestors, the Torah would be divine, surely, but inert and unable to benefit the world, like a heap of iron ore that need human intervention to refine it, reshape it, and make it into tools.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">6. The biggest metaphysical claim of all - that only through the combined efforts of God and humanity that the universe exists. </span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-5929435430861461872012-09-28T11:36:00.001-05:002012-09-28T11:36:51.563-05:00Esoteric Judaism Brought to the Public Eye<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsMS3nWdSmMTlQN5eSXvtZtpkx4s_Fnpm_lvhDUe8GCjjXLMwTaSBgwF1DkIxQArEsvq6eM5mK6fRsBdwFLlFzIMoZmxUczLZHRJmcn0W4x2DBOru2_BTJwyd2OiY9xAE5DSMx/s1600/EJMMM_3%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsMS3nWdSmMTlQN5eSXvtZtpkx4s_Fnpm_lvhDUe8GCjjXLMwTaSBgwF1DkIxQArEsvq6eM5mK6fRsBdwFLlFzIMoZmxUczLZHRJmcn0W4x2DBOru2_BTJwyd2OiY9xAE5DSMx/s320/EJMMM_3%5B1%5D.JPG" width="254" /></a></div>
It's been four years since I wrote the <i>The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, </i>and three years since it was selected as a Finalist for the Jewish Book Council Award, but it was only last week I was interviewed about the book by Aaron Howard for the <i>Houston Jewish Voice</i>. It is perhaps the best composed article yet written about the book and the subject, so I provide a link here:<br />
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<a href="http://jhvonline.com/do-you-believe-in-jewish-magic-p13768-96.htm" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">jhvonline.com/do-you-believe-<wbr></wbr>in-jewish-magic-p13768-96.htm</a><br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-9059484106576843492012-09-11T14:34:00.001-05:002012-09-11T14:41:32.139-05:00Possession: The Dibbuk Box - A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjkvt7DagL_tLStTqUa6hkPaxI4t1GdnW8YRAAesbUgkh5twdJbRuCe0vm4ePMLFG1CEpWydEI2GfVMgkQU_dmsvkoUCVfd4HIZwcJYGNz99Gm9Yx8mB9H0lbIqOSwU_upDXG8/s1600/Steampunk+Jew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjkvt7DagL_tLStTqUa6hkPaxI4t1GdnW8YRAAesbUgkh5twdJbRuCe0vm4ePMLFG1CEpWydEI2GfVMgkQU_dmsvkoUCVfd4HIZwcJYGNz99Gm9Yx8mB9H0lbIqOSwU_upDXG8/s1600/Steampunk+Jew.jpg" /></a></div>
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[The paranormal investigator will see you now]</div>
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So I finally got to see the new Jewish-flavored horror movie <i>Possession,</i> and my assessment is....meh. The centerpiece is really a domestic drama of a disintegrating family. The first two acts are dominated by this, and the box is, what, a symbol of the toxic emotions penetrating the family? Not that I object to deeper meanings, I rather like them, but I prefer more horror leavened with metaphor than melodrama spiced with horror metaphors.<br />
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And as for the Jewish part (which only really comes to the foreground in the third act), well, it feels like not so well-conceived window-dressing. For example:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Dybbuks are a form of pneumatic (spirit) possession, not, as the movie indicates, demonic possession. We have become rather casual about how we use words. Spirits are usually some manifestation of dead humans, rather than infernal entities. This is actually important, and it is what make the dybbuk tradition of Judaism so distinctive from your run-of-the-mill <i>Exorcist/Rite/Constantine</i> possession. Because Jewish adepts (there is no office of exorcist in Judaism, the writers got that right) are dealing with two souls, the possessed victim AND THE DEAD SOUL, their project is doubly therapeutic - to help both regain the right path. This involves expelling the spirit, but also getting him/her on with the journey into the afterlife. </li>
<li>The "name" of the demon is a strange conflation of the dybbuk tradition with the much earlier greco-roman Jewish belief in named demons (ala <i>The Testament of Solomon</i>). </li>
<li>In Jewish dybbuk traditions, dybbuks do not possess "innocent" or "pure" souls, but invade those whose lives have made them vulnerable to such infestations through sin and lax observance of the Jewish faith. </li>
<li>The fearful shuffling of the elders is pretty silly. Dybbuks are not contagious. </li>
<li>Other than the little news story that inspired this movie, the "dibbuk box" itself is not a part of the authentic dibbuk tradition. WHAT WE DO SEE is a couple of accounts of Jewish exorcism where the adept forces the spirit into a bottle (ala the djinn tradition). This is taken as a sign the exorcism was successful. What did they do after that? I've never seen a "spirit disposal" report, but I assume the now <i>takanah</i> (repaired) spirit is released to continue its <i>gilgul </i>(transmigration). </li>
<li>Jewish rituals of expulsion are usually communal affairs - at least a minyan (quorum of ten) is present, and often the whole community that can fit in the house participates. </li>
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So what did they get right?</div>
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<ul>
<li>Jewish "exorcists" are any menschlik person (yeh, Matisyahu, nice film debut) with the knowledge to perform the rituals - rabbis, local holy men, the educated.</li>
<li>The recitation of Ps. 90, the "Psalm of Affliction," along with Ps. 121, 16, and others, is the centerpiece of this Jewish ritual. </li>
<li>Though the explanation doesn't make a lot of sense to me, Jewish occult beliefs do regard mirrors as potential doorways between the living and the dead (Read Chaim Vital's autobiography, for example).</li>
<li><i>Tallisim</i> (prayer shawls), <i>shofarot</i> (rams horns) and other Jewish ritual objects are often integrated into the process. </li>
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So what can I say, given this movie and the slightly older <i>The Unborn, except </i>perhaps Jews should simply be happy that we have "arrived" - Hollywood is finally as open to making crappy movies about Judaism as it is to making crappy movies about Catholicism and Protestantism. For something better, I suggest <i>The Secret </i>(Israeli), the golem episode of <i>the X-Files, </i>or even <i>Keeping the Faith.</i></div>
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Oh, and you can read my book, <i>The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism. </i></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-79149540083251301582012-08-31T15:35:00.000-05:002012-09-11T13:53:50.796-05:00The Dibbuk Box: There's a Ghost in my Web Stats<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDCfUc-G-9OrkTqOzFRgP8Y_6jfV7Y7_eIxthrMwfYH_zpSx08tcn-FYp9OzRkg6yBfe0zu912BUPsCR-U45P7S6Mmw9bQlgUGJwOcU9WPqYOFa-ETVo7z7ntJLMQngozAae-/s1600-h/simmons_dybbuk.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289839035340267522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDCfUc-G-9OrkTqOzFRgP8Y_6jfV7Y7_eIxthrMwfYH_zpSx08tcn-FYp9OzRkg6yBfe0zu912BUPsCR-U45P7S6Mmw9bQlgUGJwOcU9WPqYOFa-ETVo7z7ntJLMQngozAae-/s400/simmons_dybbuk.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 220px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 301px;" /></a> ["Dybbuk" by Elly Simmons, found at <a href="http://www.cre8tivez.org/interdis/interdis.htm">www.cre8tivez.org/interdis/interdis.htm</a> ]<br />
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So I just noticed a strange spike in visits to the JMMM blog. This most often happens after a showing of the Demi Moore film, <em>The Seven Sign</em>. But this one is different. A huge number of visits to entries on Exorcism and Dibbuks / Dybbuks. I was puzzled, but now I understand. It's unusual for me to be caught off guard when it comes to movies, but it just happened -- I had no idea the horror movie <i>Possession: The Dibbuk Box</i><em> </em>had a Jewish theme to it. Well, I haven't had a chance to see it yet (33% in Rotten Tomatoes - that's Ashton Kutcher bad!), but I thought I'd facilitate online seekers by grouping all the links to relevant topics on the JMMM right here...</div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/03/dybbuk-spirit-possession.html">The Dybbuk: Spirit Possession</a></div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/03/jewish-exorcism-i-defeating-demons.html">Jewish Exorcism I: Defeating Demons</a></div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/03/exorcism-ii-jewish-ritual-against.html">Exorcism II: A Jewish Ritual Against Demonic Posse...</a> </div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2007/04/exorcism-iii-battling-dybbuks-and-dead.html">Exorcism III: Battling Dybbuks and the Dead</a> </div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2006/11/spawns-of-satan.html">Spawns of Satan, Children of Cain</a> </div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2006/11/does-curse-of-cain-live-on.html">Does the curse of Cain live on?</a></div>
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<a href="http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/01/demon-lovers-sword-of-power-children-of.html">Demon Lovers, Sword of Power: The Other Children o...</a> </div>
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...and, of course, you can do more leisurely study of the topic using my book, <em>The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a></em></div>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-1168970297504604652012-08-17T09:00:00.000-05:002012-08-17T12:16:13.153-05:00Adam Kadmon I: Spiritual Man, Primordial Being<br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">[illustration: The Creation of Man by E.M. Lilien]</span></div>
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A reader asked if the Jewish concept of Adam Kadmon that I mentioned in my earlier posting was the inspiration for the Christian concept of the “Mystical Body of Christ.” It’s an excellent question. In fact, we see what appears to be a statement by Paul (I Corinthians 15:45-50) about the Christ that has strong echoes of the Adam Kadmon tradition:<br /><br /><em>So, too, it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being," the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual was not first; rather the natural and then the spiritual. </em><a href="" name="v47"><em></em></a><br /><em>The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven. As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly. </em><a href="" name="v49"><em></em></a><br /><em>Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one. </em><br />
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What is most striking to me is Paul’s insistence on the “order” of being. Paul pointedly states the “spiritual Adam” was not first. I take that to mean that Paul is making sure his readers understand that what he is teaching is markedly different from what they might assume. And that indicates to me that Paul is both aware of and modifying for his own theologic purpose an already well-known doctrine of a “spiritual Adam” that people believed preceded the earthly Adam. Since Jesus came millenia after human creation, Paul finds it necessary for the spiritual Adam be the culmination of humanity, rather then its origin. So in response to the question, all in all, I would think that this idea of being incorporated into the "body of Christ" is likely a specifically Christian re-retooling of the Jewish esoteric doctrine.<br /><br />The concept that there is a primordial man that encompasses all humanity (indeed, the entire universe) probably has its first basis neither in Judaism or Christianity, but in the Platonic theory of “forms,” the belief that there exists an ideal form of all the varied forms that manifest themselves in the material world. Thus, while there may be many types of chairs (swivel, French provincial, Stichley, folding, La-Z-boy), they all share an essential “chairness,” a quality that Platonic thought would say emanates from the ideal form of “chair.” Likewise, despite the obvious enormous variety of humans (Male, female, caucasian, negroid, dwarf, giant, etc.), there must be an essential, transcendant model of humanness that encompasses all these possibilities.<br /><br />Esoteric Judaism developed this in the most elaborate and imaginative way:<br />
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<em>The [human] body is composed in two worlds: the Lower World and the Supernal World (Zohar 2:23b)</em><br />
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and discovers it to be present in the two Biblical narratives of the creation of humanity (Gen. 1 vs. 2:6 >). Thus the <em>Adam Kadmon</em> (“Primordial Human”) - Also called <em>Adam Elyon</em> or <em>Adam Ila’ah</em> - the supernal, first creation of God that is made in the divine image is specifically described in Gen 1:26-27 (and <em>not </em>to be conflated with the humans created in 2:6-24). It is he that is the true “image of God,” a majestic vessel of divine glory, the ideal human (Deut. 4:32; PdRK 4:4, 12:1, Lev. R. 20:2). All earthly humans (Gen. 2-3) are in his image (B.B.58a). When he was created, in fact, he was so awesome the angels mistook him for God and began to worship him <br />
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<em>Said Rabbi Hiyya: "When the Holy One created man to dwell upon the earth, he formed him after the likeness of Adam Kadmon, the heavenly man. When the angels gazed upon him [Adam Kadmon], they exclaimed: 'You have made him almost equal to God and crowned him with glory and honor.' After the transgression and fall of Adam, it is said the Holy One was grieved at heart because it gave occasion for repeating what they had said at his creation, 'What is man that You should be mindful of him, or the son of man that You should visit him.'" (Ps vii. 5.)</em> <br />
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According to the Midrash, Adam Kadmon is androgynous, incorporating all the aspects of both genders (Gen. 1:27 can actually be translated thus, though it usually isn't). Inspired by the description of man extending from one end of heaven to the other (Deut. 4:32), he is also a macrocosm, extending from one end of the universe to the other and containing all creation:<br />
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<em>The rabbis taught: The creation of the world was like the creation of humanity, for everything that God created in the world, God created in the human being. The heavens are the head of humankind, the sun and the moon are the human eyes, the stars are the hair on the human head</em> (Otzar haMidrashim, Olam Katan 406).<br />
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For more on the rabbinic understanding of Adam Kadmon, see Gen. R. 8:1; Lev. R. 14:1, Chag. 12b, 14b.<br /><br /><span style="color: #3366ff;">To learn more, read the EJMMM, available at amazon.com. Click here - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a></span><br />
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Barack Obama, Rapture, End of Days, Israel, prophecy, revelation<div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-16016699846929328992012-08-08T18:48:00.000-05:002012-07-13T17:27:06.807-05:00The Barren Shall Rejoice: Battling Infertility With Jewish Rituals<div align="center">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7jdg3TXK3dTip0XoUQP0oss3ivyU933sxFShQ0LmyumQf6AzKIdXu5nyUfzUTB-kYkQgVF46SE3i1jFw7f_8G5-KVIQeesbbxOT5lyz5MW2mHIlOuoREjznjELlr-Z5hIm6D/s1600/Genesis+Epstein.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485025004931695218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7jdg3TXK3dTip0XoUQP0oss3ivyU933sxFShQ0LmyumQf6AzKIdXu5nyUfzUTB-kYkQgVF46SE3i1jFw7f_8G5-KVIQeesbbxOT5lyz5MW2mHIlOuoREjznjELlr-Z5hIm6D/s400/Genesis+Epstein.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 279px;" /></a> ["Genesis" by the sculptor Jacob Epstein]</div>
<br />
Its been a while since I've added an entry. And recently it occurred to me that I have only addressed issues of infertility tangentially, through the themes of Sukkot, or the fabulous stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. So here is something more on point:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Fertility and infertility is a major issue in any traditional culture, and Jewish culture is no different. In fact, infertility is a central theme in the book of Genesis, starting with the divine command to be "fruitful and multiple," right through the growing pathos arising from the contrast between God's promise to make Abraham a great nation and the constant struggles with infertility he and his family endured (Gen. 30:1).</span><br />
<br />
Over the centuries, Jews, and especially Jewish women, developed a whole arsenal of folk cures, rituals, and devices to combat prolonged bouts of infertility (this is aside from wedding rituals encouraging fertility, aphrodisiacs and treatments for male impotence, things I explored in an earlier entry). These include -<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Mandrakes, which have a biblical warrant (Gen. 30:14-16). This root is incorporated into varied cures across the centuries.</li>
<br />
<li>Consuming rubies was another popular treatment in medieval medical texts.1</li>
<br />
<li>Visiting the grave of Rachel outside Bethlehem, to ask for the Matriarch's intervention. The burial places of other deceased worthies, such as Hasidic masters, are also sought out. </li>
<br />
<li>Mizrachi (Asian) Jews would place a cup of water under the chair set out for Elijah at a circumcision ceremony (<em>Brit Milah</em>). Following the ceremony, barren women would drink this water in hope of aiding in pregnancy. A related practice would be to drink from a kiddush cup that had just been used at a <em>Brit Milah</em>. In Europe, women would meditate upon the knife used to perform a circumcision. All this was inspired by the hope that the fertility embodied in the newborn boy that permeated the ritual would prove contagious. 2 </li>
<br />
<li>The exact reverse of this association, and one probably adopted from surrounding gentile cultures, involved having a woman stand in close proximity to a corpse, or sprinkle themselves with the water used to purify a corpse (European gentile women would stand under a gallows or even a hanging criminal). </li>
<br />
<li>Incantations and <em>kamiyot</em> (amulets) were common and widely circulated. Most amulets included verses from Scripture that promise to counter barrenness (Isaiah 30:19, for example, or Exodus 23:26).3</li>
<br />
<li>Most startling is a practice forbidden by the rabbis, but nevertheless reported in several communities - infertile women consuming the foreskin tissue from a circumcision (perhaps not so weird if we think of the occasional modern practice of women eating the afterbirth, but still shocking). Not surprisingly, <em>keeping</em> the foreskin as a talisman was more common. 4</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: 180%;">Zal g’mor:</span> To learn more, read the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism:<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1. Klein, <em>A Time to Be Born, </em>41.<br />
<br />
2. Sperber, <em>The Jewish Life Cycle, </em>16, 452.<br />
<br />
3. Naveh and Shaked<em>, magic Spells and Formulae</em>, 160-161.<br />
<br />
4. Patai, "Folk Customs and Charms Related to Childbirth"<em> </em>(Heb.), <em>Talpiot 6. </em>Fascination with foreskins in not unique to Judaism. Historian Frances Stonor Saunders reports that at one point, a relic of Jesus' foreskin could be petitioned in <i>18 </i>different cathedrals of Europe. The monastic movement took that one better with the "cult of the holy foreskin," a belief that the foreskin of the savior was the wedding ring of every novice who took holy orders. One saint had a vision of Jesus circumcising himself before placing the ring of flesh on her finger.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-72237403413478765792012-06-17T11:12:00.002-05:002012-06-17T11:12:44.601-05:00Jews and the Zodiac, pt. 1 - a Good Sign<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGrsaqpKolUVfTRs-IRSGaV_JH8cubrh1oGdyNSL8GR3HNa9GvVH-17qOwWB08r53I0Fr8xNe9FMpmDCstnEQk0mdqLuoCwjFb7ZF5ytRfPpwDi2MO37vjjsga9EoijKzSrsP/s1600/zodiac+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGrsaqpKolUVfTRs-IRSGaV_JH8cubrh1oGdyNSL8GR3HNa9GvVH-17qOwWB08r53I0Fr8xNe9FMpmDCstnEQk0mdqLuoCwjFb7ZF5ytRfPpwDi2MO37vjjsga9EoijKzSrsP/s320/zodiac+2.jpg" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beit Alpha Synagogue floor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Modern Jews are largely ignorant of the degree to which astrology and, particularly, the zodiac, has played a role in Jewish tradition. Famously, and frequently quoted, the Talmud says, <i>Ain mazzel b'Israel</i> ("Israel is not affected by the planets/fortune.") But remember, this is only one voice in the Talmud, the only religious document in the world that asserts one position, and its direct contradiction, simultaneously. Thus you can find opponents and proponents of the ideology of astrology and the influence of the stars on human affairs (even if not the affairs of Jews), and a variety of intermediate positions, all in the Talmud, and beyond.</div>
<br />
The two great zodiac traditions we know today are the Greek and the Chinese, though many cultures have their particular systems for mapping the sky. While we may have gotten our start under the influence of Babylonian astrology, the great bulk of what has been preserved in the <i>mesorah </i>reflects our participation in the Greek tradition (See the 5th Century synagogue floor-mosaic above). Of course, Jews adapted it in ways suited to Jewish monotheism. Thus <i>Sefer ha-Razim</i>, for example, asserts that the zodiac is governed by angelic principalities, making the the system of destiny from the stars integral to the divine order.<br />
<br />
But let's start slowly. With a seemingly simple word, <i>mazzal (</i>or <i>mazal, </i>or as the moderns say it, <i>mazel</i>). Of course the ancient Israelites, like everyone else, had only few permanent celestial features they could see with the naked eye - the sun, moon, fixed stars, and five "wandering" stars, the planets.<br />
<br />
In biblical Hebrew, mazal means "planet," or secondarily, "star" (there is a more specific word for star <i>khokhav, </i>as well as multiple words for the sun and the moon). Thus,<i> </i> <i>mazzalot </i>(pl.) could mean "planets" as a group or "constellations." (Isaiah 13:10; Job 38:31-33).<br />
<br />
These remote lights were assumed early on to be "signs" to humanity (Gen. 1:14-15) and the Children of Israel (Gen. 12, 15, et al). Hence the expression, <i>Mazal tov/Siman tov! </i>"A good star/a good sign [for you]!" i.e., "congrats!" So it is not surprising that more elaborate theories of how to interpret other meanings for these signs evolved.<br />
<br />
The earliest evidence of Jewish divining the skies for esoteric meaning and messages appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls (2nd century BCE). There two fragments in particular, 4Q318 (Brontologion) and 4Q186 (Horoscope). The first concerns itself with brontology, the mantic interpretation of weather, such as thunder (and, often, transient celestial events, like comets and meteor showers). 4Q318 also includes some skeletal references to the babylonian zodiac. The other document, Q4186, is particularly of interest because it shows the effort to tease out the human implication of what unfolds in the heavens, the essence of what we mean when we use the word astrology today.<br />
<br />
So this is interesting, but given the often sectarian nature of the material preserved at Qumran, we need to be cautious about any conclusions we can draw from it about the rabbinic tradition of Judaism. But it is enough for now to know that Jewish interest is the stars is very old, indeed.<br />
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-46812331339343393122012-03-21T09:18:00.000-05:002012-03-21T08:57:49.875-05:00Elijah the Prophet - Angel of the Covenant<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE35lhVILan4q6BUZc4niYPQVS7tcETqpd_lSOJfCU_FaU2xNnP8r_82fB47TSzFovGQpI-nIUUa3PtRMLE1UZBUV7bt-PUalYSToJDGAYb4vBfZD4z4EhN-JYvwZr9aat0O8Z/s1600-h/scan0002.jpg"></a><br /><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCra3qTjY5iPpkuZYrKb4koE3lsFxmxhP5Mxzski6OS0bhnsO0_T2nVobPoSucLqttzmHWBjQpLYUxgmxdfD4ODgJ40IXVjPBggudQIkKhdl85MbwIkhz31vAucUOLDF_IkLLK/s1600-h/scan0001.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5062974032295711074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCra3qTjY5iPpkuZYrKb4koE3lsFxmxhP5Mxzski6OS0bhnsO0_T2nVobPoSucLqttzmHWBjQpLYUxgmxdfD4ODgJ40IXVjPBggudQIkKhdl85MbwIkhz31vAucUOLDF_IkLLK/s320/scan0001.jpg" border="0" /></a> Called <em>Eliyahu ha-Navi</em>, “Elijah <strong>the</strong> Prophet,” in Hebrew, this prophet of ancient Israel (9th Century BCE) is one of the most celebrated heroes in Jewish lore. In his earthly mission he performed numerous miracles in his war against Israelite idolatry (I Kings, Chapters 17-21). He alone among all the prophets was carried from earth in a fiery chariot (II Kings 2).<br /><br />Rabbinic literature elaborates on many of his feats and his unique status. He never died (B.B. 121b; Gen. R 31;5), instead, having ascended to heaven on a divine chariot, he became one of only a few select mortals who have been elevated to the status of an angel, and is henceforth known as the “Angel of the Covenant” (Mal. 3:1; Ber. 4b; Zohar Chadash Ruth 2:1). Unlike Enoch, however, Elijah retains his material body.<br /><br />Another tradition claims he has always been an angel, specifically the <em>ofan </em>Sandalfon, and he only briefly takes human form (Yalkut Reubeni; Pardes Rimmonim24:4; Emek ha-Melekh 175c). A cognate tradition holds that he has had multiple earthly incarnations, most famously as Phinehas, the zealous grandson of Aaron mentioned in the Book of Numbers, a figure who predates the historical Elijah by hundreds of years (PdRE 29).<br /><br />In subsequent Jewish tradition, Elijah fulfills three roles:<br /><br />1) <em>Angelus Interpres - </em>revealing heavenly secrets to mortals in this world (see earlier entry)<br />2) Psychopomp – the spirit who guides souls in the World to Come<br />3) Herald of the Messiah and <em>Malchut Shaddai</em>, the Kingdom of Heaven (see earlier entry)<br /><br />In countless Jewish stories Elijah appears wandering the earth on missions from God (sort of like the Blues Brothers), performing wonders, intervening on behalf of the poor, teaching, and giving divine insight to those who recognize him (B.B. 121b; B.M. 59b). He is present at every circumcision, and a chair is set aside for him, to welcome him (PdRE 29; SCh 585; SA 265:11; Zohar 13a). In the absence of the spirit of prophecy, it is a visitation of Elijah, along with the <em>Bat Kol</em> and the <em>Ruach Elohim</em>, which provides humanity of this eon with knowledge of the divine will (PdRE 1). The phenomenon of xenoglossia is sometimes understood to be an Elijah visitation.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30577778#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> He also appears to people in visions and dreams. Kabbalistic texts, such as the Zohar, cite him as the source for various mystical teachings (Zohar 1:2a).<br /><br />On High Elijah fulfills the essentially same function that Peter does in popular Christian imaginings, directing the souls of the dead to their proper destinations (Seder Olam 7; PdRE 15).<br />Based on the verse in Malachi mentioned above, Elijah is understood to be the herald of the Messiah, as well as the figure who will restore the power of prophecy to the people Israel. Therefore his presence is invoked at every Passover Seder and a cup of wine is set out for him in welcome him and in the hope that he will resolve all controversies in Jewish tradition<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30577778#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> (Haggadah). It is he who will sound the great shofar of salvation marking the start of the messianic era. One tradition states he will perform seven wondrous feats at that time: Resurrect Moses and the Generation of the Wilderness; bring up Korach from the earth; resurrect the Messiah ben Joseph; restore the Ark of the Covenant and the other vessels of the Temple; display God’s scepter; flatten the mountains in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, and resolve the many unanswered questions and unresolved disputes concerning Jewish tradition. His permanent return to earth is a recurring theme in Jewish prayer and liturgy (Eruv. 45a; M.K. 26a; PdRK 9:76; Gen. R. 21:5). </div><br /><div></div>To learn more, read the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050/sr=1-1/qid=1159997117/ref=sr_1_1/002-7116669-7231211?ie=UTF8&s=books</a><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30577778#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Spirit Possession in Judaism, p. 355.<br /><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30577778#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Like whether we should drink four or five cups as part of the Pesach ritual – the medium in the message.</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30577778.post-14871662219881893802012-03-19T14:19:00.010-05:002012-03-19T15:03:07.215-05:00Five Angry Angels - Moses, the Golden Calf, and Zombie Angels<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzZEU52zZwjrWbTX2N6EZoD2HNKOWlf3KcK8-6SwdiDx2Re3EtHB2H5HnBnpMZr6mfiZ7s2ormAT5_vO3JCZ5EfQfOtVs2VAD7AF8_e4W8eSRseuq96_34QJOyyg52xRoKdB0/s1600/hells_angels_0731.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzZEU52zZwjrWbTX2N6EZoD2HNKOWlf3KcK8-6SwdiDx2Re3EtHB2H5HnBnpMZr6mfiZ7s2ormAT5_vO3JCZ5EfQfOtVs2VAD7AF8_e4W8eSRseuq96_34QJOyyg52xRoKdB0/s320/hells_angels_0731.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721699906917624002" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: normal; ">Many people are familiar with the episode in Ex. 32:11-13 where God wants to wipe out Israel in response to the </span><i>egel zahav, </i>the golden calf incident. Moses, according to the biblical version, talks God down and persuades the Holy One not to wipe out the people and make him, Moses, the new Abraham. <div><br /></div><div>Less may be aware of the "zombie-fighting" Moses who appears in various <i>midrashim</i>. In these re-tellings, Moses again puts himself on the line for Israel, But in a much more dramatic way. According to this tale (variants appear in Exodus Rabbah (41.7; 44:8), Tanhuma (Ki Tissa 20), PdRE 45, and Deut. Rabbah (3.11),<span style="font-size: 100%; "> God unleashes five "destroying angels" (</span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">Af </i><span style="font-size: 100%; ">[or</span><i style="font-size: 100%; "> Haron-Af</i><span style="font-size: 100%; ">]</span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">, Ketzaf, Mashchit </i><span style="font-size: 100%; ">[the three names are derived from Ps. 78], </span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">Chaimah </i><span style="font-size: 100%; ">[Deut. 9.19]</span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">,</i><span style="font-size: 100%; "> and </span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">Hashmed</i><span style="font-size: 100%; "> [alt. </span><i style="font-size: 100%; ">M'lachah</i><span style="font-size: 100%; ">) </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">against the people. Moses uses his lifeline to the <i>amudei ha-olam</i>, the meritorious ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the three names in invokes in verse 13) to neutralize three of the angels with their powers of love, but Moses is left to dispatch the other two himself. Being a prayer-warrior, the son of Amram slays them with his sincere <i>bakasha </i>(supplication).</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; ">One of the intriguing features of this story is how God's anger is understood to become personified (or angelified, to be more specific), reflecting the rising medieval belief that God interacts with the world less directly and more through intermediaries. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; ">It's also interesting how differently each source treats the role of the ancestral helpers. In several versions, the mere mention of the names deflect God's irritable messengers, but in one version, Abe, Izzy, and Jake actually rise from the grave, like a righteous zombie army! Then, just to round out the story, Moses buried the two ?corpses? of the angels he personally defeats and seals them in their graves using God's name (PdRE). Still, these zombie angels are a continuing threat to Israel, trying to rise up from their dual graves whenever the people sin. So to ensure they stay put, Moses is in turn buried opposite them (at Peor, as described in the Torah, Deut. 34.6) as a kind of spirit sentinel, keeping watch over Israel even in death. This is why it is called <i>Beit Peor </i>("House of Peor," but literally, "two mouths" - get it?)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Here again we see angels used to created a mythologized theology - that the <i>zechut avot, </i>the merit of our ancestors, protects us and graciously shields us from divine wrath, even if we deserve it. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 100%; ">To learn more, read my <i>Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism. </i></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><center>
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</div>Geoffrey Dennishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730822805332856423noreply@blogger.com0