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Rashi (Sanhedrin 44b, s.v. D'ba'ya) relates the story of Shimon ben Shetach's capture of 80 witches. He instructed his students to pick up the witches because the sorcery would be powerless against the students if the witches were ungrounded. Is this to say that sorcery does not work unless the practitioner is grounded?

If so, how can we interpret the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabba, 20:20) that states that Bilaam used sorcery to fly through the air?

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Maybe you only need to be grounded to start a spell, but once it's going you don't need to be involved. –  Double AA May 9 '12 at 6:50
Maybe Bilam was higher level then a witch. –  jutky May 9 '12 at 10:58
Must be grounded,see Sefer Chassidim 474. –  sam May 9 '12 at 15:36
related (slightly): judaism.stackexchange.com/a/13705/603 –  Menachem May 9 '12 at 19:07
@fred wasn't the scroll story yeshu? –  sam May 10 '12 at 20:37

2 Answers 2

I think, in the Rashi on Sanhedrin 44b, the subject of the sentence "He should lift one of them from the ground" is not referring to one of the witches, but to one of the jars that he distributed in the sentence before.

As translated here: http://www.bmv.org.il/shiurim/sanhedrin/san080.html

[Shimon ben Shetach] assembled eighty tall young men and distributed to each of them a jar with a cloak wrapped up inside (it was a rainy day). He also told them to make sure that they were always eighty in number. "When you come inside," he said, "one of you must raise his jar from the ground; from that moment the witches will have no further hold over you; if that does not work then we can never beat them." Shim'on ben-Shataĥ went into the witches' coven and left the young men outside. When the witches asked him who he was he replied that he was a wizard who had come to test them with his wizardry. "What tricks can you do?" they asked. "Despite the fact that it is raining today I can produce eighty young men with dry cloaks!" "Show us!" He went outside and beckoned the young men inside. They removed the cloaks from the jars, put them on, and came into the coven. Thus they bettered the witches, took them outside and strung them all up.

I don't know how lifting one of the jars from the ground would render their powers useless, but maybe that answer lies in what power the witches claimed to have.

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In other places, water is used to nullify witchcraft. Perhaps it was really the rain that nullified their powers. –  zaq May 17 '12 at 18:19
Thanks for the answer. However, I just reread the Rashi, and it is in fact referring to the witches, not the jars. The translation is incorrect. -1, sorry. –  Fred May 17 '12 at 20:21
Although it seems from Rashi that it was not the rain that did it, could you please produce a source that "in other places, water is used to nullify witchcraft"? –  Fred May 17 '12 at 20:24
@Fred: in Sanhedrin 67b, there's the case of Ze'iri buying a donkey in Alexandria - unbeknownst to him, it was turned into one by magic - and having it turn back into "a plank of wood from a bridge" when he took it to the water to drink; they tell him that everyone who buys stuff here knows to first test it with water to make sure it's the genuine article. –  Alex May 18 '12 at 2:52
It turned out to be a RaDak on the the third passuk in Yechezkel, that I was thinking of. He does not say anything about magic there, but he states that water is a purifying medium and the large body of water allowed Ezekiel to have a prophecy outside of Israel. There's also this:media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/47/93447-004-BB23D797.jpg –  zaq May 18 '12 at 14:10

Perhaps one need be grounded only to cast the spell (as @DoubleAA said here). If so, Bilaam could have cast the spell on the ground. They were then able to fly, which they did.

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Could be. It would be nice if you could better support the answer, though. –  Fred Jun 21 '13 at 21:08
@Fred: It would be nice if I could find support for the answer. –  Menachem Jun 21 '13 at 21:50

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