The Worship of Prophet Elijah in Beit She'an, Israel

ARAM, 20 (2008) 43-57. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.20.0.2033119Y. BILU 43

DREAMERS IN PARADISE: THE WORSHIP OF PROPHET ELIJAH IN BEIT SHE’AN, ISRAEL

Dr. YORAM BILU (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

INTRODUCTION

In recent years Israel has witnessed a proliferation of holy sites and cultic practices related to saint worship. Old-time saints’ sanctuaries are glowing with renewed popularity; new ones are being added to the native “sacred ge- ography,” and the list of contemporary charismatic rabbis acknowledged as tsaddiqim (holy men) is growing.1 While this revival appears too widespread to be the monopoly of one particular group, Jews from Morocco have emerged as a major force behind it, impregnating the cult of the saints in contemporary Israel with a distinctive Maghrebi flavour.2 The case I am presenting here may be viewed as part of this renaissance of Jewish Moroccan saint worship in Is- rael, even though the mythical space it consecrates and the figure it glorifies are not directly related to Jewish Maghrebi hagiography. According to a Talmudic legend the entrance to the Garden of Eden in its terrestrial form is located in the town of Beit She'an in the central Jordan Val- ley.3 In 1979 a man of Jewish Moroccan background in his late 30s named Yaish, a leader of a cleaning team in the local municipality, announced that he had discovered the Gate of Paradise in the backyard of his house. Elijah the Prophet, the protagonist of Yaish’s visitational dreams that precipitated the discovery,4 was declared the saintly patron of the site. The hillula (annual cel- ebration) for Elijah was conducted in the site in the beginning of the Jewish

1 Bilu, Y., “The Sanctification of Space in Israel: Civil Religion and Folk-Judaism,” in Rebhun U., and Waxman, Ch.I. (eds.), Jews in Israel, (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 371-393; Gonen, R. (ed.), To The Tomb of the Righteous: Pilgrimage in Contemporary Israel (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1998). 2 Ben-Ami, I., Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco (Hebrew), Folklore Research Center Studies 8 (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1984). 3 “With regard to Gan Eden, Reish Lakish said: if it is in Eretz Israel, Beis Shean is its entrance” (Talmud Bavli. Tractate Eruvin 19a, New York: Mesorah Publications, ltd, 1990). 4 On visitational dreams in Maghrebi culture see: Bilu, Y., and Abramovitch, H., “In Search of the Saddiq: Visitational Dreams Among Moroccan Jews in Israel,” Psychiatry 48, (1985), 83- 92. Crapanzano, V., “Saints, Jnun, and Dreams: an Essay in Moroccan Ethnopsychology,” Psy- chiatry 38, (1975), 145-159. Kilborne, B., “Moroccan Dream Interpretation and Culturally Con- stituted Defense Mechanisms,” Ethos 9, (1981), 294-312.

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month of Elul, near the small synagogue named after Elijah, which was erected over the presumed entrance. Throughout the first half of the 1980s, when I was doing fieldwork in Beit She’an, the Gate of Paradise was function- ing as a modest but regularly frequented shrine. It enjoyed a constant flow of female supplicants, particularly from the local neighborhood. The site became a healing shrine for many of the visitors to the neighboring Health-Fund Clinic, supplementing the medical interventions. All this thriving activity came to an end in the late 1990s when the site ceased to exist and its builder sold his house and moved to another town. I would like to situate this case study in a wider context by discussing the ways in which personal experience and cultural symbol, private dream and ca- nonical text, biography and community are mediated through the cultural idioms of site and saint. To account for the initial success of the shrine, the evo- lution of Yaish’s initiative from a private dream to a public resource has to be elucidated. A special emphasis will be put on the figure of Elijah, the patron- saint of the site, as articulated in the dream reports of Yaish and others in the local community. Given that many sacred sites in the contested territory of saint worship have a bounded life cycle, I would also like to shed light on the two-decade life span of the shrine and the dynamics of its eventual demise. The post-mortem examination of the vanished shrine has unexpectedly showed that it had inter- esting reverberations in Beit She’an which could be viewed as a type of “afterlife.” As we shall see, this afterlife too was intimately associated with the miraculous figure of Prophet Elijah.

THE ROAD TO PARADISE AND THE BONDING WITH ELIJAH: YAISH’S LIFE STORY

In accounting for the welcoming reverberations that Yaish’s revelation stirred in the local community, we should note again that the vision that inspired him was not an idiosyncratic fantasy. The cultural representations he and other “saint impresarios”5 have employed were personal symbols with Janus-faced typification, at once mental and collective, private and public, internal and external.6 The associations between the Garden of Eden and Beit

5 Brown, P., The Cult of the Saints (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981); Bilu, Y. “Jewish Moroccan ‘Saint Impresarios' in Israel: A Stage-Developmental Perspective”, Psy- choanalytic Study of Society 15, (1990), 247-269. 6 On the articulation of psychological experiences through cultural idioms see: Obeyesekere, G. Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (Chicago and Lon- don: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Obeyesekere, G., The Work of Culture (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1990). Spiro, M.E., “Collective Representations and Mental Represen- tations in Religious Symbol Systems,” in Kilborne, B., and. Langness, L.L. (eds.), Culture and

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She'an were not born in Yaish's mind as many local inhabitants were familiar with the talmudic tradition connecting Paradise to their town. Prophet Elijah figures highly in Jewish legend, mysticism and folklore as an immortal prophet, “the angel of the covenant”, teacher of esoteric knowledge, and divine emissary sent to earth to combat social injustice. His special vigilance as the emblematic protector and helper of the innocent and the needy has given him a privileged place in the Jewish Moroccan pantheon of saints. In fact, Gilui Eliahu (“The revelation of Elijah), studying Torah with Elijah, was a common claim for saintly stature in the Maghreb.7 More specifically, Elijah has been also intimately associated with Paradise, having ascended there alive.8 As the precursor of the Messiah, who is ensconced in Paradise until the time of redemption, Elijah was presented in Jewish sources as one of the Ce- lestial Garden’s most prominent inhabitants.9 Lastly, there might be a geographical connection between Elijah and Beit-She’an as Gilead, the native territory of the biblical prophet, is located east of the town, in the mountainous plateau just across the Jordan River. Still, it was Yaish alone who appropriated this tradition by claiming that the Gate of Paradise and prophet Elijah were located in his own backyard. We must account for Yaish's singular undertaking by asking what individual experiences had fashioned his internal schemas of Paradise and Elijah into a cognitively salient, life transforming motivational system.10 Hence, before discussing the acceptance of his vision in the community I will portray Yaish’s personal journey to the Garden of Eden, dwelling on those life events and experiences that supposedly endowed his personal notion of Paradise and Elijah with rich subjective meanings. Yaish was born in Oulad Mansour, a village in southern Morocco where most of the Jewish inhabitants found their living in agriculture and animal hus- bandry.11 Yaish's mother boasted a line of pious ancestry, and related to her children many stories of her grandfather and father’s miraculous feats. In contrast, Yaish’s father, a plain, hard-working man, came from a plebeian background, and in terms of learning and spirituality was a far cry from his mater- nal forefathers. The awareness of this gap might have left Yaish in an ambigu-

Human Nature, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 161-184. Stromberg, P., “The Impression Point: Synthesis of Symbol and Self.” Ethos 13, (1985), 56-64. 7 Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco, 23-24. 8 See II Kings, 2, 11. 9 Wiener, A., The Prophet Elijah in the Development of Judaism (London, 1978). 10 Spiro, “Collective and Mental Representations;” Strauss, C., and Quinn, N., A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 11 The agricultural nature of Jewish Oulad Mansour was so exceptional that Pierre Flammand, who studied the Jewish communities of southern Morocco in the 1950s, depicted it “un accident de l’economie juive. ” Flammand, P., Diaspora en Terre D’Islam: Les Communautes Israelites du sud-Marocain (Casablanca: Presses des Imprimeries Reunies, 1959), 84.

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ous state of “distant proximity” vis-à-vis the family blessing.12 Is it far-fetched to add to the motivational bases underlying his grandiose initiative an enduring wish to affirm his share in his forefathers’ blessing? It might be argued that as a personal symbol Prophet Elijah was molded by Yaish in the cast of these family tsaddiqim. Yaish viewed his childhood with nostalgic affection, portraying life in Oulad Mansour as idyllic. In his recollections, the community enjoyed abun- dant, unspoiled natural resources, harmonious interpersonal relations, and special spiritual ambiance. This happy and secure childhood was shattered upon immigration to Israel, when Yaish was 12 years old. The harsh living condi- tions in Beit She’an, coupled with the negligent atmosphere in the local school, led Yaish to abandon permanently the path of learning after just one year in the new country. To this day he laments his truancy and seeks actively to undo it by maintaining a life style of piety and learning. Given Yaish’s ide- alized depiction of his native community, his claim to have discovered the entrance to The Garden of Eden could be interpreted as a fantasy to recreate the lost paradise of his childhood in his house with Elijah as the family tsaddiq, a surrogate for his pious forefathers. It appears that by employing a shared tradition or “public myth,” Yaish was able to act out a childhood fantasy or “private myth” and become a cultural broker, providing his fellow believers with the combined healing resources of Paradise and Elijah. After dropping out of school, Yaish began to work in various manual jobs in the local municipality. On the eve of the revelation, he was already married with four children. His initiation dreams were triggered by an acute psychological distress. Introverted and ill-at-ease in dense social situations, he suf- fered from severe anxiety attacks during synagogue prayers. Following his initiation dreams, the problem was assuaged. Following the revelation, Yaish was praying dutifully in the relaxed atmosphere of the tiny synagogue he founded at home, enjoying the spiritual guidance of Prophet Elijah and other tsaddiqim. To go public and impact the community at large, Yaish’s revelation had to be transformed into an easily communicable text. With the help of learned neighbors, he wrote down his initiation dreams in a text titled “Announcement to the Public,” which was circulated in Beit She’an and environs. The text is presented here verbatim followed by a short exegesis.

12 On the mysterious power, or baraka, of the saints in Moroccan Islam see Rabinow, P., Symbolic Domination: Cultural Forms and Historical Change in Morocco (Chicago and Lon- don: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), 19-30; Westermarck, E. Ritual and Belief in Mo- rocco (London: Macmillan, 1926), 35-126. The Jews in Morocco designated this power zekhut avot (ancestral virtue), see Ben-Ami, Saint Veneration. Stillman, N.A., “Saddiq and Marabout in Morocco,” in Ben-Ami, I., (ed.), The Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage Studies, (Jerusa- lem: Magnes Press, 1982), 485-500

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I, O'hana Yaish who lives in Beit She’an, Neighborhood D, 210/2, have been privileged by the Lord to see wonders. In my first dream a tsaddiq revealed himself to me and told me to dig in the yard behind my house. I started digging and suddenly a gate was disclosed to me. I entered through the gate, and marvelous things were revealed to my eyes. I saw a pool with fresh water and a lot of plants around it. I kept on going and saw a splendid, bountiful garden, and rabbis walking around the garden, enjoying the brightness of the place. One of the rabbis turned to me and told me that I must take good care of the place because it is holy. He also told me to inform anyone who would like to come to the place that first he must cleanse himself. I didn't pay attention to the dream even though it came back every day on that week. But then, on the second week, I was bothered again (by another dream). I dreamed that I was standing between two cypress trees in the yard of my house and I heard a voice calling to me in these words: Listen, listen, listen. Three times the voice was heard. I stood there trembling from head to toe, and the voice continued, telling me that the place were I stood was holy and I must maintain its holiness. And again on the third week, on Sabbath eve, I went to the synagogue to pray. After the prayer I came back home, did the Kiddush (Sabbath sanctification ritual), and sat down to eat. After dinner I went out to the yard, and suddenly a gate was revealed to me in the same place, and I saw light burning in the entrance. And again I heard the same voice calling me in the same words: Listen, listen, listen. And this time it was a reality, not a dream. And I was told that this was the gate of Paradise. And I was asked to build an iron gate and to clean the place, and to put it in order. I was also asked to announce in all the synagogues and to inform the public at large that those who would like to fre- quent the place must first cut their fingernails and purify themselves and re- pent. Then my wife had a dream in which I came to her and told her that we have to prepare a se’udah (festive meal) and call it after Elijah the Prophet.

The events depicted in the announcement span three weeks in the month of Elul during which Yaish was gradually and reluctantly coming to the recogni- tion that the Gate of Paradise was located in his backyard. His initial disregard of the recurring nightly messages and his ignorance of the identity of saint and site convey his innocence. Aside from the visual images of the unearthed site that resonate with Jewish folk depictions of the Garden of Eden – bountiful, oasis-like location inhabited by sages – the identity of the site is implied by expressions such as “a wonderful garden” and “that I must take good care of the place” (cf. Genesis 2, 16).13 13 For traditional images of Paradise see: Eisenstein, Y. D., Otsar midrashim A (Bnei-Brak: Mishor, 1990, in Hebrew), 84.

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The voice of the announcement is double-edged. On the one hand, in accord with the theme of innocence, Yaish presents himself as a receptacle for external messages from authoritative beings. On the other hand, the narrative is fraught with active imagery – “I started digging,” “I entered,” “I kept on going” – which bespeaks of the personal nature of the revelation and anticipates the industrious phase of site building. Following the first dream, Yaish is ex- posed to vocal messages which repeatedly emphasize the holiness of the site. The messages seem to be informed by prototypical biblical revelations, from Jacob's dream in Bethel, through Moses' encounter with God through the thorn-bush, to Samuel's initiation at Shilo. The latter episodes may have been encoded in the phonetic similarity between tishma, tishma, tishma (Hebrew: “listen, listen, listen”) and the Hebrew names of Moses and Samuel uttered by God – Moshe, Moshe (Exodus 3, 4) and Shmuel, Shmuel, Shmuel (I Samuel 2, 10) respectively. Moreover, the dream message received by Yaish – … “telling me that the place where I stand is holy” – is almost identical with the biblical injunction to Moses in the burning bush scene – “the place where you stand is holy ground” (Exodus 3, 5). The revelatory sequence reaches its apex at the end of the third week, when the identity of the place is directly conveyed to Yaish. The timing of the revelation – Sabbath eve at the end of the month of Elul, the month of penitence that leads to the High Holidays – and the activities preceding it – evening prayer in the synagogue, the Kiddush ritual, and the Sabbath meal – all con- verge to produce the apposite framework for the revelation – an intersection of sacred time, sacred space and appropriate ritual activities. To fully understand Yaish’s move from carelessness (“I didn’t pay attention to the dream”) to receptivity, we have to juxtapose the majestic nocturnal drama of the revelation to another, real life drama that tormented Yaish during exactly the same period. Under persistent family pressures initiated by his wife, Îana, Yaish reluctantly gave his consent to leave Beit She’an for the town of Yavneh, where Îana’s siblings were living. In the morning of the very Friday that constituted the climax of the revelation Yaish had completed the prepara- tions for departure planning to leave Beit She’an permanently on the coming Sunday. But the sudden apparition of Elijah and the discovery of the Gate of Paradise forestalled the decision and bound the family to their home–turned- shrine. It seems likely that the powerful convergence of the two plots, with its obvious psychological gain for Yaish, was conducive to his own readiness to accept the revelation as a reliable source of authority and guidance.14

14 It is noteworthy that the same precipitating factor – a firm decision to leave one’s home- town for a more central place forestalled by a saintly apparition – was found in the reports of most saint agents I studied in the 1980s. For the significance of this recurring theme for the development towns in which the new sites were built see: Bilu, Y., The Saints’ Impresarios (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 2005, in Hebrew).

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The laconic and putatively marginal se'udah dream, which seals the revelatory sequence, bears special significance to the acceptability of the announcement. It provides the site with its patron-saint, Prophet Elijah, situating it within the cultural domain of the folk-veneration of saints. As noted, the apparition of Elijah is highly compatible with his established position in Jewish folk traditions as a divine messenger and conveyer of esoteric knowledge. Against the common idiom of gilui Eliyahu (“The Revelation of Elijah”), the identity of the site’s patron may have added credibility to Yaish’s initiatory dreams augmenting the authority of his announcement. Note that it is Îana, Yaish's wife, who receives the nightly message regarding Elijah, but Yaish is the dream protagonist disclosing to Îana the identity of the new site's saint.

FROM ONEIROBIOGRAPHY TO ONEIROCOMMUNITY

The enthusiastic responses to the announcement in the local community were a lucid testimony to the impact of Yaish's revelatory dreams on the collective level. What had started as a representation of experience of the world has become a cultural thing in the world.15 But the role of dreams in this context went beyond the nocturnal revelation. First, Yaish’s life, in critical mo- ments before and after the building of the shrine, was punctuated by dream- based messages from sainted figures. Second, the approbation of his initiative by the community was registered in a gush of dream apparitions related to site and saint. Thus, two analytic avenues could be discerned in this dream-satu- rated soil. One was intra-psychic, reflecting the fantasy life of the site builder; while the other was interpersonal and intersubjective, reflecting the various imprints and reverberations of Yaish’s announcement on his audience.16 I coined the terms oneirobiography and oneirocommunity to refer to this two- tier process in which a dream-based vision, after infusing one's life with sur- plus meaning, is projected on the community to produce an elaborate dream dialogue among its members.17 Note that the bifurcation focusing on the intra- psychic versus interpersonal aspects of dreams is schematic. As the following dream reports show, each of the dreams embedded in the communicative net- work of the community also conveyed personal concerns reflecting the individual characterization of the particular dreamer. At the same time, Yaish’s fantasy life was grounded in collectively shared, cultural idioms.

15 Cf. Urban, G., Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 241-258. 16 Cf. Fabian, J. “Dreams and Charisma, ‘Theories of Dreams’ in the Jamaa Movement (Congo),” Anthropos 61, (1966), 544-560; Lincoln, J.S, The Dream in Primitive Societies (Balti- more: Williams and Wilkins, 1935). 17 Bilu, Y. “Oneirobiography and Oneirocommunity in Saint Worship in Israel: A Two-Tier Model for Dream-Inspired Religious Revivals,” Dreaming 10, (2000), 85-101.

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The following three dreams, out of 150 I managed to collect in Beit She'an in the early 1980s, illustrate how individual dreamers employed the cultural idioms of Elijah and Paradise to articulate personal wishes and concerns, thus molding the cultural symbols of saint and site against the anvil of their personal experiences. The first dreamer, Me}ir, belonged to the inner circle of activists that emerged around the Gate of Paradise. His dream was a direct response to Yaish’s initiation dream. I am walking near Kittan (a local textile factory) juncture, on the old road to Beit-She'an. There was some sort of a hut, and I saw someone there, looking like a religious kibbutz member, with kova tembel (a standard, inexpensive hat, very popular in Israel’s formative years) on his head. He was sitting there, and I saw myself as if I was going to work (in Kittan). He says to me: “Sha- lom Me}ir, how are you?” and I reply: “Shalom, what are you doing here?” And he points at this house (Yaish's), toward the wadi (creek), indicating that they are working there with compressors, digging some sort of a stream. I ask him why, and he says to me: “Look, the stream as it exists today, the rain al- ways blocks it. The passage they dig, it's in the direction of this (Yaish's) house.” And I ask him: “What happened?” And he says: “Look, here it al- ways overflows; that is, it disrupts the traffic and all this. So we would like to dig a stream here.” And he shows me how they are working. Suddenly I meet another person, and he also asks me how I am. And the place is full of trees; really, trees all over, and people are coming out of the place, old-timers, like Yemenite Jews. And a young man was standing there, like I told you before, a kibbutz member with kova tembel. And I ask him: “Who are these people?” And he replies: “This is an old moshav ( a semi- cooperative village), and in the morning every one is going to his work.” And I see them, one with a basket, another one with a bicycle, etc. I asked him: Can I see this?” And he says: “Sure.” I entered that place and, instead of see- ing some sort of a moshav, I saw something like his (Yaish's) house. And I see something like a hospital, a Sick-Fund clinic, nurses with white gowns, all this. And I see a man sitting there, with three bottles of wine before him, and inside the bottles there are myrtles. I ask him: “Tell me, are these myrtles? I would like to ask you a question.” And this is what I asked him: “Why isn't every plant successful?” He replied: “Look, this is a secret I can't reveal.” And I see the people, like sick people, sitting there, as in a Sick-fund clinic. And he tells them to take some ‘arak (anis-flavored alcoholic beverage) from the bottles, as if they threw away (the pills)…As if they took some pills or something, and now they don't take these pills anymore. And he gives them some ‘arak to drink, this is their medicine. And I ask them: “Well, how do you feel?” And they say: “All the pain that we had – with the stuff he has given us, it's O.K., it's gone.

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And I go on and I see a third man, and I ask him: “What do you plant here?” And he says, “Look mister, here, near the entrance to Beit-She'an, we already planted something one year ago, but the inhabitants spoiled what we had planted. Then I say: “You should blame no one. You informed us neither by letters nor through the Ministry of Religion or the local municipality.” Then he says: “You'll receive a letter and then you'll know.” That's what he said to me. The dream elucidates the motivational basis of Me}ir's immediate attraction to the site. Unlike Yaish's initiation dreams which took place in a contextual vacuum, Me}ir's report is replete with places and characters from the local scene: Kittan Juncture (named after the biggest industrial plant in town, where Me}ir was working), a religious kibbutz member and a veteran moshav of Yemenite Jews (compatible with the fact that the valley of Beit-She'an is dotted with religious kibbutzim and moshavim), the Sick-Fund clinic, and Yaish's home. The diversion of the stream in the direction of Yaish's place alludes to the identity of the site, since “A river issues from Eden to water the garden” (Genesis 2, 10). The flow of water will ensure the growth of the plant which stands for the shrine. The road construction that will enable a fluent, undisturbed locomotion to the site may represent the dreamer’s wish to see the popularity of the shrine growing, and perhaps also to unearth the gate (of Paradise) – the “passage” in the dream.18 The sequence of characters and places in the dream may indicate that for Me}ir the road to the Garden of Eden which ends in Beit- Se'an, a development town mainly populated by North African Jews, starts in a religious kibbutz (whose inhabitants are Ashkenazim, of European background) and goes through a Yemenite moshav. This is a clue to Me}ir's integrative vision of the site, which resurfaced in other dreams that he had. The transition in the dream from the domestic shrine to the Sick-Fund clinic is based on a functional similarity, healing, enhanced by the fact that Yaish’s house is adjacent to the neighborhood Sick-Fund clinic. This transition, which occurred in many other dreams (see the following example), not only highlights the therapeutic func- tions of the site, but also emphasizes the superiority of the traditional resource over the modern clinic. The ‘arak and the myrtles, traditional symbols of well being, supplant the modern medication as the therapy of choice. The generally optimistic mood of the dream is marred by uncertainty epito- mized by the question, “why isn’t every plant successful?” The answer is given only at the end of the dream. The plant, standing for the site, was put in the ground near the entrance to the town (where Yaish's house is actually located) already a year ago, but “the inhabitants spoiled what we had planted” (by disregarding it?) Me}ir's yearning in the dream for a reassuring sign regarding the success of the plant was congruent with his relentless attempts in

18 Indeed, Me}ir sought to promote a large-scale archaeological dig in the site.

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daily reality to legitimize the revelation by soliciting approval from celebrated rabbinical figures outside Beit-She'an. The fact that in the dream the ministry of religious affairs and the local municipality were not notified about the site might betray Me}ir's concern over their reluctance to acknowledge the holiness of the place. The promised letter at the end of the dream probably alludes to the Announcement to the Public. Against the backdrop of the dream as a whole, it may be assumed that the three figures that guide Me}ir to the site represent the shrine's patron-saint, Elijah the Prophet, known in Jewish folk-traditions for his unpredictable appearances under a wide range of guises. The fact that all three encounters involve verbal interaction is significant, given the tradition that meetings in which Elijah addresses the interlocutor with a blessing or a short conversation are particularly well-regarded.19 To conclude, Me}ir's vision situates the revelatory experiences of Yaish at the epicenter of the community endowing them with meanings derived from the local scene in Beit She’an. The dream lucidly conveys the immense impor- tance that Me}ir ascribed to the site as a place for integration and healing as well as his strong ambitions to play a central role in its development. The second dreamer, Zo'arah, a middle-aged woman, represents an ordinary devotee whose episodic involvement with the shrine rested on a strong belief in its healing powers. The following dream indicates the personal source of this belief. We have a neighbour here who is a real criminal. And he made up his mind to rob me of this bracelet. So I took it off and put on a long sweater to cover my arms. All this happened in reality, not in a dream. I dreamed that I was going to the Sick-Fund clinic. You know, the place (Yaish's) is near the clinic. I was sick. I told my husband that I am going to see the doctor. On my way (to the clinic) this rascal seized my hand and wouldn't let me go. All this happened on Friday. I beseeched him: “Let me visit the doctor. What do you want from me?” But he refused to let me go. And I told him: “People are already going to the synagogue and I haven't lighted (the candles) yet, haven't seen the doctor, nothing. In only one hour, two hours, the Sabbath is coming, please let me go.” But he refused to release me. People around us tried to convince him, and he wouldn't agree. I took a bucket of water and threw it in his face, I struck him on his face, then he let me go. I entered the Sick-Fund clinic agitated, shivering in rage. An Arab stood up and said to me: “My daughter, what do you need the doctor for (in this place), full of noise and rage? Come, I’ll show you the Lord's doctor, a real doctor, a doctor who is the Great God himself.” I asked him: “Where is this place?” He said to me: “Here, just go past the Sick-Fund clinic, you'll find it, without waiting in line, without running around.”

19 Rosenberg, Y., The Book of Prophet Elijah, (New York, 1985, in Hebrew).

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For Zo'arah this health-related dream served as an initiation to the Gate of Paradise. She maintained that on the following day, when she attended the Sick-Fund clinic, she heard for the first time that “a tsaddiq named Elijah was discovered” in the neighbouring house. Strongly impressed by the prophetic quality of her dream, she hastened to the new site and lighted candles for Elijah there. As in Me}ir's dream, the narrative is informed by the physical proximity of the shrine to the Sick-Fund clinic, which creates a convenient framework for comparison and confrontation. The ascendance of the healing shrine is accen- tuated by contrasting it with the dangers and frustrations that befalls the dreamer on her way to the clinic. As Zo'arah makes clear in the preamble, the harassment scene was based on an idiosyncratic association – the dreamer's real-life apprehension of her criminal neighbour. But the fact that this incident unfolds on her way to the doctor may be associated with her dissatisfaction with the clinic, projectively conveyed toward the end of the dream. The dreamer's emotional state after she got rid of her chaser – “I entered the Sick- Fund clinic agitated, shivering in rage” – may be associated with the hectic atmosphere in the overcrowded and understaffed public clinic. The fact that the enforced arrest on the way to the clinic prevented Zo'arah from lighting the Sabbath candles may be viewed as the first allusion to the forthcoming healing alternative. Lighting candles – delineating the passage from the secular weekdays to the holy Sabbath – is also a major ritual activity in saints' sanctuaries. This activity indeed sealed Zo'arah's first visit to the Gate of Paradise on the following day. In the Jewish Moroccan dream vocabulary, where contrast is a major principle of interpretation, an Arab may stand for a tsaddiq.20 Elijah himself, in one of his many guises, appeared as an Arab in the Talmud.21 In this dream Prophet Elijah seems to appear under two guises, since “the Lord's doctor” is probably also the patron-saint of the site. The assertion that the visit to the shrine can be concluded “without waiting in line, without running around,” is another indication to the superiority of the traditional mode of healing. Indeed, Zo'arah asserted this superiority, contending that the visit to the shrine brought relief to her ailing feet. Since then she frequented the Gate of Paradise in times of need and participated regularly in the hillulah for Elijah. The last dreamer, Ra’Ìel, was the most productive dreamer in the community. Her profound involvement with the Gate of Paradise was reflected in many dreams in which the site was portrayed as warm, hospitable, and nurturing – a panacea for all life problems. While food exchange between the tsaddiq and the dreamer is a common theme in visitational dreams,22 the com-

20 Bilu and Abramovitch, “In Search.” 21 Talmud Bavli, Tractate Berakoth, 6b. 22 Bilu and Abramovitch, “In Search.”

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pelling way in which it resurfaced in Ra’Ìel's dreams indicated that in her case it was charged with a strong personal motivation. One possible source for this motivation, associated with early loss, is manifest in the following dream. I dreamed that I go to Yaish's house and I stand before the gate there. I knock on the door and a tiny old man with a hat comes out. I ask him: ‘Where is Yaish?' He says: ‘Yaish isn't here, I replace him, I take care of the house. What do you want?' I say: ‘I came because I don't feel well, I have problems with my pregnancy, give me some ‘arak from the place.' Then he asks me: ‘Did you take a (ritual) bath?' And I know that only tomorrow I should take the bath (indicating the regaining of purity after the menstrual period). I say: ‘No, only tomorrow I go.' He says: No! I don't agree, no one will enter this place without taking the ritual bath.' I say to him: ‘But Yaish, whenever I ask him, says that I don't have to take the bath if I am clean.' He says, waving his hand: ‘No, you are not allowed to enter! And Yaish should know that from this day on no woman would enter this place without taking the ritual bath first.' I said O.K. He didn't let me in. He stood with me at the entrance. Then he says: ‘Wait here, I'll bring you something.' He gave me a glass of ‘arak and an orange, and I went home. And my mother – I lost her when I was fourteen. And then I see her waiting for me at home. She says: ‘Where have you been? How come you've disap- peared. I have been waiting for you for so long.' I told her: ‘Mother, we have a place, what shall I say, in this house every wish is granted. She said: ‘Come on, take me there, to that place. I took her there. And I saw her standing, hold- ing a baby and feeding him with milk.

The dream is divided into two separate, though thematically related parts. Ra’@hel is coming to the place as a supplicant, with an actual life problem, related to her pregnancy. She meets the gatekeeper of the site – in all probabil- ity standing for Prphet Elijah – and asks him for a remedy, some ‘arak from the place. The refusal of Elijah to let her in might have been related to the religious concerns that engrossed Ra’@hel when she dreamed this dream. Fight- ing with herself and her husband to adopt a more religious life style, she found in “The Gate of Paradise” a major source of support in her struggle. Her concerns about her religious stance seems to be articulated through the idiom of limited access. As befitting a shrine designated the Gate of Paradise, Ra’@hel employs in her dreams images of smooth and easy access versus a difficult and limited one to convey feelings of self-efficacy and self-aggrandizement on the one hand, and self-depreciation and doubts on the other. Here she fails to gain entry into the shrine; but the sense of failure is softened first by attributing the responsibility to Yaish for not enforcing more strictly female purity laws in his abode, and then ameliorated by the ‘arak and orange she receives from Prophet Elijah. The act of oral nutricion or nurtuning indicates that despite

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Elijah's reproach she is entitled to enjoy his blessing. Moreover, the gift from the tsaddiq assures her that her difficult pregnancy, the reason for her visit to the site, will end well. In the second part of the dream Ra’Ìel meets with her late mother. Ra’Ìel deemed her mother's sudden death when she was fourteen the most painful loss in her life. The mother's complaint – “Where have you been…” – appears as a sheer projection of the dreamer's own sense of privation following the mother's death. The dynamic association between the reunion with the mother and the site is displayed in their joint visit to the place. The final scene openly reflects Ra’Ìel's strong wishes to be taken care of and nourished. It is hard to say whether the baby in the dream is Ra’Ìel herself, enjoying again her mother's milk and thus compensating for her painful disappearance, or her own baby, soon to be born (an indirect assurance that the pregnancy problems will be gone). But, in any case, it seems that for her the site is a “mother-surrogate,” endowing her with nourishment and protection. In her own words (in the dream): “…in this house every wish is granted.” Note the correspondence between the two sections of the dream. In either of them the dreamer meets with a parental figure who is providing and nurturing, and in either, the resources provided are meant to protect a newborn, before or after birth. The dream indicates the multidetermined way in which Ra’Ìel is using Prophet Elijah and the “Gate of Paradise.” While dealing with a current medical problem, part of a normal life routine, she is also coping with a past trauma. The three dreams presented above are far from representing the oneirocommunity that emerged in beit She'an in response to Yaish's initiation dreams; but they illustrate the highly personalized ways in which Prophet Elijah and his site were incorporated into the life-worlds of different dreamers. While Yaish’s authority was not based on charismatic leadership, his dreams served as “charismatic significants,”23 igniting the imagination of many in the community and drawing them to the domestic shrine he erected. The rich dream-based discourse that engulfed the community germinated in the common cultural heritage of saint worship and visitational dreams.

THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE

Nothing in the house that once hosted the Gate of Paradise is indicative today of its past glory. Shrine and builder have both vanished from the local scene. A fire that consumed Prophet Elijah's synagogue in 1997, constituted

23 Lanternari, V., “Dreams as Charismatic Significants: Their Bearing on the Rise of New Religious Movements,” Psychological Anthropology, ed. T. R. Williams (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 221-235.

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the coup de grace for the shrine that was already struggling throughout the 1990s, when feuds in the community of believers pushed Meir, Ra’Ìel and other activists out of the shrine. Suspecting arson, Yaish grew embittered and morose, and refused to restore his life project. Three years later he moved his family to town of Yavneh, thus completing the move that was forestalled 22 years ago. This time Prophet Elijah did not intervene to stop him. The life span of the Gate of Paradise was quite short then. Erected in 1979, it ceased to exist before the end of the Century. Yet Yaish’s initiative had a peculiar ramification in Beit She’an. Just two streets away from the defunct shrine, a vibrant healing activity is taking place in a new domestic site, the builder of which was no other than Ra’Ìel, one of Yaish’s most devoted fol- lowers. The strong bond between Yaish and Ra’Ìel was broken in the early 1990s, when Yaish started to suspect that Ra’Ìel was seeking to stake a claim in the shrine he erected. Banished from the place that was her second home, Ra’Ìel looked for another outlet for her growing sense of calling. Eventually she became a healer empowered by the tsaddiqim that frequented her dreams, establishing herself a special name in curing barren women. While Ra’Ìel is working under the aegis of several saints, Prophet Elijah, with whom she established an intimate liaison during the days of the Gate of Paradise, plays the cardinal role in her shrine. Prophet Elijah reappeared in Ra’Ìel’s dreams at a decisive moment in her life, when she was about to leave her apartment for a more spacious place. His nightly message was unequivocal: “My daughter, I came to warn you, don’t leave this house; the value of the house depends only on the soul of the person” (dweller). Ra’Ìel followed the message and re- mained in the house that later became a healing shrine. Note that the same pat- tern – a near-executed plan to leave the old house annulled by a saintly figure – constituted the trigger for the establishment of many new shrines in Israel, including the Gate of Paradise. In the same vein, Ra’Ìel’s willingness to re- verse her decision and stay in the old place stands in sharp contrast to Yaish’s uncontested move out of Beit She’an. Ra’Ìel maintains that Prophet Elijah is now dwelling in her house, two blocks away from his old abode. Following the tradition established by Yaish, she conducts the hillula for Elijah in one of the first days of the month of Elul. Even if the days of the Gate of Paradise have gone, its patron-saint, Prophet Elijah, did not disappear from the local scene but rather moved to another house in the same neighborhood in Beit She’an. Sacred geographies in various religious systems appear historically as dynamic and shifting. This was particularly true of the pre-modern Christian or- bit with its wandering saints, moving relics, and shifting sites.24 Appropria-

24 Brown, The Cult. Geary, P.J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). Sox, D., Relics and Shrines (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985).

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tions of saints and struggles over holy sites were known in Islamic Morocco too.25 Jewish saint worship in the Holy Land was also noted by displacements and transformations of traditions in bounded geographical areas.26 But the mi- cro-dynamics of these processes often escaped the historian’s gaze. The eth- nography of the vicissitudes of hierophany in Beit She’an provides us with a lucid illustration of the dynamic processes of continuity and change typical of the history of many holy places. Shrines may lose their popularity and disappear, but their underlying traditions may be carried on and unexpectedly resur- face in modified forms in other places and other times. The image of Prophet Elijah as a trickster, agile, itinerant, master of many guises, perfectly suits this flexible displacement.

25 Crapanzano, V., The Îamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1973).. Marcus, M.A. “The Saint has been Stolen: Sanctity and So- cial Change in a Tribe of Eastern Morocco,” American Ethnologist 12 (1985): 454-467. 26 Reiner, E., Pilgrims and Pilgrimage to Eretz Israel 1099-1517, Ph.D. dissertation (Jerusa- lem: The Hebrew University, 1988, in Hebrew), 295-305. Reiner, E., “Between Yehoshua and Jesus: From a Biblical Narrative to a Local Myth,” Zion 61, (1996, in Hebrew), 281-317.

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