It is filled with recipes and incantations, examples of sympathetic magic and
bibliomancy as well as talismans
to ward of illness and demons.
Doesn’t sound very Jewish, does it?
The Torah is very clearly against this:
. . . you shall not learn to do
after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any
one who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or who uses
divination, or a soothsayer, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a
necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord;
(Deut. 18: 9-12)
Still, even with this injunction, there is a great tension
in our texts between the rational and the common. The rabbis could not escape
the fact that many of these remedies were popular and were seen, in a
pre-scientific world, as efficacious. However, this had to be balanced with
strong biblical injunctions against the use of magic – it being seen as “the
way of the Amorite” (based on the injunction in Lev. 18:3 not to “walk in their
ways).
How to allow some forms of magical healing without embracing the practice of idolaters?
The Mishnah allows certain magical items to be used “as a
prophylactic” according to Rabbi Meir – but:
THE SAGES FORBID THIS EVEN ON
WEEKDAYS ON ACCOUNT OF ‘THE WAYS OF THE AMORITE.’
So the rabbis suggest a distinction similar to what we saw
earlier (Shabbat 53b) about amulets:
Abaye and Raba both maintain:
Whatever is used as a remedy is not [forbidden] on account of ‘the ways of the
Amorite.’
That is to say – if it works it stays!
As a counter-point, though, an example is raised of a common
cure. If a fruit tree drops it’s fruits one paints it with a red dye and hands
stones on it. Now the stones are logical – they are intended to strengthen the
tree on the theory that it is simply not strong enough to keep its fruit. But
what does the red paint do?
That is
in order that people may see and pray for it.
Magic becomes logic!
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