Without Bounds

Book excerpt: Without Bounds illuminates the life of the mysterious Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana, a great Jewish healer who worked in the Western High Atlas region in southern Morocco and died there in the early 1950s. Wazana is remembered by Moroccan Jews now living in Israel's urban and rural peripheries. Impressed by his healing powers and shamanic virtuosity, they are intrigued by his lifestyle and contacts with the Muslim and the demonic worlds that dangerously blurred his jewish identity. Based on interviews with Moroccan Jews conducted in the late l980s, Without Bounds proposes multiple readings of Wazana's life. Yoram Bilu recreates the influences and important moments in Wazana's life and evaluates his character from psychological and anthropological perspectives. Human and demon-bound, holy and impure, Jew and Muslim, old and young, Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana dissolved the boundaries of the major social categories in Morocco and integrated them into his identity. Without Bounds will fascinate the lay reader interested in mysticism as well as scholars of anthropology, comparative religion, Judaism, and contemporary Jewish and Israeli history.