1996 Archer Taylor memorial lecture: "Let it go to the garlic!": Evil eye and the fertility of women among the Sephardim, The

Western Folklore, Fall 1996 by Rosemary Levy Zumwalt

Now, as if with a twist of the kaleidoscope, I would like to rearrange the pattern of analysis, and move from the specific details of the evil eye among the Sephardim to an incorporation of other analytical approaches. In "Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye," Alan Dundes presents a comprehensive theoretical approach towards an understanding of the evil eye complex. As he says, "...the opposition between wet and dry is a fundamental folk idea, albeit an unconscious one, in Indo-European and Semitic worldview, a folk idea which is, metaphorically at any rate, a matter of life and death" (1981:298). First, and to my mind central for the understanding of the evil eye among the Sephardim, is the following: "Life depends on liquid. From the concept of the `water of life' to semen, milk, blood, bile, saliva, and the like, the consistent principle is that liquid means life while loss of liquid means death. `Wet and Dry' as an oppositional pair means life and death. Liquids are living; drying is dying!" (266; see also 273, 274). Certainly this equation between liquid and life, and drying and death, is implicit, if not explicit, in the Sephardic evil eye belief system. As J. E. Crombie suggested, "the element of life is sometimes believed to exist in the saliva" (1892:252), so for the Sephardim a protective measure against evil spirits involved spitting. Recall also the unfortunate woman whose breast milk not only dried up, but turned to pus at a glance from the vedre, the Muslim woman.

Drawing also on George Foster's theory of limited good (1965), Dundes remarks on the "finite, limited amount of good-health [or] wealth," where a gain by one individual is a loss to another (1981:266). The emphasis on limited good is apparent in every aspect of the evil eye belief complex, from the care against expressing praise, to the caution at displaying one's good fortune, to the more formalized interactions between people directed towards maintaining the balance of "goods." Among the Sephardim, one such practice shows clearly the principle of limited good, and the additional and related aspect of "the equilibrium model," in which poor or unhealthy individuals "constitute threats to persons with sufficient or abundant wealth and health" (266-67). The custom of kambasear involved the ritualized exchange of coins or a small gift, sometimes alfinetes (pins), between women of the following categories when they passed in the street: 1) two young women married in the first half of the same lunar month (and, thus, likely to be pregnant at the same time), or 2) a new bride and a parida, or 3) two pregnant women, or 4) a new bride and a woman who had recently miscarried. As part of this exchange, the two women would say, "Toma tus partos i yo tomo los mios" ("You keep your own miscarriages/childbirths and I keep mine"). If this custom were not followed, the pregnant woman would miscarry or give birth to a dead baby, according to Zimbul Suzi Maya, originally of Turkey, and Benny Nahmias of Jerusalem. The first three categories clearly illustrate the concept of limited good: there is only so much pregnancy to go around, so you keep your childbirths and I'll keep mine. The last category highlights the concept of the equilibrium model, that a new bride, either just pregnant or hoping to become pregnant, would need to be protected ritually against the woman who had recently miscarried. Even the etymological derivation of the word, kambasear, illustrates this aspect of the limited nature of fertility and the need to maintain the delicate balance between health and misfortune. In "The Evil Eye and the Power of Speech Among the Sephardim" (1987), Isaac Jack Levy and I connect the meaning of the word kambasear to the Portuguese cambalacho, "a deceitful and fraudulent barter, to trick." As we note, `"The exchange, therefore, was carried out either to appease or to fool the spirits, who would be naturally envious of women's fertility. If the precautionary exchange did not take place, then the young woman would be kambaseada-that is, asolombrada (enshrouded/prey to an evil spirit), always open to attack" (54). I add now that the exchange was symbolically projected onto the spirit realm: it was the vexing buenos de mozotros (good among us/spirits) who interfered with pregnancies and caused miscarriages and not the envious thoughts of newly-married Sephardic women!