Hello and happy 2017! Between a trip to England, planning a wedding, and moving halfway across the United States (more on that soon), this blog has been somewhat neglected. This post was actually written a couple of months ago, but (ironically given its subject matter) I was too nervous to post it at the time. Hope you enjoy and stay tuned for more fresh, juicy musings!
I am not a superstitious person. That is, not intellectually. I don’t believe that human beings can magically bring good or ill upon others, nor that there are mysterious forces of evil at work which must be warded off. I don’t believe that any mundane act, whether knocking on wood or walking under a ladder, is inherently good or bad. And yet, on some level, I do.
Growing up, superstitions were part of my family’s cultural DNA. Several miniature rituals were geared towards warding off the ‘Evil Eye’ – a somewhat nebulous negative force believed to be transmitted through feelings of jealousy. Whilst some were relatively innocuous, such as swiftly following particularly positive statements with ‘keyn eyne hora’ (‘without the Evil Eye’ in Yiddish), others, particularly those from my grandmother’s Iraqi-Indian tradition, were a little more out-of-the-box (think saliva and burning chilies). As a child, I found these slight eccentricities entertaining. My rationalist, Austrian-born grandfather dismissed them as ‘bubbe meysers’ (Yiddish for ‘old wives’ tales’) and, on the whole, I agreed. Yet the roots of belief still took hold. Even today, I stay vigilant. When my baby nephew is crawling around on the floor, I avoid stepping over him lest he not grow. Whilst I often wear a Hamsa, a hand-shaped amulet, in celebration of my Middle-Eastern heritage, it also comes out for exams, interviews, flights, and any other times I feel in need of a little extra protection. The reason? It’s better to be safe than sorry.
All of this seems pretty harmless and, most of the time, it is. There’s just one problem; if the Evil Eye, or Ayn Hara in Hebrew, can be ‘given’ to someone through jealousy, then my own jealous thoughts can be dangerous to others. For me, as someone who suffers from anxiety, this fear takes on a new dimension. I am prone to constantly examining my own actions, magnifying their impact out of all proportion. I can’t send an email without obsessively re-reading it for fear of it being received badly. Over the years, I have also been plagued by intrusive, often disturbing, thoughts. The result is that I have come to see my thoughts as somehow dangerous, having an effect on others as well as myself. So if I am jealous of someone’s success or characteristics and they suffer a tragedy (which has actually happened), who is to say I haven’t unintentionally ‘wished’ it upon them? Whilst I realise the absurdity of this, in my mind, I am capable of causing calamity simply by thinking.
In an essay for Tablet magazine about her experiences with Jewish superstitions, Paula Derrow writes that fear of the Evil Eye prevented her from taking risks as she felt that disaster would inevitably follow good fortune. My own superstitions have little outward impact, but the desire for control is the same. I take steps to ‘protect’ others from my feelings. Terrified of wishing harm on people, I go overboard in repeating more positive thoughts about them, in a silent ritual. Like Derrow, the phrase keyn eyne hora (or at least one of its equivalents) has become a ‘mantra’ to me, a prayer to keep harm away. Yet even as my ‘positive’ thoughts provide momentary relief, they reinforce the ‘magical thinking’ from which I struggle to escape.
So, if superstition can be so oppressive, why don’t I just drop it altogether? Why not stop myself from using ‘magical’ formulae in everyday conversation, refuse to worry about ‘tempting fate’, embrace only the rational side of Jewish tradition? After all, it’s not as if I actually believe I’m powerful enough to wish harm on someone. The immediate answers are fear and force of habit – certain superstitions are so ingrained that they are difficult to disregard entirely. However, I also see these practices as part of my cultural heritage. Whilst some Jewish scholars, such as the great 12th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), voiced their opposition to superstition, these ideas have held a fascination throughout Jewish history, from the Talmud and Kabbalah to folk tales and modern literary works. Whether or not one believes in such concepts as the Evil Eye, to forget the existence of these beliefs would be to forget an important, if contentious, part of Jewish tradition. I’m trying to take steps to look after my mental health, and hopefully my ‘magical thinking’ will not last forever, or at least become less frequent. However, when I next fly home to the UK, there is a good chance I’ll be wearing my Hamsa.
The Desert 