Exorcism and second marriages

From J. Post:

Do Jews beleive in exorcisms? It depends who you ask.

A liturgical text dating back to the 18th century is being used by a British researcher as proof that they do, or at least did at one time. ....

A neatly written, 150-word text fragment - discovered by Dr. Renate Smithuis from the Centre For Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester - describes a ceremony to dispel the evil spirit of Nissim Ben Bunya from his widow, Qamar Bat Rahma.

It is one of the 11,000 manuscript fragments held at the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library - rescued from a 1,000-year-old storeroom - or Genizah - at the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo.

Smithuis thinks the Hebrew document was written in the 18th century, and probably originated in Egypt or Palestine.

The fragment contains the second part of a prayer ritual in which the husband - or husband-to-be - of a widow recites an exorcism prayer, to which the other men gathered in the synagogue respond with a similar prayer.

Avakesh comments:  I think that this interpretation of the fragment is a mistake. While I have not seen it, this is probably a prophylactic rite for a new husband of a widow. It is taught in Ari's Sefer Hagilgulim that the spirit of the first husband remains within a widow and can harm the new husband or his children with her. It has nothing to do with dybbuks or possession or exercism. This is a good example of why researchers in Jewish studies need to be consummate scholars in all areas of traditional Jewish literature. The generations of scholars who have now passed from the scene and were educated in yeshivos had this wide ranging knowledge. Unfortunately the new generation is university educated and not infrequenlty, in my experience, miss fairly obvious things.

Caveat: I did not see the fragment but would love to.

The concept is briefly discussed in a new book with a quotation from Shoresh Ishai, p. 68  here

A video of an exorcism perfomred a few weeks ago by R. David Batzri (Part 1 of 10)

 

Comments

[devorah]

I'm surprised that Dybbuk video ended up on You Tube. There were a few "warnings" with its original release: DO NOT WATCH or LISTEN.... danger!
Perhaps people should exercise some caution when watching it.

[pierre]

Had a short piece on possession a while back;

http://harherem.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-posession-why-anthropology.html

and a somewhat related piece on mysticism;

http://harherem.blogspot.com/2007/07/c.html