Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana

by Yoram Bilu

Overview

Without Bounds illuminates the life of the mysterious Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana.

Without Bounds illuminates the life of the mysterious Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana, a Jewish healer who worked in the Western High Atlas region in southern Morocco and died there in the early 1950s. Impressed by his healing powers and shamanic virtuosity, Moroccan Jews are intrigued by his lifestyle and contacts with the Muslim and the demonic worlds that dangerously blurred his Jewish identity.

Based on interviews with Moroccan Jews conducted in the late 1980s, Without Bounds proposes multiple readings of Wazana's life. Yoram Bilu re-creates the influences and important moments in Wazana's life and evaluates his character from psychological and anthropological perspectives.

Human- and demon-bound, holy and impure, Jew and Muslim, old and young, Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana dissolved the boundaries of the major social categories in Morocco and integrated them into his identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814343258
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2017
Series:	Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	187
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Yoram Bilu is a professor of psychology and anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also co-editor of Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience (State University of New York Press, 1997)

Editorial Reviews

This text is superb. It traces the life of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana- a Moroccan Jewish saint- the development of his cult in Morocco, and his career as a cult figure in Israel following his death. Professor Bilu is arguably the expert par excellence of Jewish folk religion in Israel, and, as expected, his treatment of Wazana- historically, biographically, anthropologically, and psychologically- is masterful.

University of California, San Diego - Melford E. Spiro