Rabbi Uram: Jewish ghost stories and the walking dead
As we brace ourselves for the sugar rush of Halloween, I thought it might be appropriate to examine some of the more dark and spooky sides of Judaism. Since, I wrote about Jewish notions of angels, Satan, and amulets a few months ago, Halloween seemed like a good time to share some background about ghosts, spirits, and hauntings.
There are several sources in the *Hebrew Bible that either allude to or make direct mention of ghosts. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the Children of Israel not to adopt the abhorrent customs of the native populations.
"Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to fire, who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviners, a sorcerer, one who cast spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar sprits or one who inquires of the dead (Deuteronomy 18:9-12)."
There are two interesting aspects to these verses: 1) the prohibition is not based on a larger ethical or theological reason. The essence of is to keep the Israelite separate from other peoples, and 2) the Bible assumes the world of magic, ghosts, and spirits is real.
There is an incredible story about contacting a ghost that appears later in the Hebrew Bible. When King Saul fears the approaching Philistine army and does not know what to do, he prays to God for help. When he receives no answer, he seeks out the help of a woman in Endor (1 Samuel 28) who knows how to communicate with the dead. Saul asks her to rouse the prophet Samuel so that he can ask his mentor for help.
The scene is vivid as Samuel grumpily rebukes Saul saying, "Why have you disturbed me and brought me up?" Saul does not get the help he wants, but it is clear that by contacting the dead, he has committed some sin.
In contrast to the rules in Deuteronomy, the act of consulting with ghosts in this story has a deeper meaning. It is viewed as crossing some line that undermines the natural order of the world as determined by God, and in doing so, amounts to kind of denial of God's power.
Ghosts also make appearance in different places in the Talmud and well as in medieval Jewish literature.
The whole possibility of ghosts rests on the idea of an immortal soul that can hang around in the world of the living. One Jewish notion of the soul is that it is comprised of three parts: The 'neshamah' that ascended and reconnects with God, the 'nefesh' which wanders around in the same places where the dead once lived, and the 'ruach', that stays forever near the body at the graveside.
While the precise definitions of these terms are never fully fixed and were sometimes used interchangeably, some form of the soul has the ability to walk among the living and create all sorts of chaos and suffering (see "Jewish Magic and Superstition" by Joshua Trachtenberg). There are examples of Jewish ghosts causing sickness, ghosts fighting with each other, and even ghosts going to synagogue to pray.
In one medieval work, the author warns that ghosts are particularly connected to the places where their homes once stood. In order to protect the living from any kind of haunting, a complex protocol for building homes is suggested. First, do not build a home where another home once stood. If you must, build it from wood, which is more permeable for ghosts who want free access to their old dwelling places. If for some reason stones must be used, make sure to build it with the windows in the same place as the pervious home to allows the spirits to come and go with ease lest you anger them and cause some kind of supernatural retribution.
In closing, I want to offer two observations:
1) While I find these sources amusing, it is important to point out that this folklore is just that. They are legends and superstitions that made there way into Jewish tradition, especially during the medieval period, but they do not, for the most part, represent active tenants of modern Judaism.
2) These ideas can offer one piece of wisdom to the modern person. We are certainly more scientific and rational than our medieval ancestors, but they were ahead of us in one area: they understood how to embrace the mystery of living. While science and technology improve our lives in immeasurable ways, they also delude us into thinking that everything that we think, feel and intuit can be explained empirically. We know that this is not true. Some of the best parts of living are the experiences we have that transcend the logical and play on our sense of the mystery of the Universe.
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*Note: I use the word Hebrew Bible on purpose rather than Old Testament which implies that it has been superseded by the a New Testament. This is the proper way to refer to the Jewish bible both from a sensitivity standpoint and from an academic standpoint. The Hebrew Bible differs from a Christian Bible in two major ways: 1) it does not include the material of the New Testament, and 2) it is retains the ancient order of the individual books that is different from how they are ordered in a Christian Bible.