Battling The Evil Eye

TODD LEOPOLD and
DIANA LIEBERMAN

hen Ruth Tsoffar was growing
up, her mother wouldn't let her
use scissors after dark.
"You didn't use scissors at
night; you didn't sew at night,"
recalls Tsoffar, professor of Hebrew
literature and culture at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"It was all associated with demons. They come out at
night, and they're invisible. So if you use sharp objects,
you might inadvertently hurt them. But, as long as you
respect their space, they will leave you alone."
Sound familiar? Over centuries, Jews have developed
a catalog of superstitions to keep demons and other mes
sengers of misfortune at bay. To this day, many of those
rituals and utterances survive, half-remembered, trans-
formed, but familiar.
These distinctly Jewish superstitions are vestiges of our
ancient past and of our more recent history in eastern
European shteds andr North African villages. The ideas and
concepts they express offer a connection to our more mys-
tical Jewish roots as well as the richness of our history.
As Joshua Trachtenberg observed in his comprehensive
work, Jewish Magic and Superstition (Atheneum, 1975)
these superstitious practices never hurt. An example: A
professor, out for a walk, suddenly encountered a black
cat. He shied away in fright. A student laughed at him.
"You're not really afraid of a black cat, Professor!" he said.
"No," the professor replied, "of course, I don't believe in
such nonsense. But there's no harm in being careful."

A semblance of control

To quote the dictionary, superstition is an irrational
belief in "the ominous significance of a particular thing,
circumstance, occurrence.
Superstitions are ways of placating the fates. The
ballplayers who refuse to talk to a pitcher hurling a no-
hitter, the architect who makes sure his new skyscraper
lacks a 13th floor — all are trying to avoid bad luck or
catastrophe. The world is a complicated place, full of
randomness and the unknown. It's better to imagine
having a semblance of control in such a world.
That kind of thinking would appear to have little
place in Judaism. In many ways, Judaism is an utterly
rigorous belief system, full of laws, directives and reasons
for almost everything. But Judaism is a religion based on
faith as well as practice, and where there's room for the
unexplained, there's room for superstition — especially
over the course of several thousand years.
A divergence always existed between popular practice
and that which officialdom sanctions. Trachtenberg writes,
"There was a constant elaboration of ... 'folk religion' —
ideas and practices that never met with the whole-hearted
approval of the religious leaders, but that enjoyed such
wide popularity that they could not be altogether exclud-
ed from the field of religion in the diaspora."
Over the generations, superstition often has become
halacha (religious law) or minhag (custom), says Rabbi
Paul Yedwab of Temple Israel.
"In our e-mail rabbinic group, for example, we were

Todd Leopold is a freelance writer from Decatur, Ga.
Diana Lieberman is a staff writer for the Jewish News.

10/8
1999

The
baud-shaped
hamsa, along
with the image of ,
the eye, is believed
to ward off evil
spirits.