Ayin hara: the evil eye in the Jewish tradition
From the Ethics of the Fathers to the Talmud, from the hamsa to the red thread: the history of belief in the ayin hara and protective Jewish customs.
In the Jewish tradition the evil eye has an ancient name, ayin hara, literally «bad eye». The expression refers both to the envious gaze and, more generally, to a mean-spirited disposition, unable to rejoice in another person's good fortune. The concept runs through rabbinic literature, the folklore of Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities and many everyday customs, a good number of which still survive today as turns of phrase and small gestures of caution.
The rabbinic sources
Already in the Mishnah, in the tractate Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, Rabbi Yehoshua lists the bad eye, together with the evil inclination and hatred of one's fellow creatures, among the things that drive a person out of the world. The sense is first of all moral: envy consumes the one who feels it and cuts him off from others. In the Babylonian Talmud, however, the ayin hara also takes on the face of a concrete force, able to strike the person being looked at.
A passage in the tractate Bava Metzia attributes to Rav, a Babylonian master of the third century, the statement that ninety-nine people out of a hundred die of the evil eye and only one of natural causes. In the tractate Berakhot, on the other hand, Rabbi Yochanan declares that he does not fear the evil eye because he descends from Joseph, interpreting a verse of Jacob's blessing in Genesis as a promise of immunity for that lineage.
Caution in words and numbers
From these ideas came very widespread habits of speech. When speaking of a healthy child, a successful deal or a large family, many would add the expression bli ayin hara, «without the evil eye», which in Yiddish sounds like keyn eynhore. The formula worked as a verbal shield, similar to the Roman praefiscini. There was also a custom of not counting people directly, preferring other ways of checking, for instance, whether the number required for communal prayer was present.
Hamsa and red thread
In the communities of North Africa and the Middle East the hamsa is very widespread: an open five-fingered hand, often decorated with an eye in the centre or with Hebrew letters. It is a symbol shared with the Islamic world, and in Jewish contexts it is sometimes called the hand of Miriam, after the sister of Moses. It appears on jewellery, doors, cradles and household objects, and in some communities even in the decoration of important documents.
Another popular custom is the red woollen thread tied around the wrist, which one tradition links to Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem, around which the thread is said to be wound before being handed out. The practice has been debated among rabbinic authorities, some of whom regarded it as a custom of non-Jewish origin and therefore to be avoided: this debate, too, is part of its history.
The ayin hara clearly shows the double nature of the evil eye in the monotheistic religions. On the one hand it is a moral vice to be fought within oneself by cultivating generosity of gaze, the so-called ayin tovah, the good eye, which the Ethics of the Fathers itself praises as the best path; on the other it is an external danger against which one defends oneself with formulas and objects. The two perspectives coexist in texts and in homes without cancelling each other out.