Dybbuks, bat mitzvahs and God’s curses

There are many mysteries in this world. There are great mysteries, but I find all the little mysteries and conundrums no less fascinating.

For example, why is there the lifting of the chair ritual at bar and bat mitzvahs?

People told me that it’s a symbolic status elevation. Recognition. A crossing of the threshold, of liminality, from one social state to another. Psychologically, it makes perfect sense, because we react to rituals and symbols much more than to words. It’s best when the words match rituals and symbols. Hence, the obsession with initiations, incantations, semi-secret and secret societies around the world.

A lot of people here in Poland don’t even know what bar and bat mitzvahs are, never mind the more intricate Jewish customs and traditions. We only have a cursory understanding of the Jewish culture. Most of it got wiped out in the Second World War, but now, it seems, there’s a revival.

Dybbuks sound cool to me. Wandering souls of the dead looking for someone to possess. There’s an abandoned hospital for mentally ill Jews not that far from me. People use it for paintball these days.

All the patients were killed during the Second World War and the hospital staff swallowed cyanide pills in solidarity. A ready horror movie scenario. You can still find strange, intricate, drawings  on the walls. I went there with two journalists more than ten years ago. When standing in front of the building, they started telling me they were scared of that place and didn’t want to go in. What? Total skeptics who had never believed in anything other than the material? And no, they weren’t kidding. Finally, we went in, and one of them started video-recording. At one point, he jumped back and said, ”What’s that?” He showed us the camera. It was an orb. Going up. You could see it clearly. The two of us were standing right next to that orb and we didn’t see a thing while the third guy was recording us. If there’s a place full of souls that want to keep on living in the physical world, their lives cut short, it’s that hospital. To me, the whole dybbuk idea makes sense. Someone dies, especially if it’s a sudden death, someone who is addicted to the carnal pleasures, so of course he or she is going to try to possess people just to have more fun. Influencing people to drink, and so on, makes sense to me, too. Why wouldn’t the soul of an alcoholic do that? Who says addictions end at death? You can be addicted to money, too, and I’ve actually read a story of a billionaire who claimed that his dybbuk kept pressing him to earn more and more. Who needs life coaches when you have dybbuks? Someone could be looking for a new family, for that matter. Who says trauma ends at death?

I know, a psychologist or a psychiatrist (though not all, by any means) would say now: oh, these are just projections of the mind, personifications of our inner shadow we call demons, dybbuks, whatever, when we say demons, we don’t mean literal demons, after all, we use these words to justify our darker side to ourselves, we don’t want to face it, we tell ourselves that it’s some other force and not us. Yes, I’ve heard it all before.

I also don’t see why our beliefs would change even after death. I do wonder, though, say a staunch Hezbollah supporter gets blown to pieces. Would he know he’s dead right there and then? Would such a death teach him humility or make him an even stronger supporter of his cause? How about a Russian propagandist? We talk about death but we rarely ask the question: does the way we die affect how we change in the alleged afterlife? For example, getting blown to pieces ought to be a shocking and humbling event, prompting serious soul-searching. But my logic is my logic, only the Lord knows how it all fits in the grand scheme of things.

If there’s a prayer thanking God for not making one a woman, there should be a prayer asking God not to ever curse one in a similar fashion. Just in case God gets offended and decides to teach us a lesson. To be fair, there was a German judge, a respected member of society, who completely lost his mind and started believing that God was turning him into a woman. Even Freud got intrigued by the case. For a man who coined the term penis envy, I can see why he’d be so intrigued by the psychotic judge. Of course, one could say – well, what if God really was punishing that judge? Ad infinitum.

We usually think of God as this grand being engineering events across endless parallel realities, but what if God is more like an undercover boss, walking among us, pretending to be some random people we come across – say, a homeless person asking us for money – just to test us or even troll us? Now, you might say, God doesn’t need to test us, or troll us, He knows it all and is beyond such nonsense. But He also works in mysterious ways. For all we know, He could be a cosmic troll or a cosmic comedian.

Someone commented on one of my earlier blog posts that I was rude to the Chinese psychic. I also got several e-mails expressing a similar sentiment. I’d normally get an email or two about my articles and, surprise surprise, I get several about my alleged rudeness to the psychic. Who would’ve thought. I’d expect more comments along the lines of, ”Why go to psychics at all?” Oh well. I guess I shouldn’t have mocked her claims so openly. I can see why this would be seen as rude, even though it didn’t cross my mind at the time.

Luckily, there was no one else around, or she might have felt like losing her face (not the literal face, status face) and that’s one of the worst things in Asia (there are differences between Asian countries and their adherence to Confucianism: the most Confucian society is likely Korea, not China or Japan, as so many people think).

Speaking of the long-lasting links between Poland and the Jewish people. How about makeup? We all know what makeup means. The popularity of makeup today, both the word and the face-painting, goes back to none other than Maksymilian Faktorowicz, better known as Max Factor. Heard of Max Factor? No? Then you must be a real ignoramus. Just kidding.

Maksymilian Faktorowicz was a Polish Jew, and certainly not the only Polish Jew, by the way, who had revolutionized the world. I’ve noticed a pattern: a Polish Jew flees the partitioned Poland, usually the Russian partition (the east), ends up in the U.S., and revolutionizes the world. For better or worse, depends who you ask.

Fun fact: apparently, more than a century ago, makeup was reserved for theater, clowns, and prostitutes. Today, we can’t really imagine a society without it. Goes to show how social norms change. There’s an obvious and definite link between makeup and clowns, though.