Spirit Possession In Judaism

Download or read book Spirit Possession in Judaism written by Matt Goldish and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extraordinary collection of essays is the first to approach the phenomenon of spirit possession among Jews from a multidisciplinary perspective. What beliefs have Jews held about spirit possession? Have Jewish people believed themselves to be possessed by spirits? If so, what sorts of spirits were they? Have Jews' conceptions of possession been the same as those of their Christian and Muslim neighbors? These are some of the questions addressed in these thirteen essays, which together explore spirit possession in a wide range of temporal and geographic contexts. The phenomena known as spirit possession are both very widespread and very difficult to explain. The late Raphael Patai initiated study of spirit possession as found in the Jewish world in the post-Talmudic period by taking a folkloric and anthropological approach to the subject. Other scholars have opened up new avenues of inquiry through discussions of the topic in connection with Jewish mystical and magical traditions. The essays in this collection expand the variety of approaches to the subject, addressing Jewish possession phenomena from the points of view of religion, mysticism, literature, anthropology, psychology, history, and folklore. Scholarly views and popular traditions, benevolent spirits and malevolent shades, exorcism, social control, messianic implications, madness, literary structure, and a host of other topics are brought into the discussion of spirit possession in Jewish culture. This juxtaposition of approaches among the essays in this volume, some of which analyze the same texts in different ways, creates a broad foundation on which to contemplate the meaning of spirit possession.

Download or read book Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible written by Reed Carlson and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spirit possession is more commonly associated with late Second Temple Jewish literature and the New Testament than it is with the Hebrew Bible. In Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible, however, Reed Carlson argues that possession is also depicted in this earlier literature, though rarely according to the typical western paradigm. This new approach utilizes theoretical models developed by cultural anthropologists and ethnographers of contemporary possession-practicing communities in the global south and its diasporas. Carlson demonstrates how possession in the Bible is a corporate and cultivated practice that can function as social commentary and as a means to model the moral self. The author treats a variety of spirit phenomena in the Hebrew Bible, including spirit language in the Psalms and Job, spirit empowerment in Judges and Samuel, and communal possession in the prophets. Carlson also surveys apotropaic texts and spirit myths in early Jewish literature—including the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this volume, two recent scholarly trends in biblical studies converge: investigations into notions of evil and of the self. The result is a synthesizing project, useful to biblical scholars and those of early Judaism and Christianity alike.

Download or read book Between Worlds written by J. H. Chajes and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a nearly two-thousand-year interlude, and just as Christian Europe was in the throes of the great Witch Hunt and what historians have referred to as "The Age of the Demoniac," accounts of spirit possession began to proliferate in the Jewish world. Concentrated at first in the Near East but spreading rapidly westward, spirit possession, both benevolent and malevolent, emerged as perhaps the most characteristic form of religiosity in early modern Jewish society. Adopting a comparative historical approach, J. H. Chajes uncovers this strain of Jewish belief to which scant attention has been paid. Informed by recent research in historical anthropology, Between Worlds provides fascinating descriptions of the cases of possession as well as analysis of the magical techniques deployed by rabbinic exorcists to expel the ghostly intruders. Seeking to understand the phenomenon of spirit possession in its full complexity, Chajes delves into its ideational framework—chiefly the doctrine of reincarnation—while exploring its relation to contemporary Christian and Islamic analogues. Regarding spirit possession as a form of religious expression open to—and even dominated by—women, Chajes initiates a major reassessment of women in the history of Jewish mysticism. In a concluding section he examines the reception history of the great Hebrew accounts of spirit possession, focusing on the deployment of these "ghost stories" in the battle against incipient skepticism in the turbulent Jewish community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Exploring a phenomenon that bridged learned and ignorant, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Between Worlds maps for the first time a prominent feature of the early modern Jewish religious landscape, as quotidian as it was portentous: the nexus of the living and the dead.

Download or read book The Origin of Evil Spirits written by Archie T. Wright and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we account for the explosion of demonic activity in the New Testament? Archie T. Wright examines the trajectory of the origin of evil spirits in early Jewish literature. His work traces the development of the concept of evil spirits from the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 6) through post-biblical Jewish literature. "I would in fact recommend this book, not because of the answers it gives, but the questions it raises." -- Philip R. Davies in Journal of Semitic Studies 55 (2010) "This work is marked by several strengths. First, Wright shows an impressive command of the primary and secondary literature. Second, this writer appreciates Wright's tendency to express cautious conclusions regarding historical and source-critical matters. These qualities are especially helpful in a work dealing with the reception history of a given text. Third, Wright has an extremely helpful discussion of the identity of the nephilim of Gen. 6:4 (80-83)." -- Mark D. Owens in Faith & Mission 24 (2007), pp. 68-70

Download or read book The Jewish Mind written by Raphael Patai and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark exploration of Jewish history and culture. First published in 1977, The Jewish Mind provides a penetrating insight into the complex collective reality of the Jewish people. Raphael Patai examines how six great historical encounters, spanning three millennia, between the Jews and other cultures led to both change and continuity in Jewish communities throughout the global diaspora. A timeless analysis by a prominent scholar. Patai, a noted cultural anthropologist and historian, drew on a lifetime of research and personal experience to explore the contemporary Jewish mind in its many manifestations, including an exploration of the notion of Jews as a race, an investigation into Jewish intelligence and talents, as discussion of Jewish self-hate, and a profile of Jewish personality and character. An insightful new foreword by Ari L. Goldman. Bestselling author and journalist Ari L. Goldman places the book in the context of recent turbulent events, especially in the Middle East, and confirms Patai's conclusion that Judaism remains enormous value to humankind. Goldman calls the book "a brilliant and absorbing survery of everything poured into the Jewish mind over the millennia." The Jewish Mind is a towering work of scholarship that remains relevant to anyone trying to understand Jewish culture and society around the world today. Book jacket.

Download or read book Jewish Magic and Superstition written by Joshua Trachtenberg and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.

Download or read book Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore written by Rachel Elior and published by Urim Publications. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why a person comes to be possessed by a dybbuk—the possession of a living body by the soul of a deceased person—and what consequences ensue from such possession, form the subject of this book. Though possession by a dybbuk has traditionally been understood as punishment for a terrible sin, it can also be seen as a mechanism used by desperate individuals—often women—who had no other means of escape from the demands and expectations of an all-encompassing patriarchal social order. Dybbuks and Jewish Women examines these and other aspects of dybbuk possession from historical and phenomenological perspectives, with particular attention to the gender significance of the subject.