[Avodah] The Talmud's Many Demons

[Zev Sero]

On 15/08/2012 7:46 AM, Akiva Miller wrote:
> Similarly, R' Zev Sero offered:
>
>> >  There is such a thing as Shedin Yehuda'in, "Jewish" demons, who
>> >  do good.  In Yosef's case, he transmitted Torah that was said
>> >  in one yeshivah to another the same day, filling a niche that
>> >  would one day be taken over by the telephone and then by the
>> >  internet.

> The problem, as I see it, is that there is a limit to how far these metaphors can go,

I did not mean this as a metaphor.  I take it for granted that shedim
do exist.  I was merely pointing out that they are not "devils", i.e.
evil creatures, whose existence poses some sort of theological problem.
Yosef Shida was a good sheid.  And if he did not exist, then how did the
seven shemaatos that were said in Sura become known in Pumbedisa on the
same day?  The only alternative the gemara considers is that perhaps
Eliyahu Hanavi transmitted them; but I don't see how that's any more
"rational" than Yosef Shida.   Rav Yosef also reports a conversation he
actually had with this same Yosef Shida; was he talking to a metaphor?
I simply don't see a greater problem with believing in sheidim than in
yetis. (The cat-ash recipe, OTOH, needs to be explained away somehow,
because I can't believe that it actually works.)

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon