Calling on the Spirits of the Dead – A Jewish Perspective

Calling on the Spirits of the Dead – A Jewish Perspective

 The idea for this entry came to me as a challenge from my good friend Bryn.  It was in 2014 when he said he wondered what Jewish Seance would look like.  Considering the limitations in Judaism put upon communicating with the dead, it took considerable research to determine if a Jewish Seance was not forbidden, but more importantly, what would it entail. 

Talking With the Dead

There is confirmation in Hebrew literature (Torah, Tanach, and Talmud, in particular) that it is possible to communicate with the dead, but in almost all cases, it is frowned upon.  However, there are technicalities; in particular, there is the technicality is that a newly dead person it not, in the words of Billy Crystal as Miracle Max, “...mostly dead, and not all dead”. 

Does it say anything in the Tanach or in the Talmud about talking to the dead through a medium?

In I Samuel 28, there is told the story of King Saul going to a medium in order to be able to consult with the prophet Samuel who had died recently. The medium succeeded in bringing up Samuel, and he spoke with King Saul. The verses show that the medium was quite shocked when she saw Samuel which seems surprising as she was an experienced medium. Our sages explain that her surprise was due to the fact that he came up right-side-up, and the dead usually rise upside-down.

 

The Book of Samuel.  Photo by Author


The Talmud (Shabbos 152b) tells us that a non-believer once asked Rebbe Avahu how it was that Saul was able to bring up Samuel if the souls of the righteous are under the Throne of Glory. He responded that within 12 months of death one is able to bring up even the righteous.

From this response it would seem as if the medium has the power to do it during that time period, even if the deceased soul doesn’t want.

The mystic commentators take this statement further. The Talmud is explaining the success of causing Samuel to rise, but why was he right side up? The Radvaz explains that since there was nothing Samuel could do to prevent himself from being brought up, he was facing a very uncomfortable situation. Coming up in this manner is a result of the medium using powers of impurity (Tumah), and to be forced to come up by such methods would have been devastating to a holy man like Samuel. Therefore, seeing the inevitable, he came up instead through the power of prophecy which is holy, in order to pre-empt being brought up through impurity. This is why he came up right side up, in a respectful manner befitting holiness, and not upside down which is a manner befitting impurity. He then told Saul the prophecy he had for him.

The Arizal, who asks how it is that a holy person like Samuel can be affected and controlled by powers of impurity?  He explains that there are five levels of the soul. The medium can only bring up the lowest, least holy, level.

The Five Aspects of the Human Spirit

We speak of five aspects of the human spirit.  These are present in live people, but also in dead people as well.  We are not meant to commune with the dead.  In the case of King Saul, he only consulted with the dead as he was facing a life and death situation, the nation was under attack. He had tried getting Divine direction through more conventional means, but G-d was refusing to respond to him.  In a case of life endangerment nearly all the commandments of the Torah are suspended.  Therefore Saul did what would usually have been forbidden by speaking with the dead.

The five aspects of the human spirit are:
Nefesh - the life giving force – the Life Breath
Ruach - The connecting point between the Nefesh and the higher levels
Neshama - The spiritual force
Chaya and Yechida are the two highest levels; only a master mystic can access these.

In my workshops on Jewish mysticism I have two different people “elevate their awareness” of one of these five aspects.  Then, we allow these two “elevated aspects” in interact.  The results are frequently very amazing and wondrous. 

Since both living and humans in transition form life to dead have these five aspects of spirit, it is clear that allowing one of these aspects to be “elevated in awareness” is the mechanism in which living and dead humans may interact in similar amazing and wondrous ways.  This is how “contact” and “communication” between the living and the dead may occur.   Essentially, this is “talking” to the dead using mysticism, rather than mediumship or the forbidden methods listed in Deuteronomy 18:9-12.

My Conclusions

The main source of communicating with the dead being distasteful comes from Deuteronomy 18:9-22. Here the attitude that Torah takes is disparaging. It describes the various ways that the ancient peoples had of contacting the dead and telling the future. The usual explanation for the distaste is that the ancient religions that surrounded Israel were very death-centered, but Torah is focused on what we should do in this world - the world of the living. There are a number of other places in the Torah that briefly discuss the “ob” and “yid’oni” (Leviticus 20:27), ancient ways of contacting the dead. All the references are quite negative. Specifically, Torah states:
כִּי-תוֹעֲבַת יְ - [fortune telling and talking to the dead] is an abomination to G-d.  This is the basis for treading lightly regarding these subjects.

As a little bit of counter-point to this, in the last days of Saul (I Samuel 28) he is abandoned by the prophets, unable to find proper advice on how to deal with the Philistine threat, he takes a drastic and desperate step: He contacts a woman from Endor who can bring back the shade of Samuel the prophet to advise him.

However (in Jewish philosophy there is ALWAYS a 'however' - usually several), the Torah says that G-d gave the people of Israel prophets CAN (i.e., are given permission to) give exact predictions of the future and see things beyond our mortal view. But even there, “you should be whole-hearted before your G-d.” The purpose of prophecy is not to be an oracle, but to help us understand how to serve properly in this world.

Most interestingly, it is the early prophets that we get the beginnings of Jewish mysticism. The techniques, the method of the prophets, were carefully guarded, kept orally until the first century after the destruction of the second temple, taught by one individual to another. The first written records appear in about 100 CE, but references to them are preceded by 200 years in the Mishnah (the oldest part of Talmud).

So, the challenge is not to step too hard on contacting the dead or fortune-telling, but recognise that the Hasadei Ashkenaz, the leading German rabbis of Thirteenth century, gave permission to consult the spirits of the dead. They made a distinction between consulting upon a dead body, which they forbid, however, allowing the consultation with a spirit.  Most notably, the Maharam (Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, 1215 – 2 May 1293) made the above argument recounted in the Beit Yosef and the Yoreh De’ah (179) which may have been based on passages in the Arba'ah Turim.  Even then, we must tread lightly. Personally, I refuse to tell fortunes. I will give personal readings and advise on past and current spiritual matters (as I have formal training in the latter), but always stop short at looking into the future. If they insist, I refuse and cite the above argument. Contacting the dead, luckily for me, has several mentions in Tanach (Samuel I, 28, Isaiah 8), in several places in Torah (Leviticus 20), albeit the attitude is not so positive. Later mystics talked to the dead regularly as is documented in Talmud (Sanhedrin 65B, Moed Katan 28A).

Rabbi Meir ben Baruch grave

Image from: http://www.tourismus.rothenburg.de

As you will read in later installments, I use a technicality for seances. Rather than contacting a dead person, we try to contact the spirit of a newly deceased person.  You see, it is believed that the Nefesh (the life breath) of a person leaks out slowly over a period of hours upon physical death of the body.  It is never to be done for selfish reasons; it should be done to help all spirits (living and dead) in their service to the Divine.