witchcraft

LILITH as A BLESSING FOR THE WORLD (short article)

LILITH—A BLESSING FOR THE WORLD

Ohad Ezrahi / April, 2010

Translated by Yair Ohr

Men and women alike need to know how to respect her and how to give her a place within themselves: Lilith—the awesome, untamed, feminine sexual energy. If we do not give her place, she will strike us harshly: she will destroy our intimate relations and poison us from the inside. But if we learn how to give her place and to work with her using appropriate skills, she will be transformed into blessed energy, to a power that blesses us as women and as men, that blesses our intimate relations with stability and perpetual freshness, with juiciness and with razor-sharp clarity.

In the Jewish mythical tradition,  the Midrash and the Kabbalah, relates that Eve was not the first woman to be created. Eve was in fact the second woman, who was created only after the first woman—Lilith—got into an argument with Adam and fled from the Garden of Eden.

Eve and Lilith are of different natures: Eve is the family woman. She is the mother. Her love is to bring children into the world and to raise them, to cook for them and to be a “housewife.” She accepts the social hierarchy in which the male dominates society, and she functions within that system. She allows for the financial, social, sexual and intellectual superiority of the male, supporting the existing social order.

Lilith, on the other hand, rebels against this “superior order.” From the day of her creation, Lilith perceives herself as an independent woman who will not accept the dominating male authority. She is not willing to accept male superiority in any sphere—not in the workplace, social interactions, academia, or sexual relations. She demands freedom for herself, and even if it will cost her heavily, she is willing to pay the price.

NOT JUST A FEMINIST

However, we should not make the mistake of perceiving in Lilith the simplistic image of a feminist woman. While feminism has neutralized women’s femininity in order to make them equal with men (see Femophobia – How Women Have Become Men, by Tovi Browning), Lilith is a specifically feminine energy. Lilith is not afraid of the power of her female eroticism, and does not deny her outbursting  of femininity.

In several places throughout the Kabbalistic texts of the Ari it is stated that each woman possesses both of these aspects: within every woman there is both an Eve and a Lilith. However, our society is built in such a way that its members are generally unable to deal with a woman who expresses both of these aspects.

Our society is structured so that each woman must choose between being an “Eve” or a “Lilith.” By causing this split, our society brings untold suffering upon women and their mates. (The many Kabbalistic sources of Lilith’s spiritual roots, spread throughout the prolific literature of the Ari, are collected and analyzed in my book, Who’s Afraid of Lilith? [Hebrew] Modan 2004.)

Based upon ideas already found in the Zohar, the Ari develops the approach that sees in Lilith a very spiritually sublime aspect of femininity, even higher than that of Eve. The ideal, though, according to the Ari, is the integration of both of these aspects anew, into one single feminine image that can fearlessly be either Eve or Lilith.

So that this may happen, women must go through an inner transformation, befriending anew the power of Lilith within themselves, a power that generally speaking they have long ago suppressed into some forgotten corner in order to survive in a socially acceptable way. But women cannot accomplish this transformation on their own. Both sexes are responsible for the creation of a society and its proper functioning. Men must also go through a transformation in order for Lilith to return to live and breathe comfortably among us.

MEN ARE AFRAID OF LILITH

Men feel threatened by Lilith. She threatens their position of power and their self-confidence. But we must understand the male paradox regarding Lilith: specifically because Lilith does not accept male domination nor suppress her wild sexuality from bursting forth as does Eve, she poses an erotic seduction that is very difficult for men to withstand. Men yearn for a woman like Lilith, a woman who is able to express the fullness of her unbridled passions, who is willing to be a sexual creature, to be active in bed, to be a woman who derives great pleasure from sexuality and is not one bit ashamed of it, who is able to be both gross and refined, both sensual and seductive, a woman who is able to be both transparent and mysterious simultaneously. Men yearn in the depths of their hearts for such a woman, who does not lecture them about morals, who does not have “headaches,” who does not all of a sudden need to prepare a child’s sandwich for school… They yearn for a free and liberated woman who can tear them apart with her unbridled passions while never allowing herself to become taken for granted. Lilith is thus the object of male passion, of sexual fantasy, a never-ending adventure for men. But at the same time, she is also a threat for their orderly world. For this reason, “normal” men are very afraid of such a woman.

The Zohar states that both Adam and Jacob were afraid of Lilith’s power, which is why they perceived her in a negative way. But this was only on account of their own smaller statures compared to her, and not because she actually was like that. And in fact—she is at a very high level. Perhaps even too high.

For this reason, a man usually decides to suppress his passions, to denigrate Lilith and to besmirch “women like that.” He may occasionally falter, and then he seeks her out discretely. He will find her in the prostitute, in the courtesan, in the secret lover, in the dark romance, in the Internet pornography. She will seduce him in dreams and fantasies; she will be his femme fatale. Afterwards, he will lash out at himself (and at her), and endeavor to establish a society “without such disgraceful phenomena.” He will decry her, “Abomination!”

THE PARADOX OF LILITH’S SOUL

The problem with the “Lilith type” is that she too is aware of these social codes. She too grew up in a fearful male society, and though she rebelled against those “ethics,” she still integrated them into herself and assesses herself by their measure. This is the paradox of Lilith herself: on the one hand, she rebels against the society that wants to suppress her, while on the other hand she integrates the standards of that society and judges herself accordingly. Lilith has a negative opinion of herself. She sees herself as a criminal, as a, “bad girl,” as a disgraceful phenomenon.

Even the ancient Midrashic myth tells of Lilith integrating this terrible image of herself, thus transforming into a demon.

RECTIFYING THE DEMON

And this is exactly the point in need of great rectification: Lilith, whose spiritual root is so exalted, has been transformed in our society into a demon, causing great suffering to men and women alike. Many families fall victim to the incitation of the demon Lilith without even being aware of it. Any couple that separates on account of “betrayal” has essentially fallen victim to the seductive teasing of Lilith. Whoever secretly masturbates in front of the computer screen, with passion accompanied by guilt and shame, hoping to not  be discovered, has fallen into Lilith’s trap. Lilith is a very active demon to this very day.

My understanding of a “demon” is any obsessive/compulsive and mindless drive in the human soul that manipulates it as if it were a choiceless creature. The Kabbalah speaks about the addition of the letter Yud to the Shin and Dalet letters of the word SheD (demon), which transform it into the holy name of Shin Dalet Yud—ShaDaY. The letter Yud represents the enlightenment and sanctification of consciousness.

Is it possible to add enlightenment and consciousness to the Lilith energy so that she will cease being an obsessive/compulsive demon and reveal her true strengths within our society and within our intimate relations? I do believe so. It is not easy, it is not simple, and not everyone is ready for it, but it is possible, and even desirable. As I have already pointed out in my book, Who’s Afraid of Lilith, it is quite surprising to find that the Ari pointed to just such a rectification as the goal of the entire Torah on earth!

THE PROCESS OF RECTIFICATION

In order to know how to contain Lilith’s energy, men and women alike need to do some heavy duty spiritual work. Men need to, “connect with the holy spark in Esau,” as it is called in Chassidic thought, and to be willing to live on the edge. Not to insist to walk only on “safe ground.” This is a decision at a very deep level to surrender control, yet to remain fully alert, for Lilith will not let you get by without full alertness. If you try to control—she will rebel. But if you surrender control in a way that turns you into a wet rag, she will immediately chop your head off!

Lilith can become a great spiritual teacher for man, sustaining him in a state of clarity, strength, and uncompromised alertness. She will not allow him to fall asleep on her watch. But she requires a man at a high level. Men of low stature are unable to contain her.

And what do women need to do? They simply need to allow her to come forth from within. To allow the wild woman that exists within them to come out and wrestle with life. She may arise from some soul-basement full of anger. But that’s OK. We would be mistaken to judge Lilith as a sour and angry creature because of that. After thousands of years of her being suppressed, yes—she is quite angry! But this will pass if we show her love. When a woman allows her inner Lilith to come forth, and begins a process of self-reassessment together with a weaning from guilt and self-affliction, she is able to harness the power of her inner Lilith to the light of love. Then, her love only increases. Then, she is able to shower a razor-sharp and uncompromising love that is as refreshing as it is filled with passion.

THE RECTIFIED LILITH AS A BLESSING FOR THE WORLD

A woman who is able to rectify her inner Lilith and integrate it with her Eve becomes a great blessing for the world. She becomes a source of inspiration, of light, and of powerful love. Lilith’s love does not come only in appealing pastel colors. The dark colors of life—black and deep red, for instance—become filled with power and beauty on her account. Men who are able to contain a rectified Lilith are very rare at present. But when such a man appears, he allows for many women to reveal their fullness in his presence, and the circle of rectification continually grows.

The work of rectifying Lilith is an integral part of the processes we lead in “The Garden—A School for Love and Kabbalah.” These processes allow singles and couples to live their love lives in full, without fear or shame, secrecy or suppression. In our opinion, this is a necessary healing for mankind, in which the percentages of betrayals and divorces are so high that one must be blind not to see that something in our “normal” family model of Adam and Eve—of a child, a lawn, and a dog—is simply not working.

for our new workshop working with the Lilith energy - see here

Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi is a co-founder along with his wife Dawn of The Garden – the School of Love in Kabbalah. www.kabalove.org

witchcraft

Rabbis and Witches

Rabbis and Witches

A class by Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi (Israel, 2006)

(This class was given in Tel Aviv, as a part of the series of lectures about Main Characters in Jewish Mysticism. It was transcribed by Michal Gilo, and translated by Reb J.)

Our class today is devoted to two figures that were active during the period of the Hasmoneans: the first is Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach, and the second is Choni haMaagal. We’ll first orient ourselves to that specific time in history before going in depth into these figures and their stories.

In the previous lessons we spoke about Alexander the Great having conquered the entire Middle East, from Persia all the way to Egypt. But he died young at age 31 and his vast empire was divided among his heirs: the Antigonid Empire based in Greece; the Seleucid Empire based in Mesopotamia and Persia, and the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and Palestine. We also spoke about the interesting ideas of Shimon haTzaddik regarding beauty and holiness, and how according to legend, he met Alexander the Great.

And we also spoke about the rebellion of the Hasmoneans, who routed the Greeks and established an independent kingdom. A monarchy was thus restored to Israel, but it was not that of a scion of the House of David, but rather, Shimon the Hasmonean, who was the high priest, was crowned king. This turn of events was a thorn in the eyes of the Jewish sages, who believed in the division of power. It is not ideal, according to the Torah, for a high priest to also serve as king. A high priest must serve as a high priest, and a king must rule as a king.  But the Hasmonean kings were not interested in sharing power, many of them also holding positions of priestly power. Nevertheless, one of them—Yochanan Hurkenus, or Yochanan the High Priest—was considered a holy man and even a prophet. The Talmud attributes to him the holy spirit, and Josephus Flavius attributes to him prophecy.

Eventually, the throne reached the hands of Yanai. Besides being king, Yanai was also a high priest, following the Hasmonean tradition. But the sages had not made peace with this phenomenon. The special problem for Yanai, though, was that during his reign, the leading sage was none other than his own brother-in-law, Shimon ben Shetach, his wife Shlomtzion’s younger brother. This means that at that time, heading the rabbinical high court was a great sage who held opinions unacceptable to the priesthood and the ruling family. Eventually, King Yanai got sick of these rabbinical sages, and as irritated kings are wont to do to those who oppose them, he ordered to have them all slaughtered. Whoever could, such as the sage Rabbi Yehoshua ben Prachyah, fled to Egpyt. Meanwhile, though, Queen Shlomtzion hid her younger brother until the king’s “crisis” passed, at which time he decided to reconcile with the rabbinical sages, whom the masses generally supported.

But what happens when an entire generation of sages disappears from the world and only one is left? What happens is—and it is important to pay attention to this point—that the one surviving is the one who transmits the tradition. At that time, the Oral Torah was still that—oral, and not formally written down. So since most of the sages were murdered, Shimon ben Shetach became one of the major transmitters through whom the tradition of the Oral Torah was passed down all the way to us.

Now, Shimon ben Shetach was a very interesting figure, and a far from simple one. He was not the only survivor, but among the few. Throughout the history of the transmission of the Oral Torah, there have been a few key figures through whom the majority of the tradition was passed down. One of them was Shimon ben Shetach, who as said, was a complex character.

The story of our focus today, though, is his relationship to women, and to the feminine principle in general. Shimon ben Shetach was know to be the one who hanged eighty witches—this was the single case of witch-hunting in Jewish history.

Let us try and understand what this says about his relationship to women in general and to witches in specific, and what it says about his relationship to the world of magic and mysticism in general. Is there any connection, and if so, what?

Some credit

Let us preface our discussion by giving some “credit” to Shimon ben Shetach. Before we judge him negatively for hanging the witches, I would like to show a complete picture of his character. One of the unique innovations of Shimon ben Shetach is the ketubah—the marriage contract—as it is formulated till this day. He was the one who instituted that the financial obligation of a husband to his wife takes precedence over all his other financial obligations. If a husband has no money, the courts can sell his house, and “even the shirt on his back” to meet those obligations. This was Shimon ben Shetach’s ordination, and till this very day it influences peoples’ lives in a very practical way. From this perspective, if we would ask what his attitude to women was, we would say that he certainly cared for them and for their welfare.

Besides the ketubah, Shimon ben Shetach also made another very important institution: the halakhic law that circumstantial evidence is not accepted in Jewish courts.

Today, civil courts do not follow this practice, but the Talmud quotes Shimon ben Shetach as saying: “I once saw someone running with a knife after another person and they both entered into a house. I ran after them and saw that one of them was just killed and the other was standing with the knife in his hand. I said to him, ‘There are only I and you here, so it is probable that you have killed him and not I, but I will not judge you in court, for in order to be judged in court there must be two witnesses. Therefore, may God judge you.”

The Talmud then concludes, “A snake came along and bit him, and he died.”

It was Shimon ben Shetach himself who instituted this practice of not accepting circumstantial evidence. The purpose was to prevent an innocent person being put to death. Only two witnesses can testify in court. As we will later see, this did not help him to prevent an innocent person being put to death, and in fact caused him great personal harm.

Another institution of Shimon ben Shetach was the law of obligatory education. All the way back then, the first century before the Common Era, Shimon ben Shetach initiated a practice that every Jewish community meticulously keeps till this day: children must begin their educational training by the age of six, whether with a private teacher or in a school. This institution of his took hold already during his time and has been typical of Jewish communities throughout history. Each community established an educational system that was provided for free for those who could not afford it, such as orphans. It was the community’s responsibility to see to it that all children would receive an education, no matter whether they came from wealthy or poor families, or were orphans.

Judging the king

Here is another story about Shimon ben Shetach’s character: One of King Yanai’s slaves had murdered someone. Shimon ben Shetach said to the sages, “Get hold of him and we’ll pass judgment on him.” But Jewish law is that when a slave has committed a crime, his master must also come before the courts. So they sent a messenger to the king asking him to bring his slave into court. When Yanai sent along the slave by himself, Shimon sent another message to him saying, “You must come too!” The king arrived at court and sat down. Shimon then said to him, “King Yanai! Stand up while we testify against you. Not before us are you standing, but before the One Who created the world.” Now remember, King Yanai was Shimon’s brother-in-law who had murdered all the sages, yet Shimon was undaunted and not afraid of him. But the king says, “I will do not as you say, but as your colleagues say,” implying that Shimon always opposed him.

The Talmud then relates, “The king looked to his right, and they all hid their faces towards the ground. He looked to his left, and they too hid their faces towards the ground.” The sages feared the king’s anger. So Simon ben Shetach says to them, “You are making calculations. May the Master of Calculations exact punishment from you.” In other words, he was telling them, “If you are moved to action by your personal interests, you are incapable of being faithful to the truth.” The Talmud concludes that the angel Gabriel came and struck them down to the ground and they died. Henceforth, “a king neither judges nor is judged” became the practice in the rabbinical courts.

This was Shimon ben Shetach. He was undaunted by anything and was as straight as a ruler. But apropos, we see that miracles happened in his honor, such as the snake biting the man whom Shimon had said should be judged by heaven, and the angel Gavriel coming to put to death the sages who were not being faithful to their positions in court.

Returning the Arab’s stone

Yet another story the Talmud tells about Shimon ben Shetach is that he earned a living from working in textiles. Rather than support himself from the rabbinate, he insisted on working for his own sustenance and not taking a penny from the communal coffers. His students, though, seeing how much time and effort he was putting in to make his business rounds on foot, insisted on purchasing for him a donkey. On their way bringing it to him, they found a precious stone in the donkey’s sack. They came and told their master excitedly: “Rebbe! God has given you a gift! You’ll never have to work again!” But Shimon said: “Does the owner of the donkey know that there was a precious stone there?” “Obviously not,” his students answered. “If so, go and return the stone to its owner.” When the students returned it, the owner, who was by the way an Arab, said, “Blessed be the God of Shimon ben Shetach!”

So the picture we have of Shimon ben Shetach until here is: “Let the law carve a hole through the mountain.” This approach was characteristic of him. At the same time, he was an honest person, did not show preference to anyone, nor could he be bought with money. From his perspective, justice was the most important thing. He did not even give special treatment for the royal family, and neither was he lenient with himself. He served God altruistically and was as straight as a ruler, and I am not using that last phrase lightly. If we try to characterize types of people empowered by the energy of yosher/straightness, as opposed to people empowered by the energy of igulim/circles, Shimon ben Shetach stands out as a typical example of yosher.

Straight and Circular – Igulim ve’Yosher

The kabbalah of the Ari speaks about two types of spiritual lights/energies that bring our reality into existence: straight light and circular light. They are two spiritual entities that are completely different. In the kabbalah, we consider the straight light as a masculine function, whereas the circular light is considered a feminine quality. Hence, for example, linear thinking is masculine. Of course, both men and women possess both straight and circular light, for in each of us are both masculine and feminine energies, but straightness is a distinctive masculine energy, whereas circularity is a distinctive feminine energy.

Simon ben Shetach was typically masculine—sharp, for better or worse. Linear thinking of the yosher type is a categorical type of thinking. When a yosher person thinks about justice, he does not take this ethical principle lightly. He does not look to find compromises, to be lenient, to round corners, to understand the accused or simply to bridge a gap between litigants—these are more feminine and “round” qualities. His thinking is categorical. Clearly, such thinking—rational, linear—dose not allow for any magical phenomena.

Magic

Magic does not fit into a linear perception of the world. On the contrary: When do we call something “magic”? When you expect a certain chain of cause and effect to happen, and something entirely unexpected takes place, without any evident cause having brought it about. For instance, when Rabbi Eliezer, several generations later, taught Rabbi Akiva to fill a field with squash with some specific words and then to cause them to disappear—this was magic. Magic is specifically something that contradicts our linear thinking. Since it is not rational, it unravels the threads of our thought patterns that seduce us into thinking that the world is ruled by logic. Every time something non-rational happens, we call it a miracle, a wonder, or magic.

True magicians do not know themselves how they produce their magic, but they feel obligated to believe in wonders, to live in wonder, and to believe in the “magic” that exists in the world. A true magician only knows that if he makes a certain potion according to a certain formula, the result will be something “magical.” So he believes in the power of magic, in the power of wonder, in the wondrous nature of existence, but he also knows that he must fully concentrate on and be completely present to what he is doing, for the process demands the best of his spiritual powers.

The prophets whom we have spoken about—Elijah and Elisha, for example—what characterized them? Elijah had a spiritual role to play within the strata of the royal government of the Kingdom of Israel. He rebuked the king—he rebuked Ahab and Jezebel and maneuvered their downfall, then arranging at the end of his life to have Yehu crowned in their stead. The very role of a scriptural prophet is to rebuke the masses, though he also rebukes the rulers. But besides this, he is also a miracle worker. Most of the stories connected with Elijah and Elisha are miracle stories.

The split of the prophet role

What happened, though, during the period about which we are talking was that the role of the scriptural prophet became split into two: During the period of the prophets, the prophet held two roles: on the one hand, a man of ethics and justice who rebukes the people and the king, and on the other hand, a wonder worker who heals and brings rain. But during the period under our discussion, these two roles were split between two different types of people: the man of God, on the one hand, the miracle worker, and on the other hand, the man of justice and ethics who rebukes. Shimon ben Shetach was a man of uprightness, justice and rebuke, while the miracle worker of his time was Choni haMaagal.

The following story appears in several places, both in the Mishnah and in the Talmud. I read it from the Talmud, since the text there goes into more detail.

Choni and the circle

“The rabbis taught: The month of Adar once passed and rain had not come.” Spring had officially arrived and there had been no rain during the winter. It was a drought year. In ancient times, this meant that people would die of hunger and thirst. The wells were empty and there was nothing to drink or anything with which to water the fields. “[Choni haMaagal] drew a circle in the ground and stood in it.” A circle —remember the circular energy we spoke about above? And Choni’s very name was haMaagal, from the Hebrew root of igul, a circle. In any event, Choni was following in the footsteps of the prophet Habakkuk, who also drew a circle around himself and refused to leave it until God answered him, as our sages comment on Habakkuk’s saying, “I will remain on this station of mine and will stand in this bastion.” Our sages say that this was an ancient tradition. When you want to beg for something urgently, you say to God, “I will not leave this circle until You fulfill my request,” and of course, you must be willing to keep your side of the bargain…

So Choni said to God, “God! I am not moving from here until you have mercy on Your children.” Choni swears that he will not move, and someone like Choni will keep his word. He is willing to die in the circle if rain does not come. He has undertaken an unconditional obligation. He says to God: “Your children have approached me, for I am like a member of Your household.” Being that the case, they are all relying on him.

The Talmud continues: “It began to drizzle. [Choni's] students said, ‘We have seen You, but may we not die!’” This is an interesting phrase. The verse says elsewhere, “Man shall not see Me and live,” for finite Man cannot maintain his selfhood in the conscious presence of the Infinite. So, as they beheld Choni interacting with God in such an intimate way, they were experiencing themselves the presence of God, and they therefore say, “May we not die!” But they also tell him that this drizzle is as if God is saying: “OK, I’ll give you these two and a half drops of rain just so that you are able to leave your circle.” Choni responds by saying to God: “This is NOT what I asked for! I want rain to fill the wells, pits and caverns!” Rain began to come down in torrents, the Talmud tells, until each and every drop was big enough to fill buckets. “We have seen You, but don’t let us die!” his students call out. It seemed as if the rains were coming to destroy the world”. So again Choni says to God: “This is NOT what I asked for! I want rain of goodwill, blessing and bounty.” And the Talmud concludes, “The rain began to fall as needed.”

Choni haMaagal was working with God to achieve something in proper proportion, and he demands exactness. He is also audacious, what in Chassidic texts is referred to as holy chutzpah. He demands of God that the rains be exactly as needed, not more than enough and not too little. But the Talmud continues to tell us that the rain fell in such quantities that the people had to walk up to the Temple Mount, since the lower areas were all flooded. So the people came and said to Choni: “Rebbe! Just as you prayed for rain to come, pray now for it to stop.”

“I have a tradition,” he answered them, “that one does not pray to halt an abundance of bounty.” But he advises them to bring an ox as a thanksgiving offering. When they brought it into the Temple, Choni lays his two hands upon it, as was the sacrificial procedure to rest one’s weight on the animal, thereby transferring one’s karma to it. He says, “God! Your people Israel whom You took out of Egypt can bear neither too much good or too much suffering. May it be Your will that the rains stop and that there be plenty in the world.” And the Talmud concludes that the rains immediately stopped and the sun came out.

This was Choni and his magical practices. So let’s try now and get a picture of his character. We see that he possessed this holy chutzpah, and that he was very close to God—”a member of His household.” He was also very popular with the people as a miracle worker. Certainly, after this incident in which he literally saved the people from starvation, his popularity must have skyrocketed. But just then, Shimon ben Shetach sends him a message: “If you were not Choni, I would put you into excommunication,” in other words, if Choni was not who he was. Why? Because he acted with chutzpah towards God. From Shimon’s perspective, one does not argue with God. But Choni had a “circular” nature, rather than a straight one like Shimon’s, so he does not accept the drought and he argues with God.

Censorising the holy magician

But even more importantly: Choni is a magician. He is able to cause wonders. He is a holy magician who was involved in practical magic. Since this story reaches us via the Talmud, we must take into consideration the likelihood that it was censored. This is not a story that reaches us via the channels of the mystics, but specifically via the channel of the classical rabbinical literature. Therefore, though the Talmud cites this story, there is a high probability that certain magical details were omitted due to censoring. The Talmud attenuates the importance of the magical aspect of this story. The only thing we know about Choni’s practices is that he made a circle around himself and swore that he would not leave it. So he also uses oaths. In short, we see that he has specific techniques. And the Talmud adds that these practices were ancient, since the times of the prophets.

But Shimon ben Shetach does not approve of this way of action. From his point of view, if you pray and rain doesn’t come, just accept it. But Choni follows the ways of the prophets of old and succeeds in bringing rain. He opens the gates of heaven because he possesses the keys of rain. Elsewhere, the Talmud states that the prophet Elijah also possessed the keys of rain.

Shimon also says to Choni, “But what can I do that you are like a son kvetching before his father.” That is, as if Choni were a spoiled child saying to God, “Wash me with warm water. No! That’s too hot! Add some cold water. No! That’s too cold! Add some hot water.” In parent-child relations there are no rules of justice. The very relationship is beyond any rules. Such behavior is acceptable from a child as part of his charm, and that is legitimate. So Shimon tells Choni that he is like such a child to God, nudging to be pampered with candies and sweets.

And who was it that declared himself a son of God just two generations later? Jesus! And the Christian Church makes a big fuss over him. But Jesus was part of certain school of spiritual thought, a link in the tradition of the “early chassidim” who were able to cause miracles and saw themselves as the sons of God, albeit not exclusively. Choni actually meant, “We are all Your children, but I am especially close to You.”

But Shimon says that despite Choni’s being like a son to God and having a special relationship with Him, nevertheless, “I would put you into excommunication,” because the practice of magic and arguing with God is not according to my liking, even when it is for the people’s benefit, and even when it is successful.

This insight that the double role of the prophet became split during the period we are discussing I would like to cite in the name of Professor Ephraim Elimelekh Orbach.

During this period under our discussion, there was an entire school of spiritual practice called, “the early chassidim,” who were not masters in the rabbinical law. The Talmud relates several miracles stories about him, but not one single law in his name. Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, mentioned later in that Talmudic passage about Choni haMaagal, was also part of that school. The school of these early chassidim was involved in magic and wonder working, and in attaining a bonding of the soul with God, what in the chassidut of the Baal Shem Tov was called, deveykut. Attaining this deveykut/bonding with God is what interested the schools of the early and the later chassidim. Such a relationship opened the door to miracles, since it meant that the linear and banal world that we see is not all there is. Wonders can take place at any time and place. A flower—the “flower” of the Shekhinah/Divine presence—can suddenly open. Existence is rich, because God, the Omnipresent, is not “Out There,” but here! The close relationship with Him is like that of a son with his father—informal.

On the other hand, there was another school of thought—that of the rabbinical sages—based upon the halakhic law. While the first school of thought belonged to the “circular” way of thinking, this latter school of thought belonged to the linear/straight way of thinking, of masculine ethics and meticulousness—a “Let the law carve a hole in the mountain” mentality. The people of this school were straight and good, but their thinking was very linear.

So what was united in the prophets became split into two personalities in later times. With the spiritual downslide of the generations, these two directions—the wondrous and the practical—became split into two separate schools of thought. The cause of this development within the Jewish people was the difference between the First Temple and the Second Temple—prophecy existed during the First, but disappeared during the Second. This is how the rabbinical sages saw it. The Babylonian exile created a different paradigm of Judaism—the era of Scriptures was over. A period in history had come to a close, at least as far as mainstream Judaism was concerned.

But the early chassidim did not see things that way. However, since the rabbinical sages did, and they were the ones who shaped normative Judaism for the coming generations, this marginalized the chassidim.

In order to illustrate this, I now cite the conclusion of the Talmudic story of Choni haMaagal, who slept for seventy years.

Immediately after the story of the rain, the Talmud relates that Choni was always bothered by a verse in Psalms, “When God returns the exiles of Zion, we will be like dreamers.” The simple meaning of this is that when the people returned from Babylon, the entire exile seemed like a dream. Now, the Babylonian exile was seventy years, as known, so Choni asked himself, “What does this mean? Can someone sleep for seventy years?” One day, Choni was walking along and he passed someone planting a carob tree. In answer to Choni’s questioning him why he is planting a tree that takes seventy years to bear edible fruit, the man answers that he is planting it for his descendants, just as his forebears planted for him. Choni then has a bite to eat, lies down underneath the carob tree and falls asleep. And he sleeps for seventy years. Upon awakening, Choni sees someone eating from that carob tree that he had seen planted seventy years earlier. Choni asks, ‘”Are you the one who planted it. “No,” he answers. “I am his grandson.” Realizing that he has slept for seventy years, Choni proceeds into town to ask after his son, but is told that he has already died, but that his grandson is still alive. Telling them that he himself is Choni, they do not believe him. So Choni makes his way to the beit midrash [study hall], where people are in heated discussion on a Talmudic subject. Then he hears them say, “Ay! When Choni was still alive, he would enter the beit midrash and the matter would become clear as day.” “I am Choni!” he says, but no one believed him, and may have even ridiculed him. Frustrated, Choni goes out and begs mercy of God to take his life.

What is the Talmud trying to tell us here? It seems that the Talmud is trying to say with this story, “Choni! Your time has passed! Have you not noticed that there was a Babylonian exile? You are just like a person who slept through the seventy years of exile and upon awakening thinks that nothing has happened, that nothing has changed. Do you think that you can continue to live as if in biblical times? Don’t you realize that the world has changed!” Choni continues to beg, “Recognize me! I am still here!” But the Talmud tells him, “You are going around making miracles as if you were a prophet before the exile. But we have undergone a paradigm shift, and your time has passed.”

This is why the Talmud brings this story of Choni’s sleeping for seventy years immediately after the story of his bringing rain, and Shimon ben Shetach’s dissatisfaction about Choni’s ways. This was the critique of the rabbinical sages who compiled the Talmud—a critique against the Choni “circular” personality. History had changed, the rabbis argued. We are not living any longer during the times of the prophets!

To the sages’ credit, though, they did not omit the story altogether. They preserved differing opinions within their own tradition. All types of stories can be found in the rabbinical tradition, even stories of ways and ideas that differed from the ways and ideas of the sages.

Now we turn to the story of Shimon ben Shetach’s great witch hunting, a sad story however we look at it.

A certain tax collector, a ruthless person who collected taxes for the government and reported evaders to them, had died. That very same day, a great rabbi had also died in the same town, and the entire townspeople gathered to give him his last honor. Thus, going in the same direction were the funeral processions of the great rabbi accompanied by all the townspeople and that of the tax collector accompanied by his family. As they both reach the cemetery outside of town, a band of marauders attacks. All present from both processions flee for their lives, leaving behind both bodies. One student of the deceased rabbi, though, hides in the field, not wanting to abandon his beloved teacher. Eventually, everyone returns, each group to bury its dead. But for some reason, the two bodies are exchanged, and the townspeople take the body of the tax collector to bury in great honor. The student who had never left and was aware of the mistake cries out, “No! You’re making a mistake!” But no one pays him any attention, and the great rabbi is buried in the plot of the tax collector.

The student is extremely upset. What had his great teacher done to receive such a disgrace, and what had the tax collector done to receive such honor? That night, his teacher appears to him in a dream and tells him, “Don’t worry. Come and I will show you the honor I have been given in Gan Eden and the punishment that the tax collector is suffering in hell.” He shows his student how the hinge of the door of hell is swinging on the tax collector’s ear. The rabbi then explains to his student: I once heard a Torah student being dishonored and I did not protest. Therefore, I was punished. The tax collector, though, once prepared a meal for the governor, and when the governor did not come, he distributed the food to the poor. For this, he was rewarded.”

“How long will the tax collector suffer this punishment?” the student asks. “Until Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach dies and takes his place,” the sage answers. The student was shocked to hear this, but the rabbi explains, “Because there are Jewish witches in Ashkelon and Rabbi Shimon is doing nothing to stop them!”

This is how the story appears in the Babylonian Talmud, according to Rashi. However, an earlier source and version of this story appears in the Palestinian Talmud. There is a slight difference in that version. There, the issue held against Rabbi Shimon, according to the sage who appeared in a dream to his student, was that he had promised to uproot witches but had not done so. “When I will be appointed head of the court, I will put anyone involved in witchcraft to death!” Rabbi Shimon is quoted as saying. Yet, despite being appointed, he had not made good on his promise (it seems that even then, elected public officials did not keep their promises…).

Anyway, this student went and told Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach about the dream. What did Rabbi Shimon do? He immediately gathers eighty young and strong men on that rainy day, hands each one a large jug with a garment stuffed inside each one of them, and instructs them to keep the jugs upside down over their heads, to keep the clothes dry. Allotting one young man for each witch, he instructs them, “When you enter, each one of you must lift one of the witches off the ground. This will render them impotent.” So we see that when a witch is not touching the ground, she is unable to do any witchcraft. This is a very interesting concept that we will speak about shortly.

Rabbi Shimon leads the young men to the witches’ cave in Ashkelon, leaves them outside and enters alone. “Who are you?” they ask him. “I am a witch, like you, and I have come to exchange secrets,” he answers. “How did you get here on such a rainy day?” they ask. “I walked between the raindrops,” he replies, implying that he did this with magical powers. “Let us show each other what we can do,” he says.  So one of them utters a magic word and some bread immediately appears, a second utters another word and a different type of food spontaneously appears, and a third one utters yet a different word and wine appears. “So now,” they ask him, “what can you do?” “I have a special type of magic,” he says. “If I whistle twice, a young man will immediately appear for each one of you to give you a good time.” “Yes! Yes! Please bring them!” they all say enthusiastically. Rabbi Shimon had prearranged with the young men that with the first whistle they remove the dry garment from the jug and change into it, and with the second whistle they enter. Shimon whistles to them, they change into their dry clothes, and presto, like magic!—as least as far as the witches see—eighty young and virile men are after them. Each young man then sweeps one of the witches off her feet and carries her away to be hanged.

But there is a short and tragic continuation to the story. The families of the witches were very upset. Two of them came to court and testified falsely against Rabbi Shimon’s son, bringing the death penalty upon him. As he was being brought out to be stoned to death, he says, “If I have sinned, may my death atone for me, but if I have not sinned, may the responsibility be on the neck of the witnesses.” The witnesses hear this, and shuddering, begin to have regrets. They tell the judges that they had testified falsely out of anger towards Rabbi Shimon for putting their relatives to death. But Jewish law does not allow witnesses to retract their testimony, and the young man is put to death.

So Rabbi Shimon does not get off lightly from this story. He who had instituted to rely solely on two witnesses as the test of absolute truth, rather than even blatant circumstantial evidence, is forced to accept the testimony of two false witnesses who had fabricated their story so well as to pass the rabbi’s interrogations, and to allow his own son to be put to death.

There is great depth in this story. Shimon wants things to be as clear as day, rather than leaving them to the clouds of doubt. Therefore, he rules to pass judgment only upon the testimony of two witnesses. He is afraid of mistakenly incriminating an innocent man with circumstantial evidence, so he relies only on the interrogation of witnesses. But in the end, his own son is put to death following the guidelines that he felt were impeccable—two witnesses, two false witnesses who had come to avenge Shimon’s putting their relatives to death. In effect, it was the feminine principle that avenged itself from Rabbi Shimon—from him and his linear thinking which he so zealously followed. The circular people avenged themselves from the man of straight lines.

But let us return to the main point. Why does the Talmud make a point of stating that these were female witches? Because witchcraft is a classic example of the feminine principle, of something connected with women. In fact, the Talmud states elsewhere, “Most women are witches,” and, “One who takes many wives just increases witchcraft [in his home].” And this despite the fact that Scriptures and the Talmud are filled with stories of male witches, such as the magicians of Egypt and Babylon. Throughout Scriptures there is only mention of two female witches—Saul’s necromancer who brought up Samuel, and Queen Jezebel.

But on the other hand, the Biblical verse instructing to put witches to death speaks about the witch in the feminine. Why is this? The Talmud explains as said, because most women are witches. This is masculine thinking. The feminine world is a mystery to men, incomprehensible. What do women talk to each other about so much? What is the secret of feminine charm? Why do they drive men crazy so often? There is surely some witchcraft involved here…

One of the Jewish grammaticians of the Middle Ages, though—Rabbi Yonah ibn Janach—offers another explanation for the feminine form of the word witch in the verse. He says: the word in its feminine form is the proper noun for witchcraft and magic. He cites other Hebrew nouns like this that are gender neutral even though the words themselves are in the feminine form. In fact, elsewhere in Scriptures we find an explicit verse stating that the prohibition to practice magic and witchcraft relates equally to men and women. It is the Talmud, though, that states that generally speaking, most of those who practice witchcraft are women.

The truth is, as I said earlier, it is men who think that this is what women do. When men are involved in magic, that’s OK, but when women do things that men do not understand—that’s witchcraft and frightening. Everything women do together in their own company is perceived by men as a mystery. Birth and death are connected with the feminine principle, and is perceived as frightening. A woman is mysterious in a man’s eyes. This is the source of misogyny, the hatred of women arising from the fear of them. Every man originally emerges from a woman, but slowly and over time comes to identify himself as something different, while a woman grows to identify herself with her mother.

In all myths, in all dreams, in the depths of human psychology, mystery is connected with the feminine. Or in other words, woman symbolizes mystery. The soul is seen as feminine. All the five levels of the soul in the kabbalah are feminine words—nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah.

The feminine perception of reality is “circular.” A circle is cyclic, and this perception is connected with nature. Woman is “naturally” connected with the nature of reality much more than man. The monthly menstrual cycle parallels the cyclic orbit of the moon. In modern times, when artificial light illuminates our nights, women do not experience this connection. But when people lived closer to nature, underneath the light of the moon, they directly experienced the connection between their own cycles and that of the moon. In those days, women generally began menstruating with the new moon and began their ovulation with the full moon. Those who deviated from this were the exceptions. And the Festivals were dependent upon the cycle of the moon to set the months of the Jewish calendar. In fact, the moon itself is seen in Jewish tradition as being a feminine entity.

Woman thus experiences nature within her very own body. Woman is nature, cyclicity, life and death. In men’s consciousness, the womb is the place from where one comes and to where one returns. Male consciousness is involved, consciously and unconsciously, with returning there. And he ultimately returns to the earth, another symbol of femininity.

The grave is itself a sort of womb, in which one is sown like a seed and from which one grows, entering the grave with death and reemerging in reincarnation for another cycle of life. Therefore, the Talmud refers to the womb with the Hebrew word that means a grave. The womb is the source of life, but ultimately also the symbol of its end. This is a cycle. Woman is also connected with the earth, the earth is circular and connected with the kabbalistic sefirah of Malkhut, the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of the Divine. We can now understand why Shimon ben Shetach said that in order to dominate a woman, one must separate her from the ground.

I don’t know if those women in Ashkelon were really witches, and even if they were, if they were really doing anything harmful to anyone, but one thing is clear: they were a threat to Shimon ben Shetach’s world. For the masculine world, these women who celebrated in a cave in nature, and perhaps may have possessed some magical talents, were a source of fear. Their connection to nature was intimidating for male consciousness. Nature is foreign to male consciousness. Male consciousness feels out of place in the natural world. Therefore, for man, the natural world is something with and in which to do something—to “conquer nature.” Circular—feminine—consciousness, on the other hand, is just to be. To celebrate what is. From this perspective, we are nature. We are the cyclicity of nature. Therefore, religions with masculine consciousness aspire to be freed from the consciousness of life and death. This is quintessential masculine religion.

On the other hand, consciousness of love is quintessentially feminine. Those who worshiped the Great Mother gods did not sit around and meditate in search of freedom from the material world. Rather, their rituals were conducted in the forest, with good food and wine. They were celebrations of life and death. Celebrating cyclicity is feminine worship. But when men created institutional religions, they did so out of a base of fear of being trapped in that very cyclicity of life and death, of being trapped in nature, which for man is one big trap. So man is always asking himself, “Am I trapped or am I free?”

Man seeks to be free in every way. If he is a spiritual person, he will seek freedom by means of meditation. If he is a rational person, he will seek to master nature by means of scientific studies, rather than be mastered by it. Therefore, the basic effort of science during the twentieth century has been a search to establish all of existence on one principle. This is symbolized by the penis—a single pillar upon which the world can stand. The goal of masculine consciousness is to minimize chaos. The natural world is chaotic. Things just happen. Especially for women—it seems that something exciting is always happening to them. The world as such is an embodiment of the Shekhinah—the Great Mother. Things happen in this world that confuse a man, and as a man, one wants to make things simple, so after a woman has finished relating to her husband an entire drama, the husband bluntly says, “OK, darling, this is what you should do…”

To live in the cycle is to experience the drama of life, involvedness with life, a celebration of the emotions. Sometimes I am sad and sometimes I am happy. That’s the way it is, and it’s fun! It’s exciting for the feminine consciousness. But for the man, it is threatening. He always wants to solve problems, to take control of the situation. He feels safe only when things are resolved. But for the woman, the resolution is only a lull from life, for her excitement is to be involved in life’s drama. That is how she experiences that she exists.

Woman is nature. The kabbalah states that in Hebrew, “Nature”—haTeva—is numerically equivalent to Elohim, the feminine Name of God, in contrast to YHVH. Nature itself is perceived as circular in the kabbalah. Therefore, planet earth is round, the cosmos is seen as round, as the stars are round. Some even say that time is circular. Everything in the natural world is circular. In fact, the Talmud states that there is no thing in nature that is square. The only phenomenon in existence that is linear is consciousness. There is nothing in the objective world that is straight. Shimon ben Shetach represents linear thought, and therefore, for him, the circular is threatening. So he says to Choni, “If you were not Choni, I would put you into excommunication.” (From one of the listeners: If he had been Chanah rather than Choni, Shimon would not have been chonen her—pardoned her.)

What is interesting in Shimon’s world view is that in order to control a woman, one must separate her from the earth. On a deep level, this symbolizes how men seek to control women—by separating them from nature in all ways. How have men accomplished this? Most women you meet today are detached from their own natures. The tampon industry, for instance, is a male statement that women must conduct themselves “normally”—that is, like a man, who does not have a period. And if you must, hide it, so no one sees! That is considered nowadays, “normal.” Society teaches young girls to deny the basic cyclic nature of their femininity, telling them, “Be a man!” Therefore, 99% of the artificial skeletons used to teach the human body in biology classes are masculine in form. To be human is to be a man. There may be specific incidences of females, but men are representative of humanity.

And let’s be honest. If they were to bring in here right now a female skeleton to study it as a human body, we would automatically think with surprise, Why are they bringing in a female skeleton? For man, woman is just an exceptional case of the human species, and is not seen as truly half of what it means to be human.

But man’s job is not to fear the feminine, but to pass through that fear and to learn to know that way of being, as well. Every man fears the Great Mother. The question is only if one is aware of it or not, if one has gone past that fear or not. One must pass through it and come out on the other side. To reach a place where one can celebrate the feminine within, and to understand that one has therewith entered into the Great Mother—the Shekhinah, Who embodies everything: everything that one is, and everything in the environment. Everyone possesses a consciousness that is embodied within the Great Mother, within the material world, within the physical body that is entirely sensual. We are contained within the Shekhinah that gives birth to us into the world, and consumes us as Mother Earth when we die. It happens to everyone. So we fear Her. But our task is not to escape from the world, but to enlighten it. Not to flee from a woman, but to enlighten her and make her happy. Not to flee from the Shekhinah, but to conjugate with Her. Therefore, the witches were happy when Shimon ben Shetach told them that he would bring them eighty young and virile men who would lift them off their feet. That is what a woman wants—a man with charm who knows how to lift her. But to do so, a man must indeed be able to “walk through the raindrops”—not to become soaked by her emotional storms, but to approach her filled with humor. And rather than hanging them—to elevate them!

With permission from the soul of Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach, who has certainly undergone great transformation since then, I would like to say that it seems that he had a psychological problem with the fact that his life was saved by his older sister, Queen Shlomtzion. He owed his life to a woman in a very personal way, over and above being born to woman. In the depths of his personality, he develops a fear of this power of the feminine over life. And when it came to the witches, this fear became an enmity.

But together with this, let us remember that it was Shimon who instituted the ketubah to protect the woman. He did not hate women, but he hated witches.

Now I would like to reveal another layer: We spoke earlier about the educational system that Shimon instituted as obligatory. This was only meant for boys. And the woman that Rabbi Shimon protects is the woman who has bought into the male story, the woman who has legally entered into a contractual relationship with a man, relinquishing to him ownership of her body, relinquishing her sexual freedom to her husband. In vulgar terms, the ketubah says: “I will support you, feed you, take care of you, have intimate relations with you, but you must not have relations with any other man. I can take other women as wives or concubines”—until Rabbeynu Gershom came along—”but if you sleep with any other man, you will be put to death.” And even after Rabbeynu Gershom’s ban on polygamy, any man taking an extra wife is not treated as having committed a major crime. The traditional Jewish marital contract is based upon the husband’s ownership of the wife’s sexuality. This was the woman for whom Rabbi Shimon was concerned. Such a woman is not involved in witchcraft… A woman who has forgone her personal freedom and entered into a deal that has made her a legitimate member of male society. “If you accept these conventions,” the ketubah says, “then we will take care of you, honor you, and mortgage your husband’s possessions for your financial benefit.”

How shall I now end this class on a happy note?

Let’s go back to the stormy and rainy day on which Rabbi Shimon went to visit the witches. A storm represents that the Great Mother is storming now. The weather symbolizes Mother Earth’s current state of being.

If we enter into the minds of these witches, the men’s coming in dry on a stormy day is a wonderful fantasy—a woman’s “wet dream.” That is what they most want: that someone will come to them on a stormy day—a day when they are feeling overcast, weepy and stormy—and be able to remain dry. A woman says to herself about such a man: “He is not running away from me. He has come to meet me where I am. He is not moved by my storms. He is not afraid. He is not hiding. He even invites me to play with him—’I will bring you young and virile men…’”

This is what a woman is always saying without words: “When I am stormy, surprise me with your magic! You be the greater magician than I!” This is what all “witches” really want…

So we conclude now with a blessing for our times, when witches have begun again to celebrate: I wish for all of us that Choni haMaagal and Shimon ben Shetach reunite. If I had to choose between them, I would choose the academy of Choni, but I feel that this split is part of Judaism’s illness—the illness we call, “exile,” an illness from which we must heal. Part of our work today is to reincorporate the circle into the line, and to reestablish conjugation between them.

The time has come to throw an evening for rabbis and witches…