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DYBBUKS and Jewish Women DYBBUKS and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore EMPTY PAGE 1/5 DYBBUKS and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore RACHEL ELIOR URIM PUBLICATIONS Jerusalem • New York Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore by Rachel Elior Translated from the Hebrew by Joel Linsider. Copyright © 2008 by Rachel Elior All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and articles. Originally published in Hebrew as the following: “Ha-dibbuk: bein ha-olam ha-nigleh la-olam ha-nistar: Kolot medaberim, olamot shotekim ve-kolot mushtakim .” In Derekh ha-ruah: sefer ha-yovel le-Eliezer Schweid . Edited by Yehoyada Amir, 499–536. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2005. “Kemo Sophia, Marcelle ve-Lizzie .” Kivunim hadashim 17 (2007): 144–163. Printed in Israel. First Edition. Layout design by Satya Levine. ISBN: 978-965-524-007-8 Urim Publications P.O. Box 52287, Jerusalem 91521 Israel Lambda Publishers Inc. 3709 13th Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11218 U.S.A. Tel: 718-972-5449 Fax: 718-972-6307, [email protected] www.UrimPublications.com This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved parents, courageous proponents of compassion, devotion and freedom: my father, Shmuel Palagee (1911–1981) and my mother, Leah Palagee (1912–2002). The book is further dedicated to the memory of my beloved friends who drew my attention to the lives of people who were living between two worlds in more than one way: Orna Zohar- Rottblit (1945–1998), Ariella Deem-Goldberg (1934–1985), Sari Foierstein (1945–1979) and Enid Soifer-McKenna (1943–2007). EMPTY PAGE 2/5 CONTENTS Preface 9 Note on Translations 11 I. “LIKE SOPHIA AND MARCELLE AND LIZZIE ” 13 II. SPEAKING VOICES , SILENCING WORLDS , SILENCED VOICES 45 a. Introduction 46 b. The Societal Background for the Phenomenon of the Dybbuk in the Traditional World of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 52 c. Contexts for the Dybbuk 65 d. The Dybbuk in the Public Arena 74 e. The Dybbuk and Witchcraft 81 f. Spirits in the Exorcism Ceremony 87 g. Kabbalistic Background 95 h. Exorcism and Unification: Between Expulsion of the Dybbuk and the Wedding Ceremony 102 i. Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk) – S. An-sky 111 Index 126 Empty page 3/5 Preface This book includes two essays. The opening essay, “Like Sophia and Marcelle and Lizzie,” discusses general issues pertaining to Jewish women in the traditional patriarchal society through various historical periods. The second essay, “Speaking Voices, Silencing Worlds, Silenced Voices,” elaborates on a particular topic, the dybbuk , which reflects a unique feminine response to the constraints of the dominant masculine order. “Speaking Voices, Silencing Worlds, Silenced Voices” rests on the premise that every socio-cultural-historical concept that is preserved in language and that recurs in a stereotypical literary, interpretive and textual construct entails numerous levels of meaning, implicitly and explicitly revealed and transmitted by diverse voices. In this inquiry into the meaning of the dybbuk, my aim is to introduce into the chorus of scholarly voices on the subject – voices on which this essay is based and to which it owes a debt of gratitude – some hitherto silenced voices and marginalized perspectives. These voices are brought to the fore in the context of a gender-based reading of the suppressed linguistic meanings of the terms analyzed here. Language, which embodies social values and preserves thought constructs and ways of life, allows for the examination from various perspectives of the relationship between the language preserved in literature and drama and the concrete or imaginative reality it reflects. DYBBUKS AND JEWISH WOMEN Professors Yoram Bilu and Gedaliah Nigal have done fundamental work on the dybbuk in Jewish culture, and their studies have been of great value in my work here. But the interpretive point of departure that I want to present differs from theirs, for it pertains to the gender-based perspective on the issue and to its social meaning as tied to the kabbalistic tradition. My thanks to my student, Dr. Rivka Devir-Goldberg, who assisted me in gathering the material discussed here and elucidating the early stages of the study in the mid-1990s. Many thanks to Joel Linsider for his expert translation of both essays from the original Hebrew into English, and to David Friedman, a devoted friend, who helped me to improve the style and content of the English version of old Hebrew texts presented in these essays. Heartfelt thanks to my dear friend, Leona Rosenberg, who helped me through her generosity to conclude the latter stages of this work. 10 Note on Translations In “Like Sophia and Marcelle and Lizzie,” Hebrew Bible quotations are from the old Jewish Publication Society (OJPS) translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917 [1958 printing].) Apocrypha and New Testament quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV), copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. In “Speaking Voices, Silencing Worlds, Silenced Voices,” unattributed translations of primary sources and Hebrew secondary sources are by the present translator. Hebrew Bible translations are from the new Jewish Publication Society version (NJPS), Tanakh, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999). Empty page 4/5 “Like Sophia and Marcelle and Lizzie” The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man. Josephus Flavius, Against Apion 2:24 IN AN INTERVIEW published about eight years ago, Israeli writer Dorit Rabinyan, born in 1972, incisively described the anguish of the women among whom she had grown up: “Like Sophia, Marcelle, and Lizzie, lest they remain in a position of limited possibilities, constrained initiative, and attenuated will.” 1 The question I want to consider is whether a position of limited possibilities, constrained initiative, and attenuated will were the lot of women only in particular communities or whether they were the fate of most women until the second half of the twentieth century. Let me say at the outset that I am inclined toward the latter premise, for the historical record shows that the lot of most women in most places was aptly 1 Interview, Yedi`ot Aronot , March 1999. DYBBUKS AND JEWISH WOMEN characterized by the comments of Creon, King of Thebes: “Slaves, bring them inside. The freedom of women must be constrained” (Sophocles, Antigone 578–580 2). Moreover, it seems to me that Tolstoy’s famous remark in the Introduction to Anna Karenina – “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” – applies to our subject. At all times and in all communities, happy women have resembled one another in that freedom of choice, a life of liberty, freedom of speech, and multiple possibilities were available to them to a greater or lesser degree, such that they were able to live their lives as they wished within the bounds of their communities. On the other hand, those who suffered coercion, rejection, discrimination, inferiority, stigmatization, silence and enslavement were unhappy in all places and at all times. The possibility of choice and a degree of freedom were available to men and women to different degrees in various places by virtue of love of parents, familial brotherhood, marital love, or love of children. The select, fortunate few might also attain a degree of freedom by force of their intellect or through customary practices that enabled the subjugated to free themselves from the oppressive social order. For the most part, however, it was a patriarchal social order in which all institutions, from family to government, were led by men. Women were prevented from raising their voices and participating in any communal arena involving intellect, influence, teaching, justice, law, liberty, or authority. From time to time, individual women could dare to shape their lives as they chose. These fortunate few benefited from love, wisdom, knowledge, justice, tolerance, cooperation, freedom, or equality within the bounds of happy families. But unfortunate women in all communities suffered lives of coercion and misery, of limited possibilities, constrained initiative, 2 English based on the Hebrew translation by Aaron Shabtai (Tel Aviv: Schocken 1990), 56. 14 RACHEL ELIOR silenced voices and attenuated free will. The men of their families and their communities subjected them to constraints, coercion, discrimination, marginalization, ignorance, silence and rejection; they did so by force of ancient laws, ancestral customs, changing rules, governmental decrees, and powerful myths that traced the lowly state of women to the beginning of time. The regnant patriarchal worldview regarding male-female power relationships is concisely summed up in the words of Josephus Flavius, the first-century C.E. Jewish historian. Josephus, commander of the Jewish fortress of Yodfat (Jotapata) during the war against the Romans, betrayed his command and went over to the Roman side, later living in Rome under the shelter of the imperial family and writing there in an effort to explain the Torah and the Jewish point of view to the Gentiles. The worldview he describes grounds its explicit authority and implicit utility in a divine source that cannot be disputed and that precludes its implicit human purposes: The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man.
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