Abstract

The ability to exorcise a dibbuk was a significant aspect of the hagiographic literature that grew up around the figure of Rabbi Isaac Luria, the most important kabbalist of sixteenth-century Safed. A letter written by one of his disciples in 1571 described one of the first exorcisms performed by Luria and was circulated to kabbalists in several countries. The story of this exorcism found its way into the Mayse Bukh, a collection of hagiographic stories in Yiddish, first published in Basel in 1602. This article argues that the Mayse Bukh was the first published account of a Safed exorcism and this letter was the source of the story in the Mayse Bukh. It also offers a plausible chain of transmission from the letter to the Mayse Bukh.

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