211
See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (New York, 1961), pp. 11-24. The Jew as sorcerer is best developed through the character of Mazaltov in Aita Tettauen.
212
Galdós must have consciously or subconsciously been influenced by the Christian legends about Jewish magic, as when he looked at the Hebrew on the «El Tránsito» Synagogue in Toledo, which he describes as having «una faja de esos hermosos garabatos de oro y azul que parece haber trazado el dedo vacilante de un brujo». (Obras completas, Madrid, 1951, VI, p. 1589).
213
«[...] Jewish magic was entirely free of the satanic element that figured so prominently in the familiar sorcery of the Middle Ages... Its primary principle was an implicit reliance on the powers of good: the angels and the manifold differentiated and personalized attributes of God, which were invoked by a complicated technique of permutation and combination of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. By virtue of this principle, which involved a close acquaintance with Hebrew mystical lore, this essentially beneficent magic remained distinctively Jewish.» Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New York, 1961), p. 59.
214
«Jewish magic... never strayed from the fold, observing closely the tenets of the faith, merely extending and elaborating certain accepted principles, so that... the magician remained a pious and God-fearing Jew.» Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstitions, p. 16. Mazaltov in Aita Tettauen also uses the Shema in her magic procedures.
215
The recitation of the Shema, correct except for the corruption of the last word which should be Echad, is a further indication of Almudena's Jewishness, which is also reflected in his vocabulary, as Vernon A. Chamberlin points out: «In Misericordia Galdós also indicates Almudena's Jewishness, among other methods, by minimal contrasts of Hebrew words spoken by Almudena compared with their Hispanized forms repeated by Benina: 'Halleluyah' -'aleluya' (p. 1954), 'Hierusalaim' -'Jerusalén' (p. 1984), and even more effectively by having him recite the most basic tenet of Judaism: 'Shema Israel...'», in «Galdós' Sephardic Types», Symposium 17 (1963), 99, note 21.
216
For example, it is told that when Solomon's chief servant was sent to fetch a demon, he subdued him by placing chains around his neck and calling to him: «The Name of thy Lord is upon thee.» In the «Testament of Solomon», a pseudoepigraphic work of the first century, quoted by Louis Ginzberg in his article «Asmodeus» in The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1902), p. 217.
217
See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible (New York, 1956), pp. 571-573.
218
The Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 217.
219
See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstitions, pp. 224-227, for some interesting methods of seeking hidden treasures used by medieval Jewish magicians.
220
Quoted by Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstitions, p. 76.