Cracking the Whip
September 24, 2004
'Who by water and who by fire," says a line in the Yom Kippur prayer U'Netaneh Tokef, which speaks of the different kinds of death in store for those not inscribed in this year's Book of Life � and if some of the extremist enemies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Gaza disengagement plan have their way, fire will be his fate. That is, the prime minister won't die in fire but of it, from a pulsa de-nura ("whip of fire") ceremony in which he will be cursed. "Once Again: Threats of Murder and Pulsa Denura," announced a banner headline in the Rosh Hashanah issue of the mass-circulation Israeli tabloid Yediot Aharonot.
"Once Again," for those unaware of it, is a reference to the pulsa de-nura that was performed by a small group of far right-wing Jews shortly before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, to the efficacy of which his death was then attributed.
[...]
After describing a modern pulsa de-nura ceremony, Philologos goes on to discus the origins of the ritual:
But what does all this have to do, you may ask, with whips of fire? Not very much, it would seem. Nor will you find a single reference to a pulsa de-nura ceremony in any traditional Jewish source. All that can be found is the Aramaic term itself, which occurs in several stories in the Talmud.
The most charming and interesting of these stories � one meant to illustrate the dangers of exaggerated spiritual powers � is in the tractate of Bava Metsi'a and tells how the wonder-working Rabbi Hiyya came to synagogue on a public fast day that had been declared to pray for the end of a drought. When, the Talmud tells us, he uttered the words in the Eighteen Benedictions, "He maketh the winds blow," a strong wind sprang up at once; when he said on its heels, "And He maketh the rain fall," it began to pour cats and dogs, and as he approached the words, "And He maketh the dead rise," panic broke out in heaven lest the dead be resurrected prematurely, before the coming of the messiah. "Who has revealed such [spiritual] secrets to mankind?" God demanded to know. "[The prophet] Elijah," the angels told Him. At once, the Talmud relates, Elijah was struck by "60 whips of fire" (pulsei de-nura), which caused him to descend to earth looking "like a fiery bear" and to drive Rabbi Hiyya from the synagogue in the nick of time.
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Good story. There's another, in some ways similar one in the early (pre-Kabbalistic) mystical text 3 Enoch 16:
R. Ishmael said:
Metatron, the angel prince of the Presence, the adornment of the height of all, said to me:
In the beginning I was enthroned on a great throne at the gate of the seventh (celestial) palace, and I judged all the sons of the heights, the household of the Omnipresent One, with the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. And I apportioned greatness, kingship, greatness, power, adornment, praise, the garland, the crown, and glory to all the princes of the kingdoms, when I sait enthroned in the court on high. And the princes of the kingdoms stood in attendance on me on my right and my left, with the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. But when the Other One (Aher, Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah) came to observe the vision of the Chariot and he set his eyes on me, he was afraid and troubled before me and his soul was confounded to the point of leaving him, because of dread, awe, and fear of me. When he saw me, that I was enthroned like a king and the ministering angels were standing in attendance on me like servants and all the princes of the kingdoms, wearing crowns, surrounded me, in that hour he opened his mouth and said, "Surely there are two Powers in heaven!"
At once a heavenly voice (bat qol) went forth from before the Shekhinah, saying, "Return, backsliding sons, apart from the Other One." In that hour Anapiel YHWH, the glorious, adorned, lovely, wonderful, frightening prince came by the commission of the Holy One, blessed be He, and struck me with sixty lashes of light (pulsot shel 'or) and he made me stand on my feet.
(My translation.) Metatron is the deified Enoch, who in chapter 15 was turned into an enormous being of fire and given the title the Little YHWH. He was given his own (comparatively!) little throne in the seventh heaven next to God's big one and, when the notorious heretic R. Elisha ben Abuyah ascended into heaven on a mystical journey, he was confused and concluded (perhaps not entirely unreasonably) that if there were two enthroned superbeings in heaven, that must mean there were two Gods. His punishment was to be made unable to repent and Enoch/Metatron's (effectively, for inadvertently inciting to heresy) was the "sixty lashes of light" (which looks to me like an attempt at a Hebrew translation of the Aramaic pulsei de-nura) and the loss of his seat.
Such is the mythic background of the Kabbalistic ceremony. The ritual itself, as Philologos notes, is modern. And at least one of its recipients died many years later of old age. I'm pretty sure it hasn't actually been done to Sharon, since, legally, it would probably count as incitement to murder. Rebecca Lesses has more about the threat in Mystical Politics.
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