The lustful demon of the Babylonian Talmud gamely withstands all scholarly attempts at rehabilitation

Demonic Desires
“Yetzer Hara” and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity

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Ishay Rosen-Zvi
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, 280 pages

 

My library contains a few books whose dust jackets sport images frightening enough to induce nightmares in small children and, occasionally, large adults. Hans Baldung’s woodcut Witches’ Sabbath, which graces the cover of Kimberly Stratton’s Naming the Witch, has a palpably chilling effect on its viewer. The cover of Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s Demonic Desires, which depicts a diabolical figure piggy-backing on some hapless soul, is more psychologically disconcerting. Demonic Desires is a well-crafted intellectual history of the yetzer hara – or evil inclination, as it is commonly known in English. But the fact that this work is written in a sober, scholarly register in no way diminishes the disturbing experience of descending into the very heart of Jewish darkness. At least in this case, it pays to ignore the conventional wisdom of never judging a book by its cover.

Demonic Desires opens with a riddle: how did two minor references to humankind’s evil designs (the original sense of the word yetzer) in the biblical flood story evolve into a full-blown, lustful, and apparently hypersexual demon that keeps pious Jews (in some communities at least) up late worrying? Rosen-Zvi is not the only scholar to ask this question, yet he is arguably the first to answer it in so sophisticated, compelling, and unsettling a fashion. Prior to the publication of this book, the yetzer had undergone a long period of rehabilitation. First, strains of the Hassidic movement advocated “sanctifying the physical”; later, apologetic tracts aimed at Christianity depicted Judaism as affirming sexuality; and relatedly, recent scholarly writing made a good deal out of the rabbinic neologism of the yetzer tov (good inclination) and its unique role in fashioning a generally positive Jewish approach to sex. Particularly in response to the latter, Rosen-Zvi confidently retorts that

Christianity depicted Judaism as affirming sexuality; and relatedly, recent scholarly writing made a good deal out of the rabbinic neologism of the yetzer tov (good inclination) and its unique role in fashioning a generally positive Jewish approach to sex. Particularly in response to the latter, Rosen-Zvi confidently retorts that

 

The Tempter Within

Demonic Desire’s weapon is the “genealogy” of its subject – a critical tool developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which patiently follows the evolution of widely held assumptions in order to question their inevitability. Rosen-Zvi is pedantic and unwavering as he stares down misconceptions about the yetzer. He works through the sources one at a time, using tried and true methods developed in the field of rabbinic philology. Rosen Zvi first takes on tannaitic literature (rabbinic works compiled in the third century CE) and confirms a general hypothesis held by scholars about “legal” midrash (midrash halakha) since the 19th century; namely, that this corpus can be divided into two schools – one associated with Rabbi Akiba and the other with Rabbi Ishmael. Rosen-Zvi discovers that midrashim from the school of Rabbi Akiba (Akiban midrash) contain a rather tame depiction of the yetzer – as a natural human weakness that must be overcome in serving God. In contrast, Rabbi Ishmael and his followers craft a demonic character that stands at the very center of their midrashic anthropology.