The evil spirit outside the Lurianic context: an examination of the 1602 Yiddish ‘Tale about a Youth Possessed by an Evil Spirit’

Abstract

The most extensive collection of its time of tales presented in late medieval (Western) Yiddish, Mayse Bukh (Basel, 1602), apparently contains the earliest published detailed account of a Safed dybbuk , but the character of the story indicates that its presenters had no interest in the Safed circle of Kabbalists. Exploiting the context in which it presents the story, the Mayse Bukh does not use the tale about the expulsion of an evil spirit in order to glorify the mystical powers of the Ari (Rabbi Isaak Luria) and his colleagues. It is also hard to accept the ‘pedagogical’ approach, which claims that the tale’s aim was to discuss contemporary moral problems. The moralistic side, indeed, is presented here, but rather as an audacious ‘decoding’ illustration of the Talmudic ideas in circumstances much closer to the readers of the Mayse Bukh . The rather abstract yetser har̓a , or evil inclination, is here replaced by the much more tangible beyz ruekh/ruah ra̓a (Yiddish/Hebrew), or evil spirit. The parallel between the two phenomena, evil spirit and evil inclination, transformed the Talmud’s theoretical discussion into a presentation of concrete sins. In this way the Mayse Bukh , written in the language of the common people lacking any sacred status, offers a quite distinctive view of the dybbuk phenomenon. In Memory of Joseph Sherman