 I want to just say that this talk tonight is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Foundation and the Fairfield Judaic Studies Program. I'm thrilled to be able to introduce Dr. Sarah Ronas, who's associate professor of theology at St. Mary's University of Texas. Dr. Ronas holds a PhD in ancient Judaism specializing in the Talmud from Yale University, a BA in Near Eastern Judaic Studies from my Brandeis University. Her first book, Demons in the Details, Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in the Babylonian Talmud, looks at demonic discourse in the Talmud in its legal narrative and sociocultural context. Tonight's talk is entitled Rabbis and Demons in Late Antiquity. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Sarah Ronas. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Diner. Thank you to the Center for Judaic Studies and Maria King for all of the logistical support and thank you to the Bennett Foundation for making tonight possible. I want to start actually with a little bit of a survey. So before I say anything, can I get a show of hands? Do Jews believe in demons? Raise your hand if you think the answer is yes. Okay. Okay. Raise your hand if you think the answer is no. Okay. Excellent. So I'm going to, my highly scientific assessment is that it was about 50-50, um, based only on my own estimation. So for the folks in the room who said yes, in the first half of tonight's talk, we're going to talk about the classic Rabbinic texts that, that describe and deal with demons. If you think Jews believe in demons, there are really good reasons for that. In the second half of tonight's talk, those of you who said no, we're going to look at why it is that you think the answer is no. And again, there are some really good historical reasons for that as well. Ultimately, what I want to leave you with is this. Yes, some Jews in some times and some places believe in demons. And not only that, but their approach to demons is creative, it's rigorous, and it's theologically important. We can learn a lot about people from looking at their demons and looking at how and why they disappear. So I started thinking about demons when I was a grad student and I was preparing to teach a 10-part community class at the Slivka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, which is Yale's version of a Hillel, but we're too snooty to have a Hillel. So the, the Slivka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, the, the class was supposed to be a 10-part class on the Talmud. The Talmud is the classic work of the rabbis of late antiquity. And if you're not sure, late antiquity is the fancy term for like, let's say the second century until the seventh century CE. All right. So we're talking sort of post-Jesus pre-Islam. That's late antiquity. Everyone with me? Okay. I know it's a Thursday. I know it's nighttime and I know the weekend is coming. So I might be checking in a couple of times. So the Babylonian Talmud is this classic rabbinic work of this period. And the rabbis were a Jewish scholastic elite who lived in the land of Israel in the province of Roman Palestine, which you can see on this map in the light green under the sort of broader province, Roman province of Syria. And they also lived in Babylonia in a province of the Sassanian Empire. And here you're looking in the pink bit in the middle. Between the third and sixth centuries CE, the rabbis of Babylonia authored and edited an enormous collection called the Babylonian Talmud. This text is a compilation of legal discussions, stories, biblical interpretation and law, legal decisions. Some of its teachings are anonymous and many others are attributed to identifiable people or schools of thought. And in the Talmud, the rabbis engaged in the back and forth discussions about basically every aspect of Jewish life, including some you haven't even thought of yet. So I was pretty excited to teach this class at the Slivka Center on the Talmud and I knew exactly what I was going to do for nine of the classes. But remember, I said this was a 10-part class, so I had no idea what to do for the 10th part. And I was talking to my friend Aviva and she said, why don't you look at all the weird demon stuff in Traktate Psachim. And if you're not sure, we're going to talk about Traktate Psachim in a minute, so just put a pin in that. So I looked at it and I thought, yeah, this is real weird. And then I looked at a bunch of academic commentaries on the text and I didn't really find anything. And I looked at the religious, medieval and early modern analysis of this text and I didn't really find anything. And I thought to myself, why this might be a dissertation topic, right? When you're trying to find something to write a paper on that nobody else has really had that insight, it's like this is staring me in the face. So it became my dissertation. And then with substantial more work, it became my first book, Demons in the Details. Because what I found is that demons are a really important lens through which to see how different communities think about good and evil, the nature of God, and how to be a person in a world that doesn't always work the way you want it to, which I think is something that actually most of us can kind of get behind. And because so many different religious communities believe in demons, they're also a great way to see how and when different groups interact with each other, sometimes sharing beliefs across religious lines, and sometimes disagreeing with each other and taking really different stands, sometimes calling each other out for being wrong, and sometimes only doing it subtly. And you kind of have to know, you kind of have to know what's going on to figure out what shade they're actually throwing. So I want to start our demonic journey this evening by looking at four fascinating texts from the Babylonian Talmud. And the first one that I want to start with is the one that I started with many years ago from Tractate Psachim. So Tractate Psachim is all about the holiday of Passover. So could I just get another show of hands? Who here has ever attended a Passover Seder? A Seder. Okay, awesome. If you haven't, don't worry. I'll let you know what you're missing out on. The Jewish holiday of Passover celebrates the Israelites' liberation from enslavement in Egypt, and it does so with particular rituals, foods, and prayers. In Tractate Psachim, the Babylonian Talmud spends a lot of time thinking about the rules of Passover as well as the stories that we tell. What you can eat, what you can't eat, what you can own, what you can't own, and what to do on the ritual meal on the first night of Passover, that meal that tonight, today we call the Passover Seder. A key component of the Passover Seder, and I'm guessing for some of the younger folks in the room, this might be what you think of most, is drinking four cups of wine. Now the rabbis of the Talmud are very detail-oriented, so when they say you have to drink four cups of wine on the first night of Passover, we should expect a lot of follow-up questions. Questions like, what kind of wine? How big should each cup be? How much of each cup do you need to drink? How quickly do you need to drink each cup? But the rabbis, and just to be fair, the rabbis ask all of those questions later on, but the very first thing that they follow up with this statement that you need to have four cups of wine on the first night of Passover, their concern is very different. How could our rabbis institute something that would ultimately lead to danger? Four cups of wine are dangerous. Okay, and if you're thinking to yourself, yes, alcohol poisoning is real, true, not what they're worried about. For surely it was taught in an earlier tradition. One should not eat in even numbers or drink in even numbers, nor wipe himself in even numbers after you go to the bathroom, nor fulfill one's sexual needs in even numbers. Apparently, as the rabbis thought, everybody knew, like we all know this, doing particular things in even number of times is especially dangerous. But why? The rabbis' answer to their own question reveals their rationale. So Ravnachlan Bar Yitzchak responds, no, no, it's okay to drink four cups of wine on the first night of Passover and only the first night of Passover, because the book of Exodus describes the night that the Israelites came out of Egypt as a night that is guarded. God guards the Israelites on this night, which, obviously, means it is a night that is guarded from the demons. Ravnachlan's answer suggests that the danger of drinking four cups of wine is demonic. Something about doing all kinds of things in even number of times is specifically provocative and offensive to demons, and watch out if you offend a demon. So let me take a giant step back for a minute, because at this point many of you might be going, huh? Basically, everyone in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East believed in demons. People thought demons were real, often physical, like had bodies you could see and touch, beings that had more power than humans, less power than gods, and could and did affect human life in all kinds of mostly not great ways. And I want to be really clear here, these demons weren't metaphors. They weren't symbols for bacteria or mental illness. So when Ravnachlan says that demons will attack you if you drink four cups of wine on an average night of the year, meaning any night but Passover, he means that literally. But not to worry, because apparently on the first night of Passover, God overrides demonic dangers and watches over the wine drinkers. Okay. But that's not the only Ribbonic solution offered, so let's keep reading the passage. Rava, a different rabbi, said the cup of blessing on which grace after meals is recited, which is the third of the four cups, combines for good things, but not for bad things. So Rava explains that it's not actually four cups of wine that you drink on the first night of Passover. It's actually three cups of wine and one cup of wine. Both odd numbers, so you're good. Finally, Ravina said, each cup is a separate commandment, and thus they do not combine to create a total number that is either odd or even. It's not four cups, it's one plus one plus one cups. All odd numbers. Nothing to look at here, folks. So let's unpack. On the one hand it's funny. I think we can all name, it's a little goofy. On the other hand, let's look at what these three different statements tell us about demons. So according to all three of the positions that we just read, the one from the previous slide from Rev Nachman, and then these two here, rabbinic reasoning neutralizes demonic dangers. The rabbis' creative math means demons won't get you on the first night of Passover. But more than that, apparently demons respect the rabbinic calendar. They know when it is Passover, and so God is watching out. They keep up with complicated rabbinic math. If you look at one plus one, you might think, oh that's two. Unless of course you're a demon who knows it, it's the first night of Passover, and you know that each of the cups is a separate commandment, and therefore they're all odd numbers. That's a lot to know. For a person, never mind a demon. They accept rabbinic insistences that the number four is really made up of odd numbers, even if logically that math doesn't quite work. Why are even numbers provocative to the demons? That might be our next question. Why don't demons like even numbers? The text doesn't tell us, and we don't have evidence for this particular belief from any other nearby culture at the time. So this idea that even numbers is particularly offensive to demons only shows up in the Babylonian Talmud. But it's worth noting that the danger has nothing to do with being drunk, because an easy solution to this, and I don't recommend you try this at home, is a fifth cup of wine. If you just have a fifth cup, you haven't had an even number. Don't do that on behalf of your liver, but it's clearly the concern isn't being drunk. So from this text from Tractape Sahim, we can see that demons are invested in and part of rabbinic teaching. They know what the rabbis are doing, and as long as you follow the correct teachings, as long as you don't drink an even number the other nights of the year, you're actually fine. The demons won't get you if you're not offending them. But demons don't just respect rabbinic math. They also respect the rabbis. So I want to show you a remarkable text from another tractate in the Talmud. This is from tractate Chulin that shows a story about just how much demons respect the rabbis. And it's a lot of text. I'll read it, don't worry, but I know some people like to have the text in front of you. So for those of you who like to have the text, it's here. Certain porters were once carrying a barrel of wine. Wanting to rest, they placed the barrel under a rain spout. Now, as we all know, underneath rain spouts is a classic place where demons like to hang out. And as we also know, demons can sometimes be invisible. So these poor porters put their barrel under a rain spout, the barrel burst. The barrel bursts. They went before Mar Baravashi, this is a major rabbinic judge at the time. He excommunicated the demon who lived under the rain spout. So basically the demon bursts the barrel and then they take him to court because they've suffered property damages. The demon came before Mar Baravashi and said to him, what should I have done to those men? For they placed the barrel on my ear. So it was hurting him so he had to remove it. Mar Baravashi said to him, even so, in a place where people are commonplace, you did not have the right. You acted improperly. Now go and pay for the barrel of wine. The demon said to him, I do not have the money. Set a date on which I will pay. He set a date but the demon did not come on that day to pay for the barrel. When he came at a later date, Mar Baravashi said to him, why did you not come on time? The demon said to him, we have no right to take anything that is tied up, sealed, collected or counted. So we can only take things that are in a state of ownerlessness and thus it took me longer to collect the money. Okay, let's unpack a lot of what's happening here. Certain spaces are marked as demonic and this demarcation means that they are safe spaces that are safe for demons to occupy. Now this demon was not looking for humans to attack. He was just chilling under his reins about doing his thing. It's only when the porters ignominiously place a barrel on his ear that he reacts with violence and even then he doesn't respond violently to the porters but to the barrel of wine to get it off his ear. Mar Baravashi then excommunicates the unnamed demon, an act that the demon resists. Though presumably the demon is originally invisible because otherwise the porters would have seen him and not put the barrel there. He now literally appears before the court to explain himself. Mar Baravashi rules that the demon should have been more aware of humans in a public space and finds him financially liable. Now according to the logic of the narrative then, the demon is a law abiding citizen with all the rights and responsibilities that this identity entails. The demon eventually resolves his perceived rejection of the court's deadline for repayment by explaining that he's actually a little late because he was so respectful of rabbinic limitations on when demons can pick up cash. They don't hold jobs, they have to collect it somehow. The demons presumed membership in the rabbinic community is highlighted in Mar Baravashi's initial excommunication of the demon. You can't expel somebody from your community who was never in your community to begin with. It's literally in the name, right? Excommunication, that's the community piece. The demon's response, right, rushing to the court to defend himself, suggests that he also sees himself as part of this same community. He's not just like, all right, peace out, right? He's like, no, no, no, I'm a part of this community. Let me explain it. I want to be here. If you think this is weird, and I'm guessing from some of your faces that some of you do, let's look at another text. And if you're used to thinking of demons as angry and malevolent, let's look at one that is going to challenge that even more. A little background. The rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia lived in two major rabbinic centers, Sura and Pumbedita. According to Google Maps on modern roads, it would take about 37 hours to walk on foot from one to the other. But the rabbis had a tradition that somebody taught rabbinic law in both centers on the same Sabbath. Depending on your math, the Jewish Sabbath is either 24 or 25 hours. So given that you have 25 hours and it takes on modern roads, 37 hours to get between the two places, you have a problem, right? How could somebody teach in both places on the same Shabbat? So who could have done it? Come in here. Who was it that taught seven legal traditions on a Sabbath morning to Ravchizda at Sura, ignore the typo, and on the same Sabbath evening to Rava at Pumbedita? Was it not Elijah the prophet who delivered them? I mean, for those of you who know your Bible, Elijah the prophet never dies, he gets carried up in a fiery chariot. So maybe he, you know, like in Back to the Future, where he has the flying car, like maybe this flying chariot can get him from one place to the other real quick. Or it is possible that the demon Joseph delivered them. Once demons are part of the rabbinic tradition, and they're part of the legal system, they have the freedom to excel within it and succeed according to rabbinic metrics of success, Torah knowledge, and religious authority. I found no parallels to this phenomenon in other contemporaneous cultures. Even then, you might be wondering, if these creatures are at best positive members of the rabbinic movement, at worst maybe neutral, if easily provoked, should we really even be calling these beings demons? Right? If what I'm describing doesn't sound like what you may have seen in The Exorcist or any one of the many paranormal activity films, should we be calling this demons? So I want to turn to the way that most people think about demons today, which is in fact, exorcism. So I want to turn to the only rabbinic story in which a demon is exercised from a human being in the Talmud. And if you've seen The Exorcist or you know the basic plot, which I'm going to spoil for you right now, a kid is possessed by a demon and they need to be exercised. I won't tell you what happens at the end, but that's your basic tag line. If you've seen that, this story is going to surprise you. And what I want to show you is the way that the rabbis use stories of demonic exorcism to be in conversation with the surrounding religious and ethnic groups. But when I say conversation, it's worth reminding ourselves that sometimes conversations can be really pleasant and collegial, and other times they can be heated or angry. So being in conversation can go either way. Before we look at the actual conversation, the actual text, let's think for a minute about, right, I said there is one text with an exorcism of a demon in the Talmud. To be clear, Jesus performs exorcisms all over the New Testament. And we have lots of evidence that other Jews in this period were active exorcists. The rabbis did not think that demons attacked by entering the body, in part because as we've already discussed, they don't really think demons attack at all if you just, you know, are not particularly offensive. Based in a world where everybody else thinks demons can attack and possess people, the rabbis have to figure out how do we live in a world where everybody else believes a thing that we don't, right, where we are a religious minority and other communities don't share our beliefs about demons. And so the rabbis tell a story which uses this difference in demonology to make a particular point about Jewish life. So let's look at the story. And again, I'm going to tell you the story, but for those of you who like the text. An unnamed Roman emperor decrees that the Jews are forbidden to keep the Sabbaths, to circumcise their sons, and to keep various purity laws. When they find out about it, a small group of rabbis journey to Rome to beg the emperor to reconsider his decree. Now, according to the story, the rabbis who embark on this journey live in Roman Palestine. But the story is being told by Babylonian rabbis and it doesn't exist in any Palestinian literature. So it's probably worth thinking about here as a Babylonian rabbinic fable or legend and not as a historical account from people who actually experienced this. Now, as this group of rabbis journey to Rome, they meet the demon Ben Thalamion. And together with Ben Thalamion, they come up with a plan to convince the emperor to annul his decree. Ben Thalamion uses his demonic ability to move large distances in the blink of an eye to run ahead of the rabbis. And that should make you think about Joseph the demon from the last text who can jump, you know, 37 hours within way less time, right? Same skill. He jumps ahead of the rabbis. He enters into the body of the emperor's daughter and he refuses to leave it. He essentially possesses her in the ways that the Roman emperors would recognize. The rabbis eventually make it to Rome and at this point, the emperor's daughter has been possessed for a while and the emperor is distraught about his daughter's condition. And who wouldn't be? He promises that anyone who can successfully exercise his daughter can have anything they want from the imperial treasure house. So the rabbis literally stage or perform, right? And I mean that in the, right, like they're performing an exorcism announcing Ben Thalamion leave, Ben Thalamion leave. And he does. At this point, the emperor's daughter is healed. The emperor says, yeah, you can take anything you want from my treasure house and they go in, they find the decree against the Jews and they rip it up. That's the story. The story reads like a traditional fairy tale, right? It's like your classic folktale. But it shows us some really fascinating nuances of rabbinic demonology. First, though the rabbis don't actually imagine that demons attack people by entering into their bodies and piloting them, they clearly know that people do believe that in the Roman West. And they're willing to play along, at least in their stories, in order to create a safe space for Jewish faith and practice. Second, it's worth spending a minute thinking about the demon Ben Thalamion. Ben Thalamion is absolutely not an evil demon out to cause harm, right? Hopefully when you read the story, you realize, yeah, he's possessing this person, but he's actually like one of the heroes in the story. He has a very strange name, right? Ben Thalamion is a weird name. Already in the 1880s, Israel Levy demonstrated that the name Ben Thalamion is actually an Aramaic version of the Greek name Bartholomew. In Christian tradition, Saint Bartholomew has a special connection to demons. In the fourth century Greek composition, the questions are gospel of Bartholomew, the resurrected Christ gives Bartholomew a full lecture on demonology. Demonology becomes Saint Bartholomew's thing. In Pseudoabdias, which is a text probably from about 200 years later, Bartholomew shows up as an extraordinary exorcist. He has now taken these teachings and run with them. In this account, right, in Pseudoabdias, the local gods in whatever city they're in are demons who've taken possession of the people, making them sick and only agreeing to cure them in exchange for sacrifices. Bartholomew shows up in town and releases the people through exorcism, including the daughter of the king, Polymias. The king is so grateful that he offers Saint Bartholomew gold and precious gifts, but Bartholomew says no. Instead of money, I just want to tell you about Christianity so that you understand it and maybe become Christian. So he exercises the king's daughter to create a status of protection and safety for his own community. Sound familiar? The parallels between Bartholomew the exorcist in Pseudoabdias and Bentholomew the demon in the Babylonian Talmud are pretty apparent. Richard Kalman has argued that both stories are the result of writing down oral traditions circulating in this region in the time. Kalman argues that these traditions are based in part on the New Testament, which explicitly states that Jesus gave the 12 apostles authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to cure every disease and sickness. But where the apostles gain authority by exercising demons, the Babylonian rabbis gain authority by integrating demons into the rabbinic system. Demons become allies and accomplices of the rabbis. Bartholomew brings the kingdom of Polymias to true Christian faith, say that ten times fast. Bentholomew brings the kingdom of Rome to an understanding and acceptance of Judaism. And in so doing, he upholds the rabbis as the most effective and most appropriate leaders of the Jewish people. They're the ones who were able to figure this out. It's worth noting just how weird this is. I said that before and I'll probably say it again and it's still true. Jews in the second temple period clearly believe in malevolent demons. We see this both in apocryphal books, books that didn't make it into the canon, like the book of Tobit, which is all about a harmful demon attacking people and needing to be exercised. And in perhaps some of the most famous second temple Jewish literature, the ones that made it into the New Testament. Jesus opposed evil demons, exercises demons all over the place. Again, it's kind of his thing for large parts of the gospels. Closer in time to the rabbis, other Jews in Sasanian Babylonia clearly believe that demons are harmful outsiders. The rabbis are only one group of Jews in the region, in this period. They're one group of many different Jewish groups in this region, right? The idea of Jewish diversity, not a new idea. It's true back then. And another group of Jews dealt with the danger they saw in demons by producing Babylonian incantation bowls. These were bowls that had images of demons on the inside. They had incantations wording demons away, like stay away, get out, get out, written on the inside. And then they'd be buried upside down at the corners of a house. So the two major scholars of this nevenge had argued that they sort of functioned like mousetraps, right? As a demon's trying to get in, they would catch it. And yet the rabbis take a totally different approach, essentially neutralizing demonic danger by including demons in the rabbinic community. By neutralizing demons through the law, the rabbis established themselves, who are the masters of the law, as those most qualified and capable of leading the Jewish people, think back to that court case, demons included. They do so as part of a broader empire-wide demonic discourse which created new opportunities for the construction of identity in conversation with other religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups. Demons became a point of shared terminology, exorcism, as well as an opportunity for religious differentiation, both within the Jewish community and in inter-religious contexts. And this religious differentiation should not actually surprise us. The Zoroastrian rulers of the Sasanian Empire were dualistic. They understood demons as malevolent creations of the evil god Aherman. Christians at the time had a concept of a semi-independent or totally independent, depending on what kind of Christian you were, Satan, who worked to oppose God's will. And so demons were Satan's minions. But the Jewish rabbis of the Sainian Babylonia were forced to integrate the demonic into a worldview in which one god, and only one god, created both positive and negative forces in the world. And with that, they had three basic options. Option one, God created evil and is therefore somewhat evil. The rabbis were not going to take that approach. Two, God is entirely good. Demons, however, somehow evil and maybe outside of divine control. The rabbis are not going to take that approach either because God is in control of everything according to their theology. Option three, God is good and has created demons who themselves are, if not entirely good, at the very least not evil. And the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud chose this third option. Demons were at worst capricious and dangerous when threatened and at best legal actors and teachers in the rabbinic system. And this is a move that actually monotheistic Muslims are going to adopt about 150 years later when they move into the region. Now, hopefully at this point I've convinced you that the Babylonian rabbis clearly believed in demons. Anyone still unconvinced? Okay, good. And not only that they believed in demons, but they integrated demons into their legal system and their theology. Demons are all over the Babylonian Talmud from the Passover Seder to the court of law to the synagogue. So in the rest of our time together, I want to shift gears now and talk about why so many people today don't know about how important demons are to at least some kinds of Judaism. So first of all, let me be very clear. Lots of Jews today do still believe in demons, both within particular religious and ethnic communities and across them. Because this is kind of the topic of my book, I give lots of talks in various contexts. Almost every time at least somebody comes up to me, tells me that they're Jewish and tells me about an experience that they or a family member have had with a demon. And whatever you're picturing in your head when you're picturing what this Jew looks like, you're probably wrong. I mean the whole spectrum. So lots of Jews today do still believe in demons. Maybe they don't talk about it as much, but I don't want to make it sound like they don't. Yeah, where was I? I got excited about Jews who believe in demons. Okay, but to understand why then so many Jews and non-Jews think that, of course, Jews don't believe in demons. I want to look at three particular moments in Jewish history. Medieval North Africa, 19th century Germany and 20th century America. So first, to Medieval North Africa. How are we doing on time? Perfect. So the North African commentator, Rabbi Isaac Alfasi or the riff, lived in the 11th century. He compiled an early code of Talmudic law called Sefer HaHalachot. And to create his compilation, he basically made a series of judgments. He read the whole Talmud and he pulled out the pieces that he thought these are the legal pieces. This is the law stuff, not the story stuff. And when he decided what parts were the law stuff, he left out all of the demon stuff. But as we've already seen from that very first text from Tractape Sahim, demons show up in legal discussions too. But the riff chose to exclude them from his law code because he thought demons just, he just didn't think they were normative law. And that approach eventually is followed a generation later by the Jewish philosopher and also legal codifier, Maimonides. In his articulation of Jewish law, Maimonides expands the riff's take on demons as not legal into a broader moral stance. And he rails against superstitious people who, and I'm quoting here because just that good, are seduced by talismanry with great folly and with similar things and think that they are real, which is not so. And these are things that have received great publicity among the pagans, especially among the nation that is called the Sabians, and they wrote works dealing with the stars and witchcraft and incantations and calling upon spirits and horoscopes and demons and soothsaying and all their forms. End quote. That's some harsh language, right, foolery, great folly. In his desire to cast rabbinic literature in a rationalist life, Maimonides explained that demons are really just people who are missing a rational soul. A so-called demon is really just an animal in the form and likeness of a person. An evil person is what he thinks a demon is. Now Maimonides is a foundational figure in Jewish thought and Jewish law. When I put his name up here, I saw some folks nodding along. And so his rejection of the demonic had a huge impact, especially on Talmudic demonology. But the real crux of the rejection actually happened almost a thousand years later in 19th century Germany. Judaism first became a subject of academic study, and by academic here I mean not in exclusively religious schools, so in universities, in the 19th century. The academic study of Judaism was spearheaded by the Wissenschaftes Judentum, which translates from the German to the scientific study of Judaism, which is a group of German Jewish scholars. And these scholars insisted to the Jewish community and to the broader public that Judaism deserved to be studied in German universities. Their work was political, intellectual, and deeply theological, and they made their case in part by presenting a Judaism that was just as, using scare quotes here, rational and spiritual as Protestant Christianity. And so they downplayed elements of Jewish tradition, legal, ritual, and irrational, that didn't fit this 19th century German model of religion. Angels, demons, miracles, and popular religious practices were dismissed as primitive or as foreign and inauthentic to true Judaism. They might be present, we can't get rid of them if you read the Talmud they're there, but they're not really Jewish. In 1866 the Hungarian rabbi and scholar Alexander Kohut described rabbinic demonology as quote, an alien product obtained through contact with the Persians and the Medes in the Exilic period. In 1893 German historian Heinrich Gretz echoed this approach. He faulted the Talmud for containing the various superstitious practices and views of the Talmud's Persian birthplace, which presume the efficacy of demoniacal medicines, of magic incantations, miraculous cures, and interpretations of dreams and are thus in opposition to the spirit of Judaism. The demons are there, but they're only there because we kind of got corrupted by the Persians we lived among. Such scholars dealt with what they saw as an irrational and primitive rabbinic demonology by dismissing it as a foreign corruption. They assumed the rabbis must have included it in their sacred corpus, either because they had themselves been corrupted, or because they knew that everybody around them believed in this and they kind of needed to placate their audience. Now I want to be really clear, I'm not criticizing them. The only reason I was academically trained in ancient Judaism, and that you are all here tonight, is that over 150 years ago the scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentem were successful in making the case that Judaism deserved to be studied in secular universities. But their early rejection of rabbinic demonology set a course for modern scholarship that ignored the parts of Jewish tradition that might have seemed awkward to 19th and 20th century European readers. It's also worth noting that the scholars of the Wissenschaft were right in terms of the timeline. Jewish demonology and angelology start to show up primarily after the Babylonian exile, meaning once they've hung out with some Persians. But they're not simple imports or copy pastes. The rabbis are doing some really creative and unique and uniquely rabbinic things with demons and angels. And we miss those things if we don't take it seriously. Finally, we can't overlook the role of antisemitism in framing the way that we today encounter Jewish texts. In the face of rising antisemitism in the 1930s and 40s, American Jewish scholars such as Joshua Trachtenberg worked explicitly to decouple demons from normative Judaism. This move was an important part of a critique and undoing of historical antisemitic tropes that associated Jews with demons, devil worship, and Satanism. In the face of Christian antisemitism, which associated Jews and demons, Trachtenberg pointed out just how dangerous this kind of biased association really was. Let me be clear. At no point in history has it been just Jews who believe in demons, good or bad. To think about our own contexts here, I'm a professor at St. Mary's University, which is Marianist. Many of the undergrads here are at Fairfield, which is Jesuit, so both Catholic universities. The Catholic Church still offers what the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops calls a major exorcism, which is directed at quote the expulsion of demons or the liberation from demonic possession. Now, because the exorcists in the Catholic Church are committed to confidentiality just like the seal of confession, I don't have numbers on how common it is. But every diocese in the United States is charged with developing a protocol for offering and performing exorcisms. Every diocese. Numerous Protestant Christian congregations also have active beliefs in demons and offer spiritual healing and exorcism. For a while, there was a reality show with some evangelical exorcists in Texas. Jews have never been the only ones who believed that demons were real or integrated demons into their understanding of the world and their place in it. There's no exclusive association of demons and Jews outside the fevered imaginings of antisemites. But antisemitism is real and has real consequences. And it makes sense that in the 1940s Jewish studies scholars would work to be extra careful when talking about Jews and demons. Unfortunately, as we know from history, these moves didn't work. The same Germany that was the heart of the Wissenchaftes Judentum in the 19th century became the locus of the Holocaust. And so even though I completely understand the impulse to play down the role of demons in some kinds of Jewish thought, but letting antisemites define Judaism or Jewish studies ultimately doesn't work. So to conclude, do Jews believe in demons? Some do. Some don't. Some aren't sure. Two Jews, three opinions. But the rabbis of the Talmud absolutely did, just like everyone else around them. But regardless of one's personal beliefs, whether you believe in demons, whether I believe in demons, the idea of demons is an important way for us to understand how ancient Jews and some modern Jews thought and continue to think about the big questions of the universe, the nature of God, and what it means to be a Jew in a world that doesn't always really like Jews. The same great minds who developed the laws and rituals of the Sabbath and holidays thought seriously about what to eat and how to write contracts and how to connect with God through prayer, who spent a lot of time developing a profound ethics of care for each other in a sometimes hostile world. Those same great minds also spent a lot of time thinking about demons. And we need to take that seriously. So I will stop there and I think we can turn it over to questions. Thank you all. And if it's okay with you, I'm going to sit because it has been a day. I think what we can do is pass around the mic for those who have questions. Does anybody have a question off the bat? I'd just like to ask one. So why are demons law abiding? I mean you hint at that there's a gnostic kind of surrounding belief of good versus evil. Rabbis are uncomfortable. How do you make them law abiding when it seems like they should be completely exempt from any law? They should be lawless. Well, because God created the universe. God created the universe according to rules, right? Rules we might call law. According to the rabbis, gave it to the rabbis to interpret and create those laws and everything in the universe is bound to it. So if God created everything, and I want to be clear, I think sometimes, and I'm sensitive to this because I too teach in the Catholic context, sometimes when we think, okay, Jews, you know, care about the law, that that's a negative. It's not a negative. It's a profound positive, right? The laws about how we treat each other and care about each other and connect with each other in ways that are ethical and connect with God in ways that are appropriate, right? Those are the laws that we're talking about. And so I think if God created the universe with the law, then everything God created is bound to it in some way. Are these Jewish demons, though? I mean, if they're Halacha and a follow-up question to my follow-up, how then do you describe other demons in the surrounding culture? Are they completely lawless? I mean, that seems to be the context. So, you know, the way I would, the way I would probably describe demons and anyone here who's ever seen sort of the godfather or something like that, demons are kind of like enforcers, right? If you follow the laws, they're your best friend, right? We've seen that, right? If you follow the laws, they're your best friend, they're part of the community. If you do something that offends them particularly, right? If you break the norms in ways that are offensive, watch out because they could get you. But if you are good with them, they are good with you. And now, as to the question, are they Jewish? I mean, I don't know how to answer that. I will say we have demons who are clearly part of the community because they're going to be ex-communicated. And in Babylonia at the time, different religious communities have their own courts. So if you get taken to the rabbinic court, you're part of that community. And they're teaching in synagogue. And there's actually a couple of bowls which call some of the demons rabbi. And there's a great discussion in the Talmud of the demon Ashmodai who spends his mornings, I don't remember which one is which, he spends half his day studying in the heavenly Yeshiva or Torah Academy. And then half of the day studying in the earthly Yeshiva or Torah Academy with human rabbis. They sound real Jewish to me, personally. And have you studied the non-Jewish demons too? But that's the thing. Ben Thalamion is your classic example of a non-Jewish demon, except he is Jewish. These demons that other groups think of as non-Jewish, the rabbis say, no, no, they're part of our community and they actually follow our laws. And if you're being attacked, it's because you are breaking the law and doing things that are offensive. I mean, it's kind of trippy. I think it's fair to say. It's kind of trippy? Yeah. Question. We need the mic just so we can be recorded. So I think some interpretations are that some of the rituals we have are sort of anti-demon devices, like breaking a glass at a wedding or, you know, a red string or something along those lines. If the demons are sort of more benign, why do we need anti-demon devices? So that's a fantastic question and I think it actually gets us back to my monities. So the rabbis of the Talmud seem really clear that demons aren't actually evil. My monities then says all of that stuff is foolishness, right? Everyone remember like 10 minutes ago? So essentially what ends up happening is the Talmud's demonology falls out of popularity, right? He says it's wrong, so it's not correct, but everybody still believed in demons. So starting in the medieval period, we see lots of evidence that rabbinic Jews start being really concerned about demons who, especially in Europe, who look a lot like Christian demons, right? So they've essentially dumped Talmudic demonology because they were told it was foolish, but they still wanted a demonology because the world doesn't actually make sense all the time and they wanted to explain it. And so in the medieval period, we start to see evil demons who are just going out to get you. We see possession and exorcism in the sort of classic sense like the exorcist. So there's this really interesting shift. So today there's tons of anti-demon devices. You know, when my nephews were born, lots of, like one of my sister's mother-in-law hung a bunch of amulets over the bassinet, right? All of that stuff. It is absolutely a Jewish practice for her. It doesn't align with Talmudic demonology. Yeah. But demonology changes, just like everything else, right? Theology changes over time. So you may have actually explained why our refrigerator keeps breaking. I mean, I wasn't going to say anything, but definitely demons. Been an issue. I might know someone who could do an exorcism, not me. This question is inspired by a palace walk, a novel by a Nobel Prize-winning Muslim by the name of Nagiv Mahfuz. And he describes, I'm assuming, the fiction is based on the reality of Cairo, which is the environment he's talking about, in the 20th century where very devout Muslims are literally believed in jins and it's pervasive in their lives, this belief. And in as much as the Sharia came from the same area, somewhat around the same time as the Talmud, I'm wondering, is there a connection between current Muslim beliefs or relatively current Muslim beliefs in jins and some belief that originated in Islam around the same time that it was prevalent in the Talmud? Yes. The Quran is filled with descriptions of jinn who are created by God, obedient to God's word, follow God's law. Now, right, so that sounds very familiar to tell Munich demology. It's about 150 years after the Babylonian Talmud, but from the same region. There's no smoking gun that one got it from the other, but I think what you do see is groups who are committed to a really strict monotheism who don't want there to be a Satan who kind of operates outside of God's will. Those groups are faced with, well, what do you do with evil? And what they end up doing is saying, if God created everything and God is good, then they must at least have the potential to be good too. And so certainly I think when we think about 19th century Cairo or any other period, I think when we think about Muslim practice, we definitely need to think at least about, you know, not always, but what sources in the Quran align with particular beliefs. So in comparing that difference in demons, so there's something, I guess, that was this notion that demons could be bound and magic was done through demons. So we have that in Jewish sources, it was said that in suburbanic sources mentioned that King Solomon, et cetera, was using demons. And at the same time, kind of the early church fathers were talking about magic as being done by by demons because there was like, I think, Celsius and the, you know, in the controversies, they were accusing the, you know, apostles, et cetera, of doing magic. And so they had to kind of kick back at those accusations and try to make a difference between magic and the miracles that they were doing. And they were often using kind of this notion that real magic was done through by using demons, et cetera. So kind of both cultures were and also Christian magic later on developed from Jewish notions of demons being used for magic. So having these different notions of demons and kind of having good demons and bad demons and being able to control both. So with, if you have these notions of different types of demons, like how does that control their function within, let's say, a rabbinic context? So within the Talmud specifically, and you're absolutely right, there are a lot of Jewish texts that talk about demons and magic at the same time. The Talmud talks about demons and magic at the same time twice to distinguish between them, right, to figure out is something that's happening a demon or magic. And a piece of context there is we need to go to Leviticus, just one of the most underrated books of the Bible, which says, right, the sort of classic translation is thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, right? You got to kill, kill the witch, which is not okay. Magic totally forbidden. Demons totally fine, because they're part of the system. And so you end up with this really interesting, there are a couple of discussions in the Talmud where you get them trying to figure out, okay, so is this demons, which would be okay? Or magic, which wouldn't. Now I think what you're also seeing, and I'm seeing this on some of your faces, this gets back to the last question, is we're not quite convinced it works. And we see today lots of people conflate demons and magic and lots of groups at the time, right, when the rabbis are saying, well, no, they're totally different, they're part of that conversation, right? They're part of the conversation that's happening at the time, and without calling out anybody by name, they're throwing serious shade at the people who think that demons are magic, right? And so they're doing all of that at the same time. Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, what's wild is the term magic, what we translate as magic, the rabbis have a term for, and then there are things that we might think of as magic that they're like, no, that's not, and other things that we wouldn't think are magic that they're like, no, that is. So clearly that category that I'm translating as magic was doing, didn't map onto our modern magic, and it was doing something else. Yeah. So something you said earlier caused a trigger to a couple of thoughts in my mind when you were talking, great point, by the way, we were talking about the enforcers, if you will. So what jumped into my mind was that's, that made me think of sort of selective, like, was that everyone's responsibility or just the selected view of enforcers? And the second thing was, when I thought about enforcers, I was thinking correct, to correct behavior, to keep people in line. But I, in my background, my bias here was thinking about demons as leading people away from the norms to try to put them in temptation and something like that. So those things were just running through my mind. I'm curious what you think about that. Yes. So we absolutely, great question. So first of all, in the rabbinic texts, it looks like lots of demons are just doing their thing. But when they show up or when the fear of them shows up, it's in their role as enforcers. In terms of temptation, I think what is one of the things that, one of the many things that is interesting to me about demons, right? Like, clearly, there were a lot of things that were interesting to me. I wrote a book about it. But one of the things that I found so interesting is the names that demons in the Talmud have. So most demons aren't named, but the ones that are, we've, we've met one by name, well, we met two by name, one whose name was Ben Thalamion, and the other whose name was Joseph. And there's another demon in the Talmud whose name is Jonathan, right? So if we look at Christian demons at the time, they have names in Greek that translate to things in English like sloth, lust, gluttony. My favorite is the one that translates basically to like napping, right? They're very concerned about the demon of napping, who is tempting monks in the afternoon, right? Because who doesn't want a mid and after lunch nap? If you have a vision of demons and their names are what you understand as sin, reading you to sin, that's clearly a very different understanding than a demon whose name is Joseph, which is one of Jacob's 12 sons. It's a solid biblical name, right? This is New England, right? Solid biblical names are kind of our jam. We don't think of those as particularly demonic. So I think you're seeing a really fundamental difference. Demons don't tempt you too bad. In some ways, demons function as a, right? We've been talking about the stick, right? That enforcer piece, but there's also a carrot, because think about somebody like a Joseph or Ashmodai who studies in the heavenly academies, right? And can jump from place to place. If you could have somebody in class with you who could go up to heaven and just ask for the answer and then bring it back down and then tell your friends, how amazing would that be? Right? So it works both ways, right? If you step out of bounds, they will get you. But if you're part of the community, they're bringing all of this divine knowledge into the conversation in a way that in a world where like, you know, we don't know the answer to so many things to have that come in. And there are places in the Talmud where mostly Joseph, the demon says, well, you know, they're debating something. He says, okay, well, here's the answer. And the presumption is he's right, right? There's not two sides to every story. Like he's got the inside information. So I think they're somewhat more complex than an enforcer because they function as both the stick, but also the carrot. And for people who want to know the answer to what God wants in the world, that's a really powerful carrot. Yeah. Thanks. So I really enjoyed that. And I'm just wondering about especially since you bring up killing witches. So I think that all the demons you talked about were male. So but then you showed the incantation bull. And I think I've seen bulls like that actually refer to as Lilith bulls sometimes. So or at least in the context Lilith is often mentioned in bulls. Absolutely. Right. So so I guess so the question is, is Lilith a demon? Are there female demons? And are female different demons characterized differently and perceived differently than male demons? Yes, there absolutely are female demons in the Talmud. They are, you know, people who say, Oh, when they're talking about demons, maybe they're really talking about women. They're not there. These are clearly men. Right. Jonathan, Joseph, very clearly coded as male. There are female demons. The rabbis mostly encounter them out on the road in a world where so much socializing was sex specific. They just had more conversations with male demons because that's who was hanging out with them in the house of study. Now, in terms of the bulls, the bulls list a bunch of demons, right? They really just want to cover their bases. So they're like, I want to ward off. And then it gives you a list of like every demon they can think of just to just to be safe. Right. It's like you want to buy whatever, whatever hand sanitizer says it will kill the most number of bacteria, right? Like I just want to cover all my bases. And then they list male demons and female demons. Now, some demons, we don't know their gender. There are also in the one where I showed you the picture. Where is it? So this one, I intentionally brought you a demon who's wearing clothing, not all of the images, many of the images depict demons naked. And some of those images have demons with secondary sex characteristics typical to people assigned male at birth and people assigned female at birth. So the idea that there is male demons and female demons itself, right? If demons can change shape and become whoever, then maybe that distinction also doesn't apply. Now the Talmud says that demons have bodies, procreate and die. So they're clearly picturing something with some degree of substance, but I think they understand, right? They might be part of, there are lots of people who are part of my community who I don't fully understand. And maybe that's okay. And they can still be part of my community. And I think the rabbis, I like to think that the rabbis have a sort of similar take. Nosticism is a central idea to Judaism. And demons in rabbinic texts secures that idea. Do you think the modern day, are Jews aware of the presence of demons in rabbinic texts and in the Talmud and how it relates to Nosticism? Do you think people, is that common knowledge in Judaism? That's a great question. So if we go back all the way to the fifth and sixth centuries, it's clear that there are many Jews whose ideas align with Nosticism in some ways. And there are also many Jews whose ideas really don't. And there are some Nostics who identify as Christians whose ideas are really negative about Judaism. So we might think about that as a framework of thought that some people of different religions are buying into. Now, I definitely think that there are many practices today within modern Judaism that originate in belief about demons, that people mostly have no idea originated in beliefs about demons. But I also think just going back to the Catholic context of Fairfield, if you look at the early church fathers talking about baptism, baptism was the way, as we all know, all non-Christians are possessed by demons. And baptism is your first exorcism. And baptism used to be an exorcism. In fact, still today, in the liturgy, they talk about exercising. Now it's infants, because the Catholic Church has settled on infant baptism. But I would say many religions today have practices that used to be about one thing that are now about something else that have taken on new meaning and new contexts. And everybody has that person who goes to Christmas and starts talking about how it's really a pagan festival of Yule or Halloween is really Samhain. Everything we do has a fascinating prehistory. For some people, that prehistory or that history is still really important in life. And for other people, their practices have meaning in their life that aren't necessarily related to that origin. And that's okay. I think we've sort of figured out that there's lots of really robust ways to find religious meaning. Any last questions? Yeah, one more. But then, if you do like... I don't remember, but maybe Necromancy was one thing. Or a spell that would kill people, that would get you in trouble. One of the things to know about magic is that since like the 90s, it's a great question. The question was, is the killing which is things only about specific types of magic? So starting in the 90s, maybe even the late 80s, scholars began to argue that magic isn't actually a thing. That you can't point to something and say that thing is magic. Actually, magic functions a lot like superstition, which is to say what I do is religion. And what those people do is superstition or magic. It's a term that we use to describe other people's religious practices that we want to dismiss. My grandmother is very superstitious. Well, is she or did she have a different understanding of what it meant to be a religious person in the world, which is different from mine, but still legitimate? Right. I mean, that's a challenge. So what I would say is for the rabbis, all kinds of magic were punishable by... were forbidden. They weren't actually performing capital punishment. They had no... like they didn't have the right. They lived in other people's empires. They weren't killing people. But in theory, all magic would make you liable. But they only called the things magic that they didn't like. So the same practice, right? So something that today we might think of as magic. So there's a great story in the Talmud of two rabbis who every Friday would study what was called the book of creation, and they would somehow through their study create a three-year-old calf that they would then slaughter and have for their Sabbath meal. And that's not magic in the Talmud. So we really see a lot, right? If we use our modern categories, some things that we might think of as magic, they think are okay, and some things that we might think of as magic, they think of as forbidden. But actually, what ends up happening is all the stuff that they think is forbidden, they call magic, and the stuff that they don't think is forbidden, they don't. Sometimes they call it demons. Sometimes they call it rabbis. Sometimes they call it rabbinic demons, right, which is extra fun. Okay, one last question. How does the Kabbalah fit into this was the question. That's a fantastic question, and the answer is it doesn't. And the reason for that is most scholars date the Kabbalah to, let's say, 12th, 13th centuries, maybe 11th for some prehistory. And that's a good 700 years after the, 600 years after the Talmud, and after Maimonides. And so you're really, by the time of it, it's real flowering. And so the Kabbalah is in a, in a very different historic moment. Now Kabbalah also has a lot of what today we might think of as mystical or magical elements, very rich, doing really interesting things. But those things are only tangentially related or loosely related to the demons of the Talmud. Yeah. What just goes to show, right, you can, you can say as many times as you want, like, let's get rid of this thing. And there are going to be some other folks who are saying, but actually it fits a really important need in my life. And I will figure out another way to bring it in. Okay, thanks so much. The fascinating talk. Thank you all.