Hamsas – Old Market, Acco, Israel

The hamsa – the word comes from the Semitic root meaning "five"– is a hand-shaped amulet used to ward off the ayin ha-ra (or, as it is known in English, the Evil Eye). Hamsas have a long history in Mediterranean cultures. In their Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, Ellen Frankel and Betsy Teutsch speculate that fear of the Evil Eye may have originated among the ancient Canaanites and that Israelite traders carried amulets to protect against the Evil Eye on their journeys east and west whence these amulets entered European, Indian, and Chinese folklore. The hamsa is known to Christians as the "hand of Mary" and to Muslims as the "hand of Fatima" – Fatima being the daughter of Muhammad and a personification of mercy in Islamic lore. Occasionally, Jewish hamsas have a sixth finger, perhaps to observe the Torah’s prohibition against making "a sculptured image of anything that is on the earth below," in this case, of course, of a human hand. Often a hamsa has a single eye embedded in the middle of the palm to symbolize the watchful eye of God or to deflect the gaze of the ayin ha-ra.

But what is the Evil Eye? Folklorists point to an ancient belief, still commonly held, that certain people can cause damage to something valuable merely by gazing at it. In the third century C.E., the Greek mathematician Heliodorus of Larissa wrote (in his ostensibly scientific treatise on optics, no less!) that "when anyone looks at what is excellent with envious eye he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a pernicious quality and transmits his own envenomed exhalations into whatever is nearest him." In other words, to Heliodorus the eye is a source – rather than a receptor – of light and other emanations. For their part, the early Rabbis also believed in the supernatural power of a malevolent gaze. Their treatment of the subject ranges across many tractates of the Talmud. In some passages they assume that the curse is inflicted unintentionally but other passages indicate that it is the result of deliberate witchcraft. At times, they even characterize the ayin ha-ra as a demonic force that seeks its victims independently of human agency.

In yet other passages, the Rabbis see the Evil Eye as a moral or psychological failing and cite jealousy as its most frequent cause. Thus in Pirkei Avot five of the disciples of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai give advice on how to follow the good path in life and to avoid the bad. Rabbi Eliezer says that an evil eye is worse than a bad friend, a bad neighbour, or an evil heart. This suggests that some of the Rabbis believed that a "good eye" designates an attitude of good will and kindness towards others. Those who display this attitude will wish everyone well and rejoice when their fellow man or woman prospers. From this perspective, an "evil eye" denotes the opposite attitude. A person with such a malevolent attitude will not only feel no joy but experience actual distress when others prosper, and will rejoice when they suffer. Such misanthropes represent a great danger to our moral purity and social cohesion. But whatever the cause of the Evil Eye, the Rabbis believed there is no end to its malicious power. One Sage went so far as to assert that "ninety-nine perish by the Evil Eye; only one by natural causes."