Dybbuk Exorcism via Skype 2
I previously talked about Rav Batzri trying to exorcise a Dybbuk via Skype.
Yeshiva World News has an update that says that it was not succesful, and that the infected person is on his way from Brazil to Israel to have it removed by Rav Batzri in person.
Check out the interesting article at YWN.
Or in Hebrew at Kikar.net.
posted by yaak @ 12/22/2009 10:46:00 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
it is sad that this person will likely not get the psychiatric or psychological help he needs, because people assume it is a ghostly possession and therefore offer the wrong sort of treatment...
kt,
josh
I beg to differ.
If I חס ושלום start talking German in the middle of the night, I would hope to get sent to Rav Batzri instead of some shrink.
Some of the the comments at the YWN site are hilarious.
Josh: I can't believe that you don't believe in dybbuks :)
yaak:
"His wife however heard him shouting in his sleep, this time in German, but she did not understand what he was saying."
so how did she know that it was German? rather, neither she nor he know German, and it sounded German-like.
someone i know was working a few years back in a psychiatric ward. and a crazy person told this Dr. that she had spoken in tongues, Hebrew, and this was a sign of Divine favor. How did she know it was Hebrew? Because she spoke these words to an Israeli person, and he smiled, so it must have been a joke in Hebrew!
the problem here is that, sociologically, these Brazilians are just as nuts as he is, just in a different way.
Devorah:
:)
kt,
josh
So you'd rather call all the people involved with this Meshuga'im than call this a Dybbuk?
I'd rather believe that R' Chaim Kanievsky and R' Shteinman (not to mention the Hafetz Hayim) know what they're talking about.
not that i would rather do so, but that i think that this is in fact the case.
though i had in mind the people more closely involved with the actual metzius, in Brazil. the wife who interprets her husband's night-terror or mental illness as a dybbuk and in fear decides she must abandon him, and the community already so steeped in superstition that they leap to dybbuk instead of mental illness, and not thinking rationally about the facts of the case. (this, whether or not they are right.)
in terms of whether rav kanievsky and rav shteinman are "meshuga" for coming to this conclusion, based on *second-hand* reports... maybe, but that wasn't my intent. indeed, i wonder if someone were presenting such symptoms up close and personal in their own backyard, they wouldn't recognize it as mental illness.
i do certainly think that Rabbi Kanievsky, Shteinman, and Kagan were factually wrong about the existence of dybbuks, and that they are merely the local Jewish flavor of the demonic possession of the Catholics.
and in both cases, back then, it was due to a lack of scientific understanding of the workings of the brain, such that other, more superstitious ideas were substituted as explanation. but that superstition was then encoded in sefarim and somehow became an established, unquestioned Jewish belief.
And nowadays, do I think that Rav Kanievsky and Rav Shteinman know what they are talking about, in terms of knowing enough scientific metzius to pass correct judgement? (because gadlus in Torah is not sufficient; knowledge of metzius is also critical.) Rav Kanievsky, who believes Jews have a different number of teeth? And Rav Shteinman, who was a big booster of Facilitated Communication? Consulting seforim, as the Yeshiva World article describes it, is not sufficient in this case. Just as I would differ with Rav Kanievsky and Rav Shteinman in those two other cases, and say that, with all due respect, they didn't know what they are talking about, I would say the same here.
kt,
josh
You are entitled to your opinion, R' Josh, but I'll let you know that I would chastise my children for saying what you just said.
to yaak about your last comment:
LOL. VERY VERY FUNNY. me too.
hashem yaazor.
josh, sorry i didn't mean to laugh at your expense. so my apologies. but you need to know that talking that way about these rabbanim is really out of line.
the thing is, i know that you don't know this yet.
It's not Josh, it's the dybbuk inside him.
Part of הלכות עבודה זרה וחקות הגוים ברמב"ם פרק י"א הל' [כ] (טז) : ודברים אלו כולן דברי שקר וכזב הן, והן שהטעו בהן עובדי עבודה זרה הקדמונים לגויי הארצות כדי שינהו אחריהן. ואין ראוי לישראל שהם חכמים מחוכמים להמשך בהבלים האלו, ולא להעלות על הלב שיש בהן תעלה, שנאמר כי לא נחש ביעקב ולא קסם בישראל (במדבר כג כג). ונאמר כי הגוים האלה אשר אתה יורש אותם אל מעוננים ואל קוסמים ישמעו ואתה לא כן נתן לך ה' אלהיך (דברים יח יד
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