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The Curse of the Saint
Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Daniel J. Schroeter
We learn from Saint Veneration among the Jews in Morocco by Issachar BenAmi (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998) of the belief that neglecting to fulfill one's obligations at the graves of a qadosh or even doubting the saint's efficacy, is liable to offend even a dead saint and consequently punishment is to be expected. I could give a number of other personal anecdotes that would probably suggest to the believer that the curse of the saint was so powerful that it might even influence the most skeptical of people.
Rabbi Abraham Ha-Cohen, also known as Rabbi Abraham Cohen BuDwaya, is one of the many righteous or saintly persons (tsaddiq, pl. tsaddiqim; also referred to as "holy ones," qadosh, pl. qadoshim), who appears in BenAmi's book. Like many venerated saints in Morocco, miracles are attributed to him.
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Before his death, may he rest in peace, atfour o'clock on a Friday afternoon, he told them not to leave his corpse overnight. He told them to drive an iron tent peg between the sunlight and the shade, and the sun would stand still until they had finished burying him. And so it came about. He passed away. The members of the Burial Society prepared him. They sent men to dig the grave. They drove the tent peg between the shade and the sunlight, and the sun stood still until they finished burying him. They lit candles, pulled out the tent peg, and only then did the sun set. (204)
A folklorist by training, Ben-Ami has devoted his career to collecting and recording the popular traditions of Moroccan Jewry and in particular, stories about the hundreds of venerated saints scattered throughout Morocco's over 200 urban and rural Jewish communities. This present book is an abridged version of the author's encyclopedic Hebrew version, Ha-aratsat ha-qedoshim be-qerev YehudeMaroko, a virtual "who's who" of Moroccan saints. Throughout our travels, Ben-Ami served as an indispensable though sometimes frustrating guide to the various places of memory (lieux de memoire, as the French put it) during the four summers we spent visiting Jewish historic sites in Morocco. Inevitably, since Ben-Ami recorded testimonies mostly from Moroccan Jews living in Israel, there is sometimes confusion and inconsistencies in geographical locations and place names. Moreover, Ben-Ami is often uncritical of his informants' stories. Not infrequently, it seems, individuals who might have been important members of his informants' families are elevated to the status of saints, when in some instances they were not venerated by the community as such. Motivated by a sense of urgency to record the memories of Moroccan Jews before the generation that left Morocco disappears, Ben Ami insists on the value of documenting every shred of material that he has collected, and therefore, he is not always very discriminating in his evidence. The major value of the book is a primary source for researchers on Moroccan culture, raw data that needs to be filtered through analytical lenses.
The first part of the book comprehensively divides the practices and beliefs associated with Moroccan saints into categories. How saints come into being, is the theme of one chapter. Here, as elsewhere in the book there is little historical or even sociological analysis; rather, Ben-Ami documents beliefs in what the signs of sainthood are, such as performing miracles or leading an exemplary life. Saints are created when they reveal themselves in dreams; or weird phenomena at the time of death may signal the creation of a qadosh. Although some saints are individuals, there are also saintly lineages, in which other members of the saint's family and their descendants attain venerated status. Such is the case of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana, the subject of Yoram Bilu's illuminating book, Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000).
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