In the public consciousness, the "possessed of Dimona" will take root, alongside the "dubbed witch" or the "X-ray from the streets", as another idiom that deepens the buffer between the center and the fringes in Israel
29.4.1999
By: Yoram Billo
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/dibukltd.html
The colorful history of the possessed disease, spanning more than 450 years, stretches between Safed and Dimona. The first recorded event of an exorcism of an evil spirit, which took up residence in a person's body, probably took place in Safed in 1545. The plot was none other than Rabbi Yosef Karo. The spell that held the body of the widow from Dimona, and was released by the Jerusalem Kabbalist Rabbi David Betsari, is for now the last case.
A cultural phenomenon that began, or was first recorded, in the Land of Israel in the middle of the 16th century and first spread in the Mediterranean basin among Sephardic communities returned to Israel at the end of the 20th century. This after in the previous century it took root among Hasidic communities in Eastern Europe until it became (with the help of Ansky, Vachtengov and " The stage") for a kind of nostalgic representation of the extinct shtetl culture. The customary in Tsari returns and opens a circle that seemed to have closed forever with the latest reports of Dibukov divorces at the beginning of the century. In doing so, he connects with his great grandfather, Rabbi Yehuda Fatiya, who expelled evil spirits from men and women in Baghdad, but also - surprisingly - with "Hafetz Chaim" (inspired by him in 1909 a spirit was expelled
from a girl in Katyn in Lithuania) and even to Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook (who in 1912 exorcised a spirit from a Sephardi boy in Jaffa).
In order to understand the return of the obsession, one must stand for the reasons for its disappearance in the first decades of the century. Anthropologists will have no difficulty identifying possession as a Jewish variation of possession states common in many cultures - states in which the universal human ability to enter a special state of awareness ("trance" or "dissociation") is shaped by a religious belief system, which assumes the existence of supernatural beings and Their ability to take over the bodies of humans.
Jewish mysticism, and especially the Kabbalistic theories of reincarnation and transmigration that developed in the 12th and 13th centuries served as a fertile ground for the emergence of the set of beliefs that explained the phenomenon, styled its expression
the behavioral ones and even gave birth to the dramatic elaborate healing ceremony.
In short, the possession episode was understood as a state of deviation and distress, resulting from the fact that the ethereal souls of great sinners, who did not even gain entry to hell, took over the body of their victim in order to escape the punishments imposed on them by a higher court.
The presence of the spirit (usually male) in the body of the victim (usually female) was evident in bursts of rampage and violence, in the display of superhuman powers, in rude speech in a male voice, and sometimes even in revealing hidden things and mastering a foreign language. The expulsion of the spirit is the result of a complex and multi-stage exorcism ceremony that begins with the identification of the spirit and its origins, continues with obtaining its willingness to leave and defining the conditions of departure, and ends with determining the exit organ (usually, as in the case of Dimona, the little toe of the left foot) and confirming the departure of the spirit.
The means at the court's disposal included oaths and boycotts, putting fire and sulfur smoke in the patient's nostrils and physical injury to his body. The ceremonies had a public and dramatic character: many times they were held in the synagogue in the presence of a large crowd, which assisted the deportation by chanting prayers and hymns, removing Torah scrolls from the Ark of the Covenant, blowing trumpets and lighting black candles.
As a distinctly culture-dependent disorder, all of its components, from the explanation of its formation through the shaping of the symptoms to the healing ceremony, were based on a cultural grammar and a shared system of symbols, possession could only grow in communities where these traditions were widespread and known. When these traditions began to weaken and crack due to processes of modernization and secularization, the possessed became a tangible symbol of ignorance and superstition in the eyes of rationalists and the educated and a battleground between them and the believers. The latter vigorously defended themselves against the mocking satires on the exploits of possessions and their plots that prevailed in the second half of the 19th century, but had difficulty dealing with the empirical claim regarding the reduction in the occurrence of possessions during this period. One narrow argument they put forward was that the spirits of sinners, who in the past became possessed, are nothing but the souls of the educated today.
Ensky also did not escape the wrath of the believers. In the Hassidic book from the end of the 20s, it is presented as follows: "Until a poker player (it's not worth mentioning his damned name) got up and made a joke out of it in theaters and circuses (like this) to make clowns." Ensky, unlike the early intellectuals, did not turn the possessed into a satire but into a poetic play imbued with mysticism. However, the overwhelming success of the play, and the fact that it was performed independently in Moscow, in Vilnius and by the pioneers paving the Haifa-Jeddah road (in 1922), was partly due to it being a nostalgic lament for a world that has passed, an elegiac, magical and ambivalent expression of the chasm that opened between the traditional father's house and the new living frameworks.
It is very doubtful whether Ensky, the first stage people and the pioneers of the third aliyah, imagined in their imaginations - even the wildest - that what in their day became an aesthetic experience, giving artistic expression to an exotic world, would return and evolve eighty years later into a "real" behavioral phenomenon that integrates the spirits as an "obvious" fact in reality the social
However, the surprise that was probably the share of the educated and the pioneers, if they were privileged to see the return of the possessed, should not be our share. At a time when mystical, esoteric beliefs
and irrationality, gain an unprecedented sophistication in the Jewish public;
When autistic and brain-damaged children are presented in shows as omniscient prophets; When preachers who send a bridle draw before a shocked audience tangible descriptions of what awaits them in hell if they do not repent; When doomsayers and messiahs, in the eyes of themselves or their congregation, make apocalyptic predictions in the mornings; And when the distribution of amulets and virtues brings political achievements in the elections - the mystical infrastructure and the cultural-spiritual ecology for the return of the spirits return and are created.
People in crisis situations everywhere give expression to their distressed situations through the cultural idioms and religious symbols that social reality invites them to. If the beliefs in reincarnations and ethereal souls seeking refuge from angels destroying the bodies of human beings are restored to the forefront - one could assume that the day will not be far when people in mental distress will turn these symbols into a means of expressing their distressed experiences.
The dramatic and suggestive nature of the possession phenomenon, and its dissemination in the media, raise the possibility that the possession of Dimona is nothing more than the first swallow in the wave of spirits that is about to hit us.
How to deal with the obsession? At the individual psychological level I have no doubt that a disorder so elaborately shaped by cultural codes can be most effectively cured by invoking the cultural logic that guides these codes. The ceremony of expelling the possessed indeed leads, step by step, in a systematic and almost mandatory manner, to its removal. Therefore, in the case of Madimon, as in similar cases, the Kabbalah in Israel is better than a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist.
It is important to note, however, that the proven effectiveness of the exorcism ritual as a form of therapy is not proof of the existence of spirits. From a psychodynamic perspective, the spirits made it possible in all periods and in all societies to maintain the "myth of passivity": under the protective and universally accepted guise that the behavior and speech during the attack originate from the spirit, the victims of possession could blatantly express impulses
Aggressive, sexual and anti-religious, which would not be allowed to be raised on Del's lips in any other context. The exorcism - the healing of the victim - was
At the same time the victory of the social order and the suppression of the hidden evils of the victims, mostly women. The possibility that the possessed
Medimona claimed that Deri Ishem was guilty - a claim that was later denied and deleted from the tape - could be interpreted according to the psychological logic presented.
It is not improbable that quite a few Shas supporters find it difficult to cancel the court's decision regarding Deri and harbor doubts about his innocence. Isn't Deri's charge by the Spirit an implicit expression of these doubts?
It is worth remembering, however, that the uniqueness of possession was not limited to the psychological level of individual healing. Throughout its four hundred years of existence, the exorcism ceremony was a kind of "moral theater", a public ceremony in which metaphysical entities and distant tenets of faith received quasi-empirical proof, a kind of "witness of the senses" that is difficult to deny. The possessed spoke from the mouths of their victims, identified themselves by name, described their past as sinners and what they find after their death. In detailed and tangible language, they told the shocked audience how they were caught in the crosshairs, were brought before a court of Ma'ale and faced terrible punishments at the hands of sabotage angels. It is difficult to think of a more effective means of returning the deviant and the hesitant to the belief in the life of the next world and the retribution of reward and punishment. It is no coincidence that so many of the reports end with descriptions of the religious awakening and repentance that surrounded the members of the community. It is also not a coincidence that these reports were repeated and distributed in many editions and with dramatic titles ("terrible act of the spirit") to teach morality and induce repentance.
Against the background of today's reality, when fundamentalists of all religions use advanced technology - from television to the Internet, it is not surprising that the expulsion ceremony of the possessed from Dimona was broadcast live on an ultra-Orthodox radio station and recorded on video that will be distributed to the public so they can see.
The humiliation suffered by the woman following the disclosure of her identity is of course a significant price for the real release from the predicament granted to her by the Kabbalah, at least temporarily. This humiliation has a collective dimension and not just a personal one. The prestige of the Kabbalist in Tsari, and perhaps also of the top of the Shas - to which, it was reported, he is close - may increase following the success of the deportation. But in the public consciousness, "the possession of Dimona" will take root, along with "the dubbed witch" or "the X-ray from the paths", as another idiom that deepens the
The buffer between the center and the fringes in Israel.
The writer is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University
The possessed - a true story about miracles and wonders
29.4.1999
By Boaz Arder
My duck started behaving amazingly yesterday. this is something
That happens once in a person's life and the little ones of faith may have a hard time
They will digest this and they will laugh, but it will not be possible to disprove the testimony she predicted
My whole family is in it.
We listened together to Razi Barkai's radio program, in which the rabbi narrated
The accepted in Israel for the people of Israel who are excited about the exorcism of spirits that they performed for the need
Removing the spirit of her dead husband from the body of a woman from Dyumana, while Razi
Sailing through the description of miracles and wonders, the duck began to drool frothy saliva
and go into ecstasy. I was amazed and frightened to see the duck that passed out
Meanwhile. A whimper began to be heard from his unconsciousness, which slowly became a voice
Deep bass. I recoiled in alarm when the call was heard:
-"Stand and listen!" Then in front of the frightened family he began to speak: "I am."
He is the messenger of the higher power, I know that you have fought all your life for my existence
But now you will know that the higher power has given that it does not exist
More... Starting today, know that reality is absolute
And objective and knowable..."
I was amazed to hear my deepest beliefs come out in a bass voice
Mysterious from the mouth of the quacking duck.
"You must leave the duck," I said firmly, "you will kill."
I have the duck!” I was very afraid of the duck that would crouch on the floor
unconsciously
"No, no," answered the voice, "I am here to guide you in your ways
The spirit continued his speech: "Now that the big boss is gone and there is no one
God, I have nowhere to go, I'm staying here, and besides, Deri
have to".
what? I was amazed, what are you even talking about? "Must, owe me money..."
He said and did not interpret.
Here the big duck came out of his convulsions and continued to waddle in the house and behave
as if nothing had happened. I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead and tried
digest the amazing event. We had a silence that lasted until the program of
Amnon Levy on Channel 2, so the duck in Zoyt Aino picked up the tape
The footage of the exorcism of the possessed and the phenomenon returning again; We talked about a garden
Heaven and Hell and I discovered amazing things that people are simple in general
are not aware of them.
Those of little faith will come to you and tell me that I don't have a duck at all
In general, I am known as a rational person who agrees and is ready to accept criticism
Rationally, but one should not escape the fact that the marginal individual
This just proves the magnitude of the miracle. Me and the duck are touring now
across the country and we have an extremely busy performance schedule in the medium
the media Maybe we will also run for elections.
The writer is the owner of the Ian Rand Philosophy Forum
