Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore [Hardcover]

Rachel Elior (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

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. While possession by a dybbuk may have been understood as punishment for a terrible sin, it may 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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rachel Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the chair of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University and has been a research fellow and a visiting professor at University College London, the University of Amsterdam, Oberlin College, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Case Western University, Yeshiva University, Tokyo University, and Princeton University. She is the author of numerous works on Jewish mysticism and hasidism, including The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism (1992). Three of her books were published by the Littman Library: The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (2004), The Mystical Origins of Hasidism (2006), and Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom (2007). The recipient of many honors, she was awarded the 2006 Gershom Scholem Prize for the study of Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Urim Publications (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 965524007X
• ISBN-13: 978-9655240078
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,991,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Women and Judaism

More About the Author

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good history of an unusual phenomenon, November 5, 2009

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore (Hardcover)

Dr. Rachel Elior, professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the author of many works on Jewish mystic, examines a rather interesting subject: how and why people thought they possess the soul of a deceased person, called a dybbuk, and what happens to the possessed individuals. Her primary focus is, as it should be, upon women, since the dybbuk frequently opted to enter and control females rather than males.

Elior notes that the first appearance of this strange phenomenon occurred in the sixteenth century, after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, when Jews turned to mysticism for solace, when a center of mysticism arose in the city of Safed in Israel and when the subjects of demons and souls was part of everyday speech. The number of occurrences slowed down and soon ceased with the introduction of the enlightenment in the eighteenth century.

What caused women to believe they were possessed and why did people believe them? How did people treat the dybbuk impregnated woman different than witches who were said to be infused by the devil? Why didn't the Jewish community ostracize and demonize the possessed women? How were the women cured? How did Jewish literature address this issue? Elior discusses these and related subjects.

Elior shows how women were adversely affected by their socio-cultural-historical climate. They were married off by their parents without any consideration of love around the age of thirteen. They were usually forced to be submissive and subservient to the authority of their husbands. They were kept home-bound, secluded from society, and prevented from acquiring an education and any economic independence. Many found life with their husbands intolerable.

They were told that women are associated with sin and uncleanliness. They heard obnoxious views about their sex, such as the statement in Midrash Genesis Rabbah 7: "When Eve was created, Satan was created with her." They were assured that all women scheme and act treacherously. They were taught that women are responsible for being raped and for incest. What could they do? How could they express their anguish and frustrations?

"The principle way in which powerless people could deviate from the patriarchal order while still remaining within the traditional world was by succumbing to illness," Elior writes, "a step that occasionally used the power of physical and mental weakness to gain a degree of distance and liberation from the expected order."

The people around them believed that some souls were floating in the physical world and that souls entered the bodies of new born children and live again through reincarnation. The women used these ideas to escape from their terrifying, repulsive experiences and coercion. Either consciously or subconsciously, they developed the notion of the dybbuk, that a soul could enter their bodies, control them, make them sick, and stop them from having intercourse with their husbands, preclude them from the drudgery of housework and bring people to their homes to be interested in them. Frequently, these women, who were unable to speak for themselves, found a voice in a soul from the dead who articulated their concerns and spoke for them.

Elior shows how the phenomenon of the dybbuk disappeared when the forces that prompted its birth disappeared, when the number of coerced marriages declined, the role of women in society became enlightened and women were given their own voice.