While Halloween is certainly NOT a Jewish holiday, our tradition is not lacking in stories and lessons from ghosts, demons, and other spooky creatures. For a little pre-Halloween fun this week, we’ll look at some of the characters and stories that haunt—and help—in our texts.

And, if you want to know all there is to know about demonology and magic in Jewish tradition, check out the Throwing Sheyd podcast.

The Holiness Code in the Book of Leviticus is very clear about our proper relationship with ghosts and spirits. Do not turn to ghosts (‘ovot) and do not inquire of familiar spirits (yid’onim), to be defiled by them: I the Eternal am your God, says Leviticus 19:31. And the Talmud, in Sanhedrin, explains even further what it is that we should be avoiding. What is, the rabbis wonder, one who inquires of the dead? This is one who starves himself and goes and sleeps overnight in a graveyard so that a spirit of impurity should settle upon him, and he can listen to what the dead are saying.

But…..what happens if you find yourself having wandered to a cemetery? And what happens if, while you’re there, you happen to hear some ghosts talking? One man in the Talmud finds out. Berachot 18b tells the story of a man who, after an argument with his wife, goes to sleep in the cemetery to avoid her. There is a curious ghost nearby, who says to her friend: Come, let’s fly to the other side of the curtain that separates between the world of the dead and the Divine Presence and hear what will be decreed for the coming year.” Coming back with all the latest gossip, she tells her friend: I heard that anyone who plants during the first rainy season will lose all of their crops to hail.

And, what do you know? Our buddy sleeping in the cemetery goes back and waits until the second rainy season to sow his seeds. Everyone thinks he is nuts, but…guess whose crops were not stricken by hail, and guess who made a fortune at the market that season?

After it happens again, his wife gets suspicious—and with enough probing questions, the jig is up. The following new year when the man came to the cemetery he heard one ghost say to the other, “Be careful! There is someone among the living who listens to what we say”.

Knowing what we know about how the Torah speaks of ghosts and inquiring of the dead, what do you think this story is meant to teach us?

— Rabbi Sari Laufer