do you believe in magic?
more women, more witchcraft
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Today, our textual wanderings take us to Deuteronomy 18, and to talk of the supernatural. ✨
There's a lot to say on the topic!
So much, in fact, that this will be a two-part series.
Today, we'll look at magic, divination and ghost-seeking in the Bible and Talmud– how these lines between "forbidden magic" and "acceptable magic" were navigated by the men creating and defining canon.
Next time, we'll look at less official ritual lives of Jewish women from a few different Jewish cultures, and we'll ask some more questions about where those lines are between "magic" and "religion"– and when, whether, it really matters.
Lotta binary gender language in this one. Reminder that there have always been people of many genders in Jewish history, and Jewish textual history.
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It's impressive, really, how much Deuteronomy manages to cover in just two hot verses:
There is not to be found among you one... an augurer of augury, a hidden-sorcerer, a diviner, or an enchanter, one who [חובר חבר-- translation unclear], or a seeker of ghosts or all-knowing ones, or an inquirer of the dead. (Deuteronomy 18:10-11)
According to biblical scholar Jeffrey Tigay, augury is a general term for divination that includes things like interpreting how arrows fall from a quiver and reading the liver of a sacrificed animal; divining is also a general term that probably included reading the patterns of liquid in a goblet; in clouds; or the flight patterns of birds. An enchanter evidently did malevolent magic. I couldn't find anything but speculation as to the meaning of sorcerer, here– there seem to be a lot of guesses without clarity. As for the חובר חבר, which I have left untranslated– Tigay translates that word as charmer or whisperer, referring to either defensive magic or "murmuring" spells.
Rabbi Everett Fox, holding by a different line of scholarship, goes with "a tier of [magical] tying-knots," alluding to ancient practices that may be less known to us. If if we go with Fox, I'll throw out some wild speculation on my part: Hebrew Bible professor Nancy Bowen observed, on a somewhat unrelated matter, that in ancient Mesopotamia, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum– an obviously perilous time– was regarded as a time where one might be vulnerable to sorcery. As such, incantations were developed to fight the bad magic, and
Many of the incantations to stop profuse vaginal bleeding during pregnancy involved the tying of knots....This is a fairly obvious sign that a suture was desired to stop the flow of blood...
Is Deuteronomy going after a midwifery practice? Might it be possible?? Again, I'm speculating wildly, and in any case: We may never know. But the connection between women, reproductive care and witchcraft is longstanding across cultures– and we'll see more of it today.
Next! No seeking ghosts, no inquiring of the dead. Despite the prohibition, the Bible shows us what this looks like, which is fun.
I'm referring, of course, to the story of the Witch of Ein Dor, (Endor, yes). We learn that the king Saul had
removed [those inquiring of] ghosts and all-knowing ones from the land (I Samuel 28:3)
because witch persecution is as old as the history of patriarchal religion.
And yet, when Saul realized he was in over his head militarily, what did he want? To consult his dead prophet Samuel. So his people track down a witch in hiding, and she reluctantly brings Samuel back so that he can yell at Saul. (She gets to yell at him, a bit, too.) (I Samuel 28:3-25). Careful what you ask for.
And then we come to the Rabbinic era:
"Hillel used to say...the more women,
the more witchcraft."
(Sayings of the Sages/Mishnah Pirke Avot 2:7)
The fact that witchcraft is forbidden by Torah does not seem to mean– as the Rabbis saw it– that Jewish women were any less engaged in the practice.
We hear things like this again and again:
(As always, bold is the original text of the Aramaic/Hebrew, and the Roman/regular is the additional explanation by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, periodically tweaked by me.)The Sages taught One who was walking outside a city and smelled a scent; if the majority of the town’s residents are non-Jews one may not recite a blessing over the scent [since one assumes it may be lit as part of idolatry], but if the majority are Jews, one may recite a blessing. Rabbi Yosei says: Even if the majority are Jews, one may not recite a blessing, as the daughters of Israel burn incense to witchcraft and the spices were certainly made for witchcraft, not for their fragrance. (Talmud Brachot 53a)
Here, witchcraft is connected to women perfuming their clothing – we see the interface of witchcraft and sexuality, seduction. And through this, Rabbi Jericho Vincent observes,
Jewish women are removed from the class of Jews/trustworthy insiders and put into the class of Gentiles/problematic outsiders.
The Talmud in Eruvin (64b) similarly reports that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai said that by his era, "Jewish women are [so] accustomed to using witchcraft," that even a random loaf of bread sitting by the side of the road could be riddled with dangerous spells.
Witchcraft and food prep: More on that in a moment.
The Sages taught, The verse: “You shall not allow a witch to live” (Exodus 22:17), refers to both a man and a woman. If so, why does verse state “a witch” (in the feminine singular form of Hebrew?) This is because most women are familiar with witchcraft. (Talmud Sanhedrin 67a)
Most women! This includes their wives, sisters, mothers. They were talking about what they witnessed, dwelled with–"you shall not allow a witch to live” notwithstanding.
In fact, there's really only one story, connected to the very early Rabbinic era, of a sage killing witches – and that was, I kid you not– to fulfill a campaign promise.* Because of course.)
*Yes, the women in the death pentalty story are described as "hurting the world," but forgive me if I don't happen to find the narrator of this text to be super reliable. We do see them conjuring up lunch, but as we'll see below, the Rabbis also did that. Beyond that, they're portrayed as having sexual mores that defy Rabbinic conventions, but that, alone, does not seem to be a prooftext for "hurting the world," even if their willingness to shtup casually likely was proof to the Rabbis of great evil.So what was the witchcraft that these "most women" performed?
As is so often the case across eras, places and cultures, the lives and the wisdom of women in Rabbinic Judaism is largely lost. What little we do know about women's lives here– as so many other places– is because men have forbidden something. [[1]]
To wit, the Tosefta– a compilation of Oral Law from the time of the Mishnah (150-200 CE), includes (in Tractate Shabbat) a list of practices regarded as witchcraft. Some are described using masculine verb conjugations, some with feminine conjugations. As historian Tal Ilan observes, almost all the forbidden witchcraft actions using feminine language fall into "areas in which women were normally occupied." As scholar of Jewish folk magic Rebecca Lesses observes, [[2]] none of what they implicitly define as women's magic are maliciously aimed at others, but rather practices to ensure the success of healing, cooking, tending and so forth.
Things like
"She who shouts at an oven not to let the bread fall, she who puts charms into the handle of a pot that it should not boil over" (6.14)
"She who imposes silence for lentils and who smacks her lips at rice" (6.15)
"She who sets hens to brood and said: I set them out only in pairs, I set them out only naked, I set them out only with the left hand, I set them out only with both hands" (6.17)
"She who sets out a brood of chicks in a sieve, or puts pieces of iron among a brood of chicks" (6.19) (Translations Tal Ilan)
Imagine the ancient rabbinic gaze. Imagine watching women labor– observing their traditions and ways of engaging with the world – and trying to make sense of them without understanding them. Or observing women's spiritual traditions (more on that next week), and ways of connecting with the divine that don't center Rabbinic interests. They denigrate it as witchcraft, imply that women are – akin to those idolatrous non-Jews.
Yet the Rabbis mostly seem to approach these occult matters with irritation and eyerolling. Here's a text from Babylonia (now Iraq):
These two women, who are sitting at a crossroads, one on this side of the road and the other on the other side, and they are facing each other, they are certainly engaging in witchcraft. What is the remedy for one who walks by? If there is another route, they should go by it. And if there is no other route, if there is another person with him, they should hold hands and switch places. And if there is no other person with him, one should say as follows: "Iggeret, Azlat, Asiya, Belusiya are killed by arrows." (These are names of demons invoked by witches.) (Pesachim 111a)
These rabbis deal with witchcraft by... using magic formulas and incantations. 🤔
The same chunk of Talmud gives us this blessing for ICE agents:
Ameimar said: The chief of witches said to me: One who encounters witches should say this incantation: Hot feces in torn date baskets in your mouth, witches; may your hairs fall out because you use them for witchcraft; your crumbs, which you use for witchcraft, should scatter in the wind; your spices, which you use for your witchcraft, should scatter; the wind should carry away the fresh saffron that you witches hold to perform your witchcraft.... (Pesachim 110a-110b)
Ameimar was on such great terms with the Head Witch that he was given this helpful spell to use!
Rebecca Lesses points out that fragments of this same curse appear on a couple of Aramaic incantation bowls, most notably the hard-to-forget, "dung in broken baskets in your mouth, women who do sorcery." It wasn't a throwaway line– it was part of the material culture of the time. Theoretical and practical magic. Rabbis are named as owners of some of the excavated bowls, which may have been written by scribes.
This certainly wasn't the only time they were willing to engage with magic, though:
Abaye says: The laws of sorcery are like the laws of Shabbat, in that there are three categories: There are of those for which the Torah decrees execution by stoning, and there are those for which one is exempt from punishment by Torah law but they are prohibited by rabbinic law, and there are those that are permitted from the outset.,..What is permitted from the outset is to act like Rav Ḥanina and Rav Oshaya: Every Shabbat eve they would engage in the study of the laws of creation, and a third-born calf would be created for them, and they would eat it. (Sanhedrin 67b)
Never mind the differences between Shabbat (commanded) and sorcery (forbidden). When Rav Hanina and Rav Oshaya order via GrimoireDash? That's... fine.
And here's a doozy:
Rabbi Eliezer said: Once [my student Rabbi Akiva] and I were walking along the way, and he said to me: My teacher, teach me about the planting of cucumbers. I said one statement of sorcery, and the entire field became filled with cucumbers. He said to me: My teacher, you have taught me about planting them; teach me about uprooting them. I said one statement and they all were gathered to one place... Rabbi Akiva learned the laws of gathering cucumbers through sorcery from Rabbi Eliezer.. but he did not understand it. Later he learned it from Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Yehoshua explained it to him. [The Talmud says this is OK because doing sorcery in order] to teach oneself is different... and you [are permitted to] learn in order to understand the matter yourself and teach it to others. (Sanhedrin 68a)
When we do cool gardening tricks with magic, it's fine, because we're, uh... only doing it as an academic exercise! (We see the Sages backing up the "hey, it's OK to learn magic in order to teach it," position on Shabbat 75a.)
Needless to say, if we wanted to play with later positions we could be here all day– – here's Rebbeinu Bachya, writing from mid-13th-mid 14th c. Spain, on why the prohibition against magic is really just a prohibition on doing certain kinds of magic, certain ways, for example.So, that's a lot of rabbis conjuring calves and cursing witches and flying cucumbers, given how much they talk about women being witches.
Historian Meir Bar-Ilan writes,
An examination of biblical and talmudic sources does not reveal that women in particular practiced witchcraft. On the contrary: sorcerers outnumber sorceresses in the sources. The books of witchcraft from talmudic times, Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses), and Sefer haRazim (The Book of Secrets), are attributed to men, and many of the talmudic examples deal with men practicing sorcery...
....The association of women with sorcery illuminates the dynamics of the oppression of the weak and the way in which the ruling class constantly strengthens its political position.
If he does it, he's just channeling Holy Blessed One's will. If she does it, though...
With this in mind, let's look at two more sources:
There's a bit of Talmud where an earlier oral tradition (baraita) discusses several categories of people who "erode the world," and with one of them, the later strata of the Talmud says,
for example, to Yoḥani bat Retivi (Talmud Sotah 22a)
They just... name her, without any more information or context. More backstory is offered in a later commentary, though, from Rav Nissim Gaon, who lived in Tunisia in the early 11th c. (His version is earlier than the better-known Rashi one.) Rav Nissim is about to tell us why she "eroded the world."
What follows, here, might be from an oral tradition passed on from the Talmudic era–that was allegedly a thing– or it could "simply" reflect the thinking of Rav Nissim's time and place. Either way, it's notable in light of these conversations about gender and power and who's telling what story. Here we see a woman engaged in midwifery-type duties– likely, here, helping other women access contraception of some kind–rolled into the description of witchcraft:
"Yohani bat Ratibi was a witch and gave all the women a potion to prevent them from giving birth. She would put the potion in two vessels, and while the two vessels were closed, no women's womb would open. She would pretend to be praying for the woman in labor, and when she would stretch out on the ground to plead, she would open the two vessels, so that the spell was broken, and the woman's womb would be opened. Once, two sages went to ask her to beg for mercy for a woman who was suffering in labor, and found the two vessels containing the spells. They mistakenly opened them; straightforth, the woman's womb was opened and she gave birth easily. Then they knew that she had cast spells."
I have so many questions. Would that the women in the community or Yohani herself could give us their accounting of these events.
We also see sources in which the power to make men sterile via witchcraft (Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 7:13) are implied. (Literally or metaphorically?)
Sociologist Soma Chaudhuri and Feminist Studies scholar Jane Ward write in the Witch Studies Reader,
We can understand the witch as a spectacularly powerful and generative symbol of what men, owning classes, and colonizing nations fear most about women’s collective knowledge—of nature, childbirth, healing, sex, and death—a symbol with enduring power to mobilize feminist action and to imagine the future otherwise....
What changes when women take charge of their own reproductive autonomy?
What changes when women's spiritual or home practices are either not understood or not valued by the guys writing the books?
What changes when women have collective knowledge that is set-apart from that of male authority?
And then there's this last story– which I think sums up a number of the themes in today's conversation. We start with the unusual power of some unnamed Talmudic women. Are they gifted due to righteousness?
Rav Naḥman’s daughters would stir a boiling pot with their bare hands. Rav Ilish had a difficulty with a verse, [won't bog us down with the citation. He said: doesn't this refer to... ] Rav Naḥman’s daughters, who were exceptionally righteous? These words caused them to be taken captive, due to the evil eye, and Rav Ilish was also taken captive with them....
Never mess with the Evil Eye, puh puh puh keinehora 🧿 🪬 (Not kidding.)
Jewish law understands that kidnapping involves the possibility of sexual assault; it's not considered adultery if there was no consent. Here, however, consent* is implied, and they state a clear preference to escape the men to whom they'd previously been shackled:
[Rav Ilish] heard [Rav Nahman's daughters] saying: These captors are now our husbands, and the men of Neharde’a to whom we are married are our husbands. We should tell our captors to distance us from here so that our husbands should not come to this area and hear that we are here, and redeem us, and take us home. They preferred to remain with their captors.
It's not hard to guess some of the reasons that early 4th c. women living near the Euphrates might not be thrilled with their original marriage. But it's still notable that things were so bad that they preferred to with their captors. And yet, their wishes were foiled:
When Rav Naḥman’s daughters were returned and they came back from their captivity, Rav Ilish said: They would stir the pot with witchcraft. (Gittin 45a)*Can one consent to one's captor? I mean.
We can read this a few ways: If they were ever considered to be operating the kitchen like good girls, they're not anymore. Their shocking (to Rav Ilish) sexual experiences– and perhaps even more shocking wishes to separate from their original husbands– have changed them forever in his eyes, and now he can only see them as forces threatening the entire enterprise in which he believes.
Or: Maybe their capture changed them. Maybe through getting out, they began to conceive of a life that is not the life to which they were subsequently returned. Maybe they were literally boiling a cauldron of anger under their hands. Regardless, perhaps they have, through the course of the story, become
"symbol(s) with enduring power to ...imagine the future otherwise..."
Than that which they had always been taught to expect.
And maybe they brought that power back to the other women in the community, and that's where the real threat lies.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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BONUS MATERIAL
I try to remember to put the stuff I cut when posts get overly long towards the bottom, so those of you who want to go hard can have the option to!
Not all women who taught healing and incantations were regarded as witches. For example, Abaye often cites his adoptive mother's teachings on matters related to medicine, health, raising children, and gossip– and even defense against sorcery.
Abaye said, Em said to me: All incantations that are repeated are intoned using the name of the mother of the one requiring the incantation, and all knots tied for the purpose of healing are tied on the left. ... What are these knots? Adda Mari said that Rav Naḥman bar Barukh said that Rav Ashi bar Avin said that Rav Yehuda said: They are garlands of the madder plant that are tied for their medicinal qualities. Abaye said: Em, said to me about the healing properties of madder: Three garlands maintain the illness at its present state and prevent it from worsening, five garlands heal the illness, and seven are effective even against sorcery. (Talmud Shabbat 66b)
AND notably, much of this until the last line is a paraphrase of a 2nd c. BCE text, but choosing which verses to lift up, and how to paraphrase them, is always a choice, isn't it?
A daughter is for her father false treasure; due to fear for her he will not sleep at night: During her minority, lest she be seduced; during her young womanhood lest she engage in licentiousness; once she has reached her majority, lest she not marry; once she marries, lest she have no children; once she grows old, lest she engage in witchcraft (Ben Sira 42:11–14) (Sanhedrin 100b)
And that last line, from when she's "no longer useful to men...." ? (To quote a cut line from the Witch Studies Reader about why hags are terrifying), that's all the Rabbis.
[[1]]: Many thanks to Arielle Solomon for sharing her research and framing on this and pointing me at the Tal Ilan chapter.
[[2]]: Thanks again to Arielle Solomon for sharing this Lesses analysis in her own research.
