This year I had the opportunity to tell Jewish monster and magic stories at Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton, CA and then at Temple Beth Emeth (my synagogue) in Ann Arbor, MI. I wanted to tell one of my favorite stories, which is sometimes called “A Tale of Posen.” It’s about a moment when half-shedim sued for their inheritance in a Jewish court. The problem is the original story, while captivating in many ways, is hard to tell because it lacks interesting characters to anchor the action. So, for my story telling, I took the liberty of expanding on it, focusing on the most unlikely of characters…two young sisters who were banim shoshavim, half-sheyd, half-human and Jewish who unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of this mess. The story is wonderful from that perspective, looking at how the town and the girls wrestle with their being half.
I previously wrote a blog post about Banim Shoshavim.
This story was first the inspiration for my Banim Shoshavim card, and it’s from the two girls in the picture that the story grew.
Here one version of the original Tale of Posen, from Joshua Trachtenberg’s 1939 book “Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion” which is available in a number of online sources, including Sacred Texts Archive, and in print from University of Pennsylvania Press. I highly recommend it.
A Tale of Posen – Original Story
“Finally, as a fitting climax to the story, we have the most unusual spectacle of a lawsuit between the inhabitants of a house and the demonic offspring of a former owner, a lawsuit argued by the contestants in strictly legal fashion before a duly constituted court, called into special sitting to hear the case. This occurred in Posen at the end of the seventeenth century. The account bears extended retelling, both for its intrinsic interest and for the light it sheds upon the beliefs of that and the preceding centuries.
In the main street of Posen there stood a stone dwelling whose cellar was securely locked. One day a young man forced his way into this cellar and was shortly after found dead upon the threshold. Emboldened by this act the “outsiders,” who had killed the intruder in their subterranean haunt, entered the house itself and began to plague the inhabitants by casting ashes into the pots of food cooking on the hearth, throwing things off the walls and the furniture, breaking candlesticks, and similar pranks. Though they did no harm to the persons of the inhabitants, these were so distressed and frightened that they deserted the house.
A great outcry arose in Posen, but the measures taken by the local savants (including the Jesuits) were not sufficiently potent to oust the interlopers, and the foremost wonder-worker of the time, R. Joel Baal Shem of Zamosz, was sent for. His powerful incantations succeeded in forcing the demons to disclose their identity. They contended, however, that this house was their property and demanded an opportunity to substantiate their case before a court of law. R. Joel agreed, the court was convoked, and before it a demon advocate, who could be heard but not seen, presented his argument. We may still sense in this graphic account of the trial the dramatic tenseness of the scene, the earnestness of the advocate’s plea, the solemn attentiveness of the three bowed gray heads on the bench, the open-eyed wonder, spiced with a dash of terror, of the audience.
The argument ran in this wise: The former owner of the house had had illicit relations with a female demon who, appearing to him as a beautiful woman, had borne him children. In time his lawful wife discovered his infidelity and consulted the great rabbi Sheftel, who forced a confession from the guilty man, and obliged him, by means of an amulet containing fearful holy names, to break off this union. Before his death, however, the demon returned and prevailed upon him to leave her and her offspring the cellar of his house for an inheritance. Now that this man and his human heirs are all dead, contended the advocate, we, his spirit children, remain his sole heirs and lay claim to this house. The inhabitants of the house then presented their case: we purchased this house at full value from its owner; you “outsiders” are not called “seed of men” and therefore have no rights appertaining to humans; besides, your mother forced this man to cohabit with her against his will. Both sides here rested, the court retired for a consultation, and returned to announce that its decision was against the “outsiders.” Their proper habitat is in waste places and deserts and not among men; they can therefore have no share in this house. To make certain that the decision was carried out R. Joel proceeded to deliver himself of his most terrifying exorcisms, and succeeded in banishing the intruders from cellar as well as house, to the forests and deserts where they belonged”
Here is my version, though each time I told it live it came out a bit different. That’s the joy of live storytelling.
Tale of Posen – Eidel’s Story
Eidel was sitting at the bottom of the stairs wrapped in a dusty old man’s coat. Her sister Sisel was sitting next to her, her braids half undone, crying and clutching their mother’s tkhines (1), her woman’s prayer book. They had been chased away from their father’s funeral. Eidel didn’t know what to do.
The stairs they were sitting on led to a dimly lit cellar below a store that sold hats and dishes, flour and pickles, fabric and needles, and her favorites, the glass jars filled with refuout (2), remedies, including rue and dill and camphor and herbs with strange names like bulls’ heart and ox tongue. Eidel also loved the cellar, which was filled with more barrels and boxes and books and old coats.
Eidel lived in the cellar, with Sisel and no one knew. Eidel and Sisel were lilin, descended all the way from Piznai the lilin (3) and Adam HaRishon, the first man. As a banim shoshavim, a half-lilin, she didn’t have a real body. She was as insubstantial as the fog rising from snow on a sunny day. She could become solid if she needed, but not for long. It was hard and made her tired. When she looked in the dusty mirror, propped up in the corner, she thought she looked just like the human girls that she’d seen on the street when she snuck upstairs and peeked out the windows. She loved doing that, when the store was quiet.
No one knew that she and Sisel lived there because their Tati was dead and buried and their Mame had been driven away. Tati had been a good Jewish man, tall and stooped, with a patchy beard that had never come in quite right. He was a shop keeper who never missed making minyan and who loved to sit on Shabbos afternoon and teach Ediel the parsha and sing with Mame. Tati could see Eidel just fine.
Eidel missed her Mame, with her dark hair and long thin dragonfly wings. Mame had seen Tati give bread to a poor delivery boy and had fallen in love with him on the spot. He was kind and observant and a bit forgetful, sometimes forgetting to say “on my right hand is Michael and on my left is Gabriel” (4) before bed. The mezuah by the back door was water stained and ruined, so her mother had found her way in. She didn’t mind that Tati was already married and had a family with a human woman.
But his human wife eventually found out why Tati was spending so much time in the cellar and she minded a lot. For a few coins, a baal shem, a traveling wonder rabbi, had written her an amulet that chased Mame away. But the baal shem didn’t know about the sisters and the amulet had no power over them. So they stayed in the cellar with the dried fish and the old coats. The rabbi’s amulet was cruel. Not only did it chase away Mame, but Tati didn’t remember that he had once loved Mame and didn’t remember Eidel and Sisel. She knew he’d forgotten them because when he came down to their cellar he didn’t call out for them and didn’t see them. Now, on Shabbos, Ediel read the weekly parsha to Sisel, struggling to explain the complicated bits but making Sisel laugh with her impressions of the beautiful Sarah and the fiery Tzipporah.
They stayed in the cellar because they had nowhere to go. Lilin are shedim, demons, and the shedim don’t like banim shoshavim, the wayward children of humans and shedim. The shedim, who lived in the forest and by the outhouses, teased her and her sister, pulling their hair, and throwing stones, and calling them names. But she knew her father had loved them. At least he did before he had forgotten them. And their mother loved them, before she was chased away howling and crying.
Mame had promised them that before Tate died, he would acknowledge them has his children, as real as those in his human family. When he did, they would be able to inherit the cellar when he died and they’d get real bodies and not die in the shadows the way the shedim do, but go on to Olam Haba, the world to come, with their human family. Eidel heard Tate describe Olam Haba as being beautiful, like the garden of Eden. That sounded nice, though she did love her cellar and the store and her street, Di Yidishe Gas, The Jewish Street.
But then Mame was chased away, and Eidel and Sisel had been alone.
And then Tati died.
Ediel and Sisel had followed the Chevra Kedusah, the burial society, in the procession to the graveyard, trying to get close to their father’s casket. They hoped his spirit, his ruach, was lingering and would recognize them. But the men of the Chevra Kedusha knew about their mother and the amulet so they danced in a circle around their father, around and around, stomping and singing psalms. Even though they were invisible, the girls could not get close. They cried out but weren’t heard over the singing.
So they sat on the steps to their cellar and listened to the new owners of the store tromp around. Tate’s human children hadn’t waited a day before selling the store to these people. Ediel hated them. They were loud with heavy boots and bad breath, onion and pumpernickel and herring breath. They argued and laughed loudly. They weren’t Tate.
So, they sat on the cellar stairs and listened.
One day Eidel was bad. She didn’t mean it. When the new owners started moving things around her cellar and carrying some of the older bits up the stairs, she threw an empty glass cordial jar at them. She didn’t even know she could do that. She had just been angry and grabbed it and threw. It missed but hit a mirror and broke it. They jumped and ran out of the cellar yelling “Shedim, shedim, Ruach Ra’ah!!!”(5) Now whenever she and Sisel heard them, the sisters would yell and whack empty pickle barrels with rusty fire pokers. Maybe the new bad breath owners would run away.
But they didn’t. They brought first one rabbi, then another. Each came in, said the Shema and recited psalms. “Because you took the LORD as your haven He will order His angels to guard you wherever you go.” Eidel had seen angels once, on the day Tati had died. Three of them. Dark angels with shining eyes. One of them held a sword that was wet and dripping something terrible. (6) She never wanted to see angels again. She didn’t think these rabbis had ever seen angels.
So, she and Sisel hid behind the pile of old coats and eventually the rabbis went away in defeat. Then she and Sisel would yell and bang more.
Then Rabbi Joel (7) came. He was a short man, with a black hat and a long black walking stick with a silver tip (8). He scared Eidel. Not like the angels had, but she could tell that Rabbi Joel was serious and stern. Other men of the town were on the stairs, watching, but he waved them back up into the store and sat down on a pickle barrel.
After sitting quietly for a few minutes, Rabbi Joel read something in Hebrew that Eidel didn’t understand then pulled out a small bag and blew. A foul-smelling powder filled the room. It made Eidel’s eyes water and she and Sisel jumped up sneezing and coughing.
“Ahh, two young shedim. Are you banim shovavim?” Rabbi Joel said, “Was that your father who was owned the shop upstairs.”
“Yes sir. I’m Eidel and this is Sisel. That was Tate. We tried to follow but we were turned back”
“And this is your cellar? And you wish to stay here?”
“Yes sir. Our mother hoped that Tate would give it to us, but he didn’t.”
Rabbi Joel sat, frowning. He looked around and studied the dusty room. When he saw the pile of Jewish books, old siddurs, and machzors, and chumash his eyes twinkled.
“Eidel, did you read these books? Do you study and pray?”
“Yes sir. We studied with Tate who taught us Shema Yisroel and Baruch ata Adonai.”
“And do you read the parshot” He said, pointing to a battered Chumash.
“We do, and this too,” Eidel said, picking up a thin book printed in Yiddish with thick letters.
Rabbi Joel’s eyes widened. “Is that your Mame, the lilin’s, tkhines?”
“Yes sir”
“May I?” He said, reaching his hand out
“Yes sir.” Eidel said handing it over. Rabbi Joel had never seen a shedim prayerbook. A Tkhines is a Yiddish prayerbook for women who hadn’t been taught to read Hebrew. He flipped through it quietly. Most was familiar, the same as would be in any Jewish women’s prayer book. But there were differences, new prayers, some lovely and some wicked.
Rabbi Joel handed it back to Eidel, who clutched it to her chest.
“Eidel, I have been called here by a very scared town. Shedim and humans are not friends. Shedim kill babies and torment Jews. They do not want you to stay.”
Eidel listened with tears in her eyes.
“And yet” said Rabbi Joel, “They do not understand that you’re half-human too. And a bright, well studied, young Jew at that. What to do?”
Rabbi Joel sat on the pickle barrel and thought.
Then he leaned over toward Eidel, looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Do you know the story of Moses and Mahlah and Milchah and their sisters?” (9).
“Yes sir” Eidel began to say, confused at the question.
“Why don’t you tell it to your sister.”
Still confused, Eidel went and sat with Sisel, who was sitting on a black coat. Eidel started telling her about how Mahlah and Milcha and her sisters were in the Torah. Their father had died too, leaving no sons, no heirs but them for his land. They were afraid that their father’s land would be given away, so they went to Moses. And then she understood!
Eidel jumped up, ran past Rabbi Joel to the bottom of the stairs. She gathered her breath, smoothed her skirt even though no one could see her, and yelled in her loudest voice, her most human voice, “I am Eidel, daughter of Yosef the shopkeeper who owned this house and daughter of Velvela, the lilin. This is my father’s house, abandoned by his human heirs. I claim my inheritance. I wish to appeal to the rabbis court.”
From behind her, Rabbi Joel started laughing a kindly laugh as pandemonium broke out upstairs.
The Rabbi’s court was a large hall filled with chairs and tables covered with books and candles. Rabbi Joel sat with the rabbi of Posen in the center of the room. The court room was filled with Jews and even a Polish Catholic priest! There was a set of benches reserved for the shedim and two chairs for Eidel and Sisel. Sisel kicked her feet, anxious and bored.
With them sat a tall shedim scholar in a grey jacket. His feet were clawed like a rooster’s and had been polished until they shined. He was a friend of Mame’s who’d come quickly when he’d heard and offered to argue for them. He introduced himself as Hirsh ha- Shedah. He was a torah scholar and descendent of Yoseh ha-Shedah (10), a sheyd friend of the rabbis of the Talmud.
Then it began. The argument lasted for three hours. The rabbi of Posen and the rabbis of the court had been uneasy not being able to see who they were arguing with but didn’t hesitate. Phrases of Torah and Talmud and even Kabbalah were hurled back and forth. Eidel kept quiet. She could barely follow the arguments. Finally, the room quieted.
One of the rabbis stood and awkwardly addressed the empty chairs that girls sat on.
“We have made our decision. As banim shovavim, you may be half Jewish but are also half shed and shedim are creatures of the ruins and wastelands. You do not belong here. You are not welcome here.”
“Rabbi Joel,” he said turning, “you must banish them immediately. Render them herem. Use your most potent exorcism.”
The room was silent. Hirsh stared fire at the rabbis. Sisel gripped her skirt so tight her knuckles turned white.
Rabbi Joel said nothing but stood, nodded, picked up his satchel, and walked out of the room. Eidel, dragging Sisel by the hand, rushed after him with the rest of the men in the room following.
When the procession reached Ediel’s fathers store, Rabbi Joel hushed the crowed and instructed them to wait outside, then, with the girls and Hirsh ha-Shedya following, climbed down to the cellar.
“I’m truly sorry Eidel. I must conduct an exorcism here to keep you from this place. But such an exorcism takes time. Time enough for you to pack whatever you wish to take with you.”
At this Sisel began crying, but Eidel stood up and with fierce determination and said “So we are to be banished like our Mame. If so, can you tell us where she is?”
“I can” said the Hirsh, the shed scholar, “She lives a few days walk through the forest. She never went far. I can show you.”
“It would be enough, sir, for you to give us directions. We will find our way.”
This place had been a home but was no longer. Eidel had no love for the loud onion smelling Jews of the town or the cruel taunting Shedim of the forest. Maybe she and Sisel would never make it to Olam Haba, but her mother was out there, and it was time they found her.
As Rabbi Joel brought out oil and lit candles, Eidel picked up a large satchel and began to stuff it with bread and paper wrapped pickles. She jammed in her father’s siddur and chumash and pulled out a dusty man’s coat from the pile and another one for Sissel, who was standing off to the side, clinging tightly to their mother’s tkhines.
To the sound of Rabbi Joel blowing a shofar and the sharp rustle of angel wings, Eidel and Sissel climbed up the stairs and out, past the crowd, into the comforting dark.
Notes and References
(1) Tkhines – Tkhines are vernacular, Yiddish, prayerbooks written for, and sometimes including contributions by, Jewish women who not been taught Hebrew. For more see the Jewish Women’s Archive article https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/tkhines
(2) Refuot (Remedies) – Kitchen table magic home cures including herbal remedies, cordials, and salves. There are many existent Jewish texts, some still in print, that provide the recipes.
(3) Piznai the lilin (or lilit) is described Midrash Akbir. See Geoffrey Dennis’s blog post “Demon Lovers, Sword of Power: The Other Children of Adam” for a translation.
(4) Some versions of the traditional bedtime shema includes an invocation to the arch-angels. See Open Siddur for a translation.
(5) Ruach Ra’ah is an evil spirit. It described as the reason that traditional Jews wash their hands first thing in the morning. See Rabbi Eliezer Malemed’s article “Ruach Ra’ah (Evil Spirit).”
(6) An angel with a dripping sword is a Talmudic description of the Angel of Death, see Avodah Zara 20b at Sefaria.org.
(7) As noted in the original version, R. Joel Baal Shem of Zamosz. R. Joel (or Yoel) was a Polish Ḥasidic rabbi that lived at Ostrog in the middle of the seventeenth century. He was known as a Baal Shem with great Kabbalistic powers and shows up in many stories.
(8) Having a iron tipped, silver handled walking stick is kind of a trope..it shows up in lots of stories about Kabbalist rabbis. (I own one too. Mine has a hollow handle that can hold a mezuzah).
(9) The story of Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the five daughters of Zelophehad is told in Numbers 27.
(10) Yosef Ha-Sheyda. Yosef Ha-Sheyeda, or “Joe the Sheyd” was a friend of the rabbi’s of the Talmud who answered their questions. See, for example, Pesachim 110a at Sefaria.org.
Jewish Monster Hunting 