We earlier reported on Rabbi Yossi Dayan’s intention to use voodoo use pulsa denura, literally meaning ‘lashes of fire’, on Ariel Sharon. The ceremony took place last Thursday at the grave of Shlomo Ben-Yosef, a Betar member who was hanged by the British in 1938 for firing on an Arab bus in protest of numerous attacks by Arabs on Jewish targets. Activist Baruch Ben Yosef explained

Ben Yosef gave his life for the Jewish people and refused to recognize the British government, while Sharon does everything for himself.

This curse was invoked against Yitzhak Rabbin several months before his assassination.

Muffti’s casual research (read: use of Google) did not reveal much about the contents of the ceremony, other than a statement by Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, from Yeshivat Benei N’vi’im. According to him:

The Pulsa DeNora has wrongfully been associated with a certain school of Kabbalah known as Kabbalah Ma’asit (magic). The Pulsa D’Nora is not a magical formula. Torah and Judaism have no connection to or tolerance of magic in any form. Therefore, the consideration of anything in holy Kabbalah, an integral part of HaShem’s Torah from Sinai to have any ties to magic is a spurious and offensive suggestion. The Pulsa D’Nora is actually not a ‘curse of death’ as many mistakenly believe. No Rabbi or Kabbalist has the right or authority to curse another to death.

Phew! And Muffti was worried that it was something weird! So, what is it?

In essence the Pulsa D’Nora is nothing more that a desperate cry of help to G-d. One who believes in the power of prayer will be impressed with this. One who does not believe in the power of prayer will ignore the Pulsa as such a one would ignore all other prayer.

Ah, well, THAT’s not so weird. Except for a quick qualifier:

It has been said, however, that the Pulsa D’Nora is not to be taken lightly. The ceremony does include the recitation of certain Holy Names. This itself is a sacred undertaking. It is said that when one approaches the Heavenly Court to judge the soul of the accused wicked one, the first one examined by the Heavenly Court is the petitioner. If the one seeking justice is himself not just and righteous, then the Pulsa can turn on his own head. It will be the petitioner who will meets his fate instead of the one who stands accused. For this reason, using the Pulsa D’Nora is a dangerous thing, for who can stand before the Heavenly Court and proclaim oneself to be righteous and just.

Ummn…a little weird?

Since Jewlicious has a participating Rabbi, perhaps he would be kind enough to fill Muffti in on the details.

ADDENDUM: Muffti forgot to write that according to Arutz Sheva:

Responding to the report, Yesha Council officials released a sharp condemnatory message, deploring the prayer service, emphasizing that it is not an acceptable action even in the ongoing battle against the expulsion plan.

Muffti would condemn the action too, but he thinks its too silly to bother.

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18 Comments

  • Barry Chamish is the one to give you the skinny on this one….he’s at pushhamburger.com and also barrychamish.com. If ever there were a Jewish conspiracy person who Yikes! Makes sense…then Barry is the man…he’ll tell you this is somehow spin….

  • Can you do these ceremonies for heads of the tuitin committees, the ones who tell you to move to a trashier neighborhood and take loans?

  • Muffti your blind faith in the power of google search mislead you again. Do you really think that the kabbalists would let one of their most guarded secrets out of their hands? If you want to know the spooky stuff you gotta go to Yerushalaim to Yeshivat Mekubalim man. Maybe this together with the fact that “not everything about Israel/Jews/Judaism can be found on google” should be another reason for muffti to make aliyah.
    On the other hand – not everything about Israel/Jews/Judaism can be found in Israel, can it?

  • YYAAWWNN.

    This was done before – by our favorite Secret Service Agent, Avishai Raviv – together with his other famous stunt, the “swearing in ceremony” of an underground militia that didn’t exist.

    The Jewish people has rituals for times of extreme distress. This is not one of them. This “kabbalistic ceremony” has the same relation to the Jewish religion that the Protocols of Zion have to the Talmud.

  • … and isn’t it amazing how those journalists managed to show up to film it… didn’t know they were so, uh, spiritual…

  • Andrew Sullivan made an interesting comment about Pulsa Denura:

    http://www.andrewsullivan.com

    “ACT OF DESPERATION: When a society does not tolerate violence against its soldiers, political losers may just turn to spells and incantations.

    link

    If only the Iraqi Sunnis followed suit.”

    So I guess it isn’t that bad….I hope…

  • muffti,
    I promise you that if you start studying torah, talmud, midrash, and eventually the zohar, you find that ‘judaism’ is very cool.

  • If the rabbis that invoked the Pulsa D’Nura have any credibility, I will not be suprised if something happens to Sharon.

  • you misspelled “weird” (it’s not “wierd”) – way to seem educated…

  • I THINK it’s a bunch if bull, but it serves to get the mentally unstable to act like lunatics. That there are those who want Sharon killed or to die naturally is not a shock.

  • Ybocher,

    Muffti did ask the Rabbi we are affiliated with to give some info. Google was only a first try.

    Josh,

    Muffti already thinks that ‘judaism’ is very cool. Otherwise he wouldn’t hang out with you losers 🙂

  • If I were a less Zen-type person, I might be insulted by the slam on my people (well, my peoples’ people at least) in the title of this piece. Instead, I’ll just do a little cross-cultural education on the spiritual practice to which the non-Kabbalist, non-ritual was compared.

    The thing is that vodoun, whatever Hollywood might have told you to the contrary, is not some primitive hexing free-for-all with death curses and zombification everywhere you turn. There are unprincipled vodonists and santeras in the world who capitalize on the religions’ black-magic reputation to rook money out of the tourists, but they no more represent the heart of the faith than the people at this ceremony represent the heart of Judaism.

    Vodoun and the African Diaspora religions are based around respect to the family, the ancestors, Creation and the Creator, in reverse order of importance, and have served as a method of uniting (and now re-uniting, as they have been able to come out into the open without as much fear of reprisal) a community spread all over the world and suffering from a history of repression and violence, thus retaining not only their spiritual values but their cultural history.
    Does any of this sound familiar?

  • Sorry, Parcequilfaut, Muffti was being insensitive and displaying his ignorance. Thanks for the correction.

  • I know that came off sounding horrendously preachy in some indefinable way, grandmuffti, and if it makes me look like less of a putz, I know you didn’t mean your original statements as an attack.

    But it’s important for people to know the real truth and not the Hollywood version; it has seemed to me for a while now that Judaism and the African Diaspora religions, while not slated to merge any time soon (grin), have a huge amount in common and face many of the same challenges because of their eerily similar history and the demands of their faith. A lot of the things I hear here, I have heard in slightly different phrasing from my Epha sister…concerns about attrition and changes in the faith wrought by the assimilationist youth, concerns about false public image due to complete misunderstanding of what traditions entail, the difficulties of reconciling traditions that, while ascribing to the same roots, have developed culturally during a long period of separation and now sometimes lead to infighting about whose version is “right”/closest to the roots of the faith…even the concerns from less observant families when their children become initiates. The AD doesn’t even have an Israel-analog or the hope of one, because there’s no pressure for anyone in the world community to recognize Ile Ife as the spiritual homeland of the AD. Up until the last 30-50 years all the information disseminated outside places like Cuba and Haiti was a bunch of racist twaddle about the “dangerous darky superstitions”, that Hollywood then capitalized on for easy gore. Some of that stuff sounds almost as outrageous now as the whole “Jews eat Christian babies on Passover” myth.

    Maybe the one GOOD thing that came out of the whole anti-Sharon gris-gris was this exchange? 🙂

  • Based upon your writing, I was curious because I’m not Jewish and I do not know about such things, but do you know of anyone who ate blood (not human) to stay alive during the holocaust? I know, it’s an odd question, but I just read My Reconstructed Life by Eugen Schoenfeld and he says that he had to do so in order to stay alive. I was curious if this was an isolated case or if there were others who experienced similar experiences. This fascinates me beyond belief because I can’t imagine doing it, even if my life was on the line. Thanks.

  • What? Abraham and Moses were magical. I see no good reason for the dichtonomy. Also the 613 mitzvot are contradicting as they say “Believe in God” yet another say’s “Don’t be superstitious” Since no physical evidence exist for a God of any kind (except for Dagon, I saw a Youtube with a merman. For those with a stick up their ass I was joking and think the mermans a hoax) and all religion is equal as all presuppose faith.

    And the URL headline is outright offensive. I’ll be telling all the Pagan equivalents of the ADL about it.

    If the Pagan Religions were so “Weird” Why plagerize ancient Sumers creation myth? And why steal Misis and the Egyptian book of the deads 10 commandments (which are the 10 commandments word for word and predate the Moses mythology).

    It was also Pagan Rome who’s tax dollars and soldiers have protected you within it’s boarders, and gave you plumbing and aquaducts.

    Pagans built the Great Wall of China, Great Pyramids, Aquaducts, Pyramids in South America, roads, Greek philosophy, herbology, natural medicine (which is still used today and more effective)and African Pagans discovered the Earth is round and Heliocentric. Let’s not forget that Hadrian kicked Israels ass, in other words Apollo 1, yahweh 0 lol 😀

    Funny “coincedence” that many of these civilizations with no contact between eachother had very similiar “myths” and pantheons. Contrast with Judaism which is just abunch of nomad caveman rantings and stolen legends from other cultures.

    By the way I prayed to Dagon to help Obama win, contrast THAT with many republican Christians praying to Jesus lol 😀 Many people prayed to Dagon that Babylon would kick Israels ass, many people prayed to yahweh that Israel would defend. Dagons prayer answered, Yahwehs not 😉

    ANY force, fraud, coercion, and theft is IMMORAL, Yahweh commands land to be stolen from Canaan and approves killing and raping children, therefore Yahweh is an immoral “God”.

    Time to invent a new God Judaism, because your intolerant hateful filth the world is tired of. And what was a Jewish center doing in Indian Holy Land anyway? The Talmud say’s idol worship is “immoral” why would India or ancient Rome let abunch of people in their country who think the host country is “immoral”?

    By the way, I’m totally against a fiat currency and want the IMF and World Bank abolished so the world keeps from getting suckered into a debt scam, and Israel gets $10,000 US per USA citizen. And USA has many wonderful idols! Guess where “immoral”.

    Now will you promise to stay out of our Gentile lands and stay out if your just going to hate on the host population (Talmud also speaks out against assimilation)?