Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts) [Hardcover]

J. H. Chajes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jewish Culture and Contexts | Publication Date: July 3, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An exciting, persuasive, and well-written study and another key addition to a subject central to early modern religions."—Jewish Quarterly Review

"Chajes's excellent new book . . . succeeds in demystifying the subject of Jewish spirit (i.e., "dybbuk") possession by placing it within a broader cross-cultural and historical context, a s sophisticated methodological approach he calls a 'historical anthropology of spirit possession.' . . . His work is both a history and a phenomenology of Jewish spirit possession during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."—Choice

"This is a major contribution, not only to early modern Jewish studies but to the subject of spirit possession broadly conceived in the Christian world."—Edward Peters, University of Pennsylvania

About the Author

J. H. Chajes teaches Jewish history at the University of Haifa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (July 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812237242
• ISBN-13: 978-0812237245
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,828,326 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jewish exorcisms revealed, December 28, 2006

By 

Zahara Solomon (Pacific NW, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts) (Hardcover)

An amazingly informative read, Between Worlds offers a rare glance into the writings of Early Modern Jews dealing with spirit possession, excorcism, and prevailing attitudes of the times, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It was fascinating to read about Luria and his contemporaries dealings with dyybuks, possessed women, and to have the comparision with Christian and Islamic practises and writings of the period. The possession accounts are captivating, and Chajes is excellent at breaking the information down to guide the reader through all the twists and turns that an excorcist would follow. I especially enjoyed the chapters on women and their use of possession to call for change, and heavily influence powerful men at times. While academic in style, it is none the less a great read for anyone remotely interested in Jewish spirit possession, exorcism, women's religiosity, and Medieval/Early Modern Kabbalistic attitudes of these issues.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly and informative., January 11, 2007

By 

A concerned scholar of religion (Atlanta, GA - USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts) (Hardcover)

This is the most scholarly work on the subject of Jewish exorcisms in English. I recommend it to the student and religious practitioner alike. If nothing else, the appendix and bibliography are invaluable to anyone interested in the subject.

I feel that not enough attention was paid to non-dybbuk forms of possession. Demonic possession, though not as prevalent in Talmudic Judaism, does appear throughout Jewish history. Also, more information on 'good' forms of spirit possession would have been helpful, specifically those forms which exhibit themselves in Chasidism.

My only real negative criticism on the text itself is that the translations leave the average reader quite sated but only whet the appetite of a serious scholar. Chajes should consider providing the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts in an additional appendix.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars religion of books alone?, May 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts) (Hardcover)

Although many people will focus in on the "ecstatic women on the margins" possibilities of Chajnes's book, I find the study important primarily for opening eyes to what was mainstream Judaism, and European at that, in the early modern period. Not just an isolated incident or two, and covering many phenomena of Jewish life, spirit communication and mystical insights are typical of a major stream in Judaism. Where did we get the hyper-rational and book-dominated religion of Reform Judaism today? That should be the question. The religion is rich with the same kind of intermingling of heavenly and earthly worlds that Christian and Muslim peoples saw. Think again about what is normal, orthodox in any of them. Thinking in the long historical perspective, Judaism as ethics, reason, and law and those elements only - that is the anomaly.