Re: Babel in the east or not?

On Thu, 17 Dec 1998 18:31:32 -0600 Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
writes:
>Clinton Moreland-Stringham wrote:
>> > Can you cite any of these supposed Jacobite interventions?
>>         The first one off the top of my head is the infamous "Thou
>shalt
>> not suffer a witch to live." The actual hebrew here means
>'poisoner'.
>Sure, but you can't take that out of context.  Where are your sources
>on this? Do you know Biblical Hebrew? Surely Stephen Belsky could
>help us in this -- is he still on the list?
The phrase (i did a short report on this commandment last year) is
_mekhasheifa lo' tehhayeh_ (do not 'enliven' a witch).  Mekhasheifa is
always translated into English as "witch", because that's pretty much
what it means.
Here's a quick translation of my report:

----------------
The commandment (mitzva) of not to 'enliven' a witch is a verse all to
itself....the prohibition includes a few laws.  1, the most obvious, is
that it's prohibited to let a witch live - instead to punish her for
witchcraft, whose punishment is death.  We also learn from here that if
you find a witch who is not jewish (who is not included in the
prohibition of *practicing* witcraft), she doesn't get the death penalty,
instead it is prohibited for a jew to give her any monetary benefit or
anything that could help her to live, like selling her food.

The commandment is only an imperative to judges to punish a witch [note:
here i used the male form].  In another place in the Tora there is the
prohibition on practicing witchcraft itself, where it is written "there
shall not be found among you.....a witch".

Seifer Hahhinukh ("the book of education", a medieval book explaining
each of the Biblical laws in order) explains what exactly is "witchcraft"
which is forbidden.  Witchcraft (kishuf) is an action by which, for a
second, the power of a human is stronger than the will of the "pamalya'
shel mal`a", the angels who are appointed over a certain thing
[situation], and because of that an action is formed in the world which
is a mixture of actions, something unnatural like animal interbreeding
[which is forbidden] and sha`attneiz (another forbidden mixture, weaving
animal and vegetable fibers in the same garment).  There are witchcrafts
that use demons, and ones that aren't done with the help or use of
demons.  But, in any case, [MAIN IMPORTANT POINT-------->]  to be
considered witchcraft, an action has to be HURTFUL TO ANOTHER PERSON - it
says in the Gemara that "all [actions] that are done for the purpose of
healing have nothing in them of the ways of the Emori [witchcraft]".  In
other words, if there is a strange action, that looks like it is a
supernatural power which a human is not supposed to use, if it's for a
good purpose, like healing, there is no prohibition WHATSOEVER, because
witchcraft is defined by the BODILY HARM that it causes.  [END OF
IMPORTANT POINT]
-------------

That's the beginning....the rest of it goes into details of commentaries
on the phrasing of the prohibition, the connection between it and the
commandments around it, and stuff like that.

Btw, many important jewish philosophers, such as Maimonides and R' Yoseif
Tzvi Hertz, have the position that witchcraft doesn't really exist
(neither do demons, the evil eye, necromancy, etc.), and that the
biblical prohibition on it just comes to teach various moral lessons.


-Stephen (Steg)
PS- i got an 100 on the report :)

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]