The idea that a person or supernatural being can cause harm with a mere look — and the practices believed to ward it off.
ed note–keep in mind, and particularly all of you out there who have foolishly bought into the nonsense that Judaism is like any other religion that the 2 faiths constantly under the microscope for all their ‘failings’–meaning Christianity and Islam–contain no provisions whatsoever for casting evil spells on people as exist within the religion of the Jews and are constitutionally and organically inimical to wishing evil on persons who run afoul of them or their teachings.
Also note, and particularly those out there who autonomically consign all of this ‘Jooish voodoo’ business to being merely a ‘Talmudic’ thing the references in this article relating to the Torah as the basis for this peculiar practice.
My Jewish Learning DOT com
The “evil eye,” ayin ha’ra in Hebrew, is the idea that a person or supernatural being can bewitch or harm an individual merely by looking at them. The belief is not only a Jewish folk superstition but also is addressed in some rabbinic texts.
The term is also sometimes used to describe evil inclinations or feelings of envy.
In several pieces of Midrash , rabbis suggest that the Evil Eye played a role in various incidents in the Torah. For example, they say that Sarah cast an evil eye on Hagar while Hagar was pregnant, causing her to miscarry before going on to become pregnant with Ishmael. Elsewhere, rabbis argue that Leah’s fertility was adversely impacted when she “became subject to the power of the evil eye” for thanking God for allowing her to bear more than a fourth of Jacob’s sons. (Rabbeinu Bahya, Bereshit 30:38:5)
In the Talmud, the rabbis say that Joseph’s descendants are immune to the power of the Evil Eye — and that–
‘One who enters a city and fears the evil eye should hold the thumb of his right hand in his left hand and the thumb of his left hand in his right hand and recite the following: I, so-and-so son of so-and-so, come from the descendants of Joseph, over whom the evil eye has no dominion.’ (Berakhot 55b)
here in sarajevo,bosnia, where i have been spending the last 4 summers (wonderful city, people, culture, food), i also picked up a fair bit of the language.
but i needed the translator for “superstition” and they really nailed it, bng-on: “praznovjerje”, which breaks downs as follows: “prazno”=“empty” and “vjerje” etymologizes to “faith”, i.e., “empty faith, which is exactly what the servants of devil profess in truth, an anti-religion, spiritually as dead as a doornail, atheism by any other means.
the creed of the witchdoctors worse than the worst of dahomey cannibal sorcerers, seeking hoodoo-to-power.
(sigh) If a human being had the power to cause harm by just looking at someone with angry eyes wishing harm on that person then every single one of my husband’s brothers would be dead by now. Because I have given each and every one of them my most evil eye from time to time. And each and every one of them is live and healthy to this day. And just as mean and stubborn as ever.
To any one who believes in God…. you can’t believe in God while at the same time believe in superstitious stuff like this. Because the only being that has that kind of power is God and no one else. When you believe that a mere human can do things only God can do then you are giving those human beings power over you they do not deserve to have. God’s opinion is the only opinion you should fear. The reason God is the only being to have that kind of power is because He is the only one who can handle that kind of power. If human beings had that kind of power we would all be dead.
When you believe that mere human beings have this kind of power you are believing that there is someone like God.
There is no one like God.
He is, was, and always shall be, the only one of His kind.
ed note–LB, thank you for your beautiful words, which are not only beautiful, but indeed true to the mark, 100%.
The point in posting this however was to show just how deranged and dangerous these people are, no different in effect than those who practice some barbaric form of voodoo where the entrails of slaughtered animals are used in predicting the future or where some innocent person is sacrificed to some deity in order to attain some earthly blessing.
Any remember these people are not just savages running through the jungles of wherever, but firmly in control of the media, our money and an arsenal of nukes they are just itching to let loose.
I have to disagree with the comments only insofar as the idea that God would be the author or producer of an evil outcome using the ‘casting’ of an ‘evil eye’ by a human. I think however, it is possible, since God has permitted people to commit evil, that those who are assisted by demons/devils are able to give themselves over to such powers, here on earth, and to permit their brains, hands, feet to be used as instruments of evil.