The last exorcist of Baghdad

The author of commentaries on the Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah, he was open about his practice of “Jewish magic” – “it was not something he kept secret”.

He was “quite unusual”, Rabbi Zagoria-Moffet said, in combining his esoteric pursuits with an informed view of the world around him. He was a mainstream rabbi, “ not a fringe lunatic” and “very well educated, rather Western in some ways”. He was also unusual for a rabbi of the times in keeping diaries of his practice, which included detailed notes of his cases, like a doctor.

“He was called upon to interpret dreams, to exorcise spirits, to interpret cycles of reincarnation, to assist people in their personal journeys and he did not shy away from recording in his books his successes and his failures,” Rabbi Zagoria-Moffet said.

People wanted to know whether their dreams came from a benign or malevolent source. If the dream was orderly, it was an inspired by an angel.

But if it was a jumble of disjointed topics which left a person frightened and confused, then it was the work of a demon. “Your heart will beat very fast and you will wake up very afraid,” Haham Fetayya wrote.

While “foreign” demons delighted in disturbing their victims, “Jewish” demons chose another tactic, trying to pass themselves off as biblical characters or learned sages. They would try to persuade their subjects to take on additional religious stringencies such as fasting or sexual abstinence, eventually driving them towards mental illness.

“The idea that religious fanaticism is the result of demonic influence is really quite interesting,” Rabbi Zagoria-Moffet said. “He sees it as a problem – people who suddenly become far more religious.”

In one case brought to the Haham, a teenage boy had been having visions of “Elijah”.  Suspecting that this was not the prophet but a cunning demon, the rabbi suggested questions to ask it when it appeared. Eventually, its identity was rumbled when it was unable to translate a passage from the book of Daniel.  

Demons evidently don’t know Aramaic,” Rabbi Zagoria-Moffet said. The Haham was “able to convince the demon to leave the boy”.

In another case a grieving father sought an explanation for why his son had been murdered during an attempted robbery. Haham Fetayya, recording that the answer had come to him in a vision when he had drifted off in synagogue, informed him that his son was the reincarnated soul of a young man who had previously been responsible for a fatal robbery.

While such a response might bring little comfort today, Rabbi Zagoria Moffet suggested, “He does have a good sense of pastoral care perhaps – but a different one than ours. To him, the answer helps to make it make sense.”