Leningrad Codex carpet page, 1010 CE · public domain

Judaism

Tradition·Founded c. 1000 BCE·est. ~15 million worldwide

Judaism → 8 branches

Branch
L Figure of Judaism

Lilith — the demon at the crib.

Incantation bowls written against her by Jews have been dug up in Iraq from the sixth century. She is the clearest evidence that a Judaism existed in kitchens and cemeteries that was never quite what the responsa said it was.

Names & titlesLilith
DomainNight, stillbirth, and the terror around childbirth
RelationsIn the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira, Adam's first wife, who left rather than lie beneath him
Depicted asAmulets over the cradle naming three angels — Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof
StandingFolk practice the rabbis tolerated and the philosophers despised; since 1976, also the name of a Jewish feminist magazine
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Lilith is what the tradition looked like below the level of the responsa. Aramaic incantation bowls from sixth-century Mesopotamia, written by Jewish scribes and buried upside down under floors, name her and bind her. Amulets naming Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof were hung over cradles in Europe and North Africa into the twentieth century, and the practice was widespread enough that Maimonides' contempt for amulet-writing was aimed squarely at a real market. Her biography — Adam's first wife, made from the same earth, who refused the position and left — comes from the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval satire whose seriousness scholars still argue about. Since the 1970s she has been claimed as a feminist figure and a magazine has carried her name since 1976, which some Jewish women find liberating and others find like adopting a child-killing demon as a mascot. Both readings are alive in the same communities.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The new year. Buddhism · rite Go deeper →
Blessing the water. Christianity · rite Go deeper →
Aqiqah — the first words. Islam · rite Go deeper →
No idols, no omens, no auspicious days. Sikhism · precept Go deeper →
The talisman. Taoism · rite Go deeper →
Purity is restored, not earned. Shinto · core tenet Go deeper →

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