Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Byline: March 12, 5:00 PM

In our past article about the Kabbalist and Haredi rabbi story that we mentioned in a previous posting (cf. “Trolls are Not Welcome”), we touched on the magical thinking of a certain rabbi, who believes his words have incantational power over the lives of others. In our previous story, nobody at the party wanted to press charges against the rabbi. One cannot help but wonder whether they feared that the trollish rabbi’s curses might come to fruition. The entire incident reminded me of an old Stephen King book, “Thinner,” where a man named Billy Hallack (who happens to be an arrogant and obese attorney) accidentally kills an old gypsy woman with his car; the gypsy woman’s father, who is 106 years old, curses Billy by touching him and saying, “Thinner.” The curse causes the protagonist to be stricken with an incurable flesh-wasting disease and he must undergo a nightmarish journey as he confronts the forces of death.

Despite our modernity, as you can see, many of us still consciously inhabit a superstitious world.

Our prehistorical ancestors believed in the infinite power of thought, which gave rise to magical thinking. The Dutch religious thinker Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950), proposed that the ancient magician believed that he can control the external world by the use of words and spells. In the field of psychology, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose notion of the omnipotence of thought (die Allmacht des Gedankens) was basic to his argument. Primitive magical rites and words correspond to the obsessional actions and spell-like speech of neurotics, who believe that they can affect reality by their own thoughts and wishes. Freud writes in his in “Totem and Taboo” (1912-13a):

“The fact that it has been possible to construct a system of contagious magic on associations of contiguity shows that the importance attached to wishes and to the will has been extended from them on to all those psychical acts which are subject to the will. A general overvaluation has thus come about of all mental processes-an attitude towards the world, that is, which, in view of our knowledge of the relation between reality and thought, cannot fail to strike us as an overvaluation of the latter.

Things become less important than ideas of things: whatever is done to the latter will inevitably also occur to the former. Relations which hold between the ideas of things are assumed to hold equally between the things themselves. Since distance is of no importance in thinking — since what lies furthest apart both in time and space can without difficulty be comprehended in a single act of consciousness-so, too, the world of magic has a telepathic disregard for special distance and treats past situations as though they were present. In the animistic epoch the reflection of the internal world is bound to blot out the other picture of the world-the one which we seem to perceive.” [1]

Here is another passage where Freud expands on some of his earlier themes; as with the first selection, Freud’s diagnosis is no less apropos today than it was when he originally penned his words. Freud is deservedly, the first psychologist to truly understand the nature of religious pathology that has afflicted our particular age with a vengeance.

“These last examples of the uncanny are to be referred to the principle which I have called ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, taking the name from an expression used by one of my patients. And now we find ourselves on familiar ground. Our analysis of instances of the uncanny has led us back to the old, animistic conception of the universe. This was characterized by the idea that the world was peopled with the spirits of human beings; by the subject’s narcissistic overvaluation of his own mental processes [cf. lines 24-26]; by the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts and the technique of magic based on that belief; by the attribution to various outside persons and things of carefully graded magical powers, or ‘mana’; as well as by all the other creations with the help of which man, in the unrestricted narcissism of that stage of development, strove to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality. It seems as if each one of us has been through a phase of individual development corresponding to this animistic stage in primitive men, that none of us has passed through it without preserving certain residues and traces of it which are still capable of manifesting themselves [cf. lines 17-23], and that everything which now strikes us as ‘uncanny’ fulfills the condition of touching those residues of animistic mental activity within us and bringing them to expression.” [2]

Freud basically accepted Sr. James Frazer’s evolutionist schema of religion and applied it to the psychological development of the individual. It is the child’s experience of utter helplessness in a cruel and unpredictable world that gives rise to magical thought both in the child and in early man: magic is wish fulfillment. Freud was never able to substantiate his novel concept from ethnographic data supplied by anthropologists, but his theory does partially explain a little bit of the magical kind of thinking we see in neurotic individuals like the Kabbalist of our original story. Continue Reading

The Dietary Laws through the Prism of Ethnicity

Indeed, Sir James Frazer in his The Golden Bough, c. 21) describes other priestly castes and their unique dietary habits and tabooed foods.  The Jews were neither the first or the last people to develop such a dietary regiment.  Similar theories can be found in W. Robertson Smith (“The Religion of the Semites,” 270) who observes, “In view of the fact that almost every primitive tribe holds certain animals to be tabooed, the contention is that the forbidden or tabooed animal was originally regarded and worshiped as the totem of the clan; but the facts adduced do not sufficiently support the theory, especially in regard to the Semites, to allow it to be more than an ingenious conjecture. . . If the scriptural data are allowed their normal force, the spiritual and hygienic explanations are the correct ones.”

The Babylonian code, The Laws of Manu, also carried a prohibition against the eating of birds of prey, and the Babylonians permitted all animals (with the exception of the camel) that chewed the cud to be eaten because they were ritually “clean.” Likewise, in Egypt, the priests were enjoined against “defiling” themselves by eating fish devouring birds.

The hygienic approach was championed by none other than Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages in Spain. The argument, now supported by modern research, was that scaleless fish and the swine tend to produce diseases. Fish with scales and fins are generally better capable of swimming in cleaner waters. By the way, some kosher fish are bottom feeders like carp and perch.

Mary Douglas’s Approach

The term “clean” and “unclean” are simply figures of speech used to describe what is considered to be an acceptable type of sacrifice for the altar.

In historical terms, since the ancient Israelites were a pastoral people, it was only natural they would use various flock animals as their offerings. That, in my honest opinion, seems to be the simplest explanation, but there are certain wild animals that are “clean” in so far as they may be eaten, but are, nevertheless, not to be brought to the altar for ritual sacrifice. The wild ox or the giraffe are obvious and well-known examples. Some commentaries point out the reason for these animals are not to be brought to the altar was due to practical considerations; these creatures are not easily found like the flock animals are.

According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the terms “unclean” and “clean” are not to be construed as an indictment against their essential character as God’s creation. Quite the opposite: “Unclean is not a term of psychological horror and disgust, it is a technical term for the cult, as commentators have often pointed out. To import feelings into the translation falsifies, and creates more puzzles. The technique of delayed completion postpones the meanings until chapter 17.

At that point Leviticus commands the people not to eat blood, not to eat an animal that has died an unconsecrated death, i.e.,  an animal that has died of itself, or an animal torn by beasts, presumably with its blood still in it (Lev 17:8-16; see also Deut 14:21). The dietary laws thus support the law against unconsecrated killing. The Leviticus writer’s reverential attitude to life, animal and human, explains the animal corpse pollution rules. ‘Thou shalt not stand upon [profit from] another’s blood’ (Lev. 19:16). The case of the animal’s blood and the case of the human’s blood are parallel. Ritual impurity imposes God’s order on his creation.”