Adam Kirsch puzzles over some of the stranger interpretations of Talmudic ritual – such as the warning that drinking only two cups of wine invites demons and witchcraft – and surveys attempts by rabbis to find loopholes:
Just as the rabbis codify in great detail exactly what can and can’t be moved on Shabbat, or how tall an eruv has to be, or what time in the evening you can say the Shema, so they lay out the rules and exceptions about urinating between a wall and a palm tree. This is dangerous, they explain, “only when there are not four cubits of space between the two objects. However, if there are four cubits, we have no problem. … And even when there are not four cubits, we said there is a problem only when the demons have no other route besides that one. However, if they have another route, we have no problem with it.”
The ease with which magic and witchcraft find a place in the Talmudic worldview is, to my mind, both illuminating and compromising. For it suggests that the Talmud’s general commitment to exact measurement and correct action—the need to find out exactly how to behave in order to please God, down to the order in which you put on your shoes in the morning—is itself a kind of magical thinking. For the rabbis, Jews are the protagonists of a cosmic drama in which their every slightest action will be either rewarded or punished. There is something ennobling about this, but when the same kind of scrutiny is attributed not just to God but to demons and witches, it begins to seem oppressive and even absurd.
The Dish 