M
y sister’s a witch.
Actually, not at all; she’s one of the biggest inspirations in my life.
But that was my initial reaction when I heard that my big sister, Mrs. Tamar Tessler, was an “ayin hara lady.” She’d been plying her craft from Bnei Brak to Johannesburg to Lawrence. She described to me what she does, and it all sounded very much like “double, double, toil and trouble.”
My rebbi, Rav Moshe Shapira ztz”l, didn’t encourage his talmidim to go running to ayin hara ladies. But in the words of Rav Zave Rudman shlita:
Even ayin hara had a system, in Rav Moshe’s worldview. I once approached him, after a number of incidents that had happened in the extended family, and asked whether we there was an ayin hara on my family and should we deal with the situation as such. He thought for moment and said, “No. The family should daven.” I learned from there that even ayin hara needs a “psak” from someone who understands these things. Otherwise the regular derachim of tefillah apply.
Create a free account to keep reading.
