Source for babies smiling in their sleep?

ra_mom

Mon, Nov 30 2020, 8:53 pm

MiriFr wrote:

Oh wait sorry you’re right. Lilith got pregnant with a daughter who married Kayin.
And Samael looked like Adam and got Chava pregnant with Kayin.
And this whole thing explains why Hashem didn’t accept his korban and only Hevel’s.

Wait. Lilith & Samuel's daughter married Chava's & Samuel's son? Married siblings?

Kayin wasn't Adam's son?

So glad I never heard this before.

MiriFr

Mon, Nov 30 2020, 9:07 pm

ra_mom wrote:

Wait. Lilith & Samuel's daughter married Chava's & Samuel's son? Married siblings?

Kayin wasn't Adam's son?

So glad I never heard this %$#/ before.

Lilith + Adam = daughter
Chava + Samael = Kayin

Weird stuff, no?
(Disclaimer: this is all medrash and twisted a bunch of different ways)

And Hevel married his twin sister. So if you wanna get REALLY weird, just think about all the deformities that we all probably have from all of these marriages way back then....

Scotty

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 12:52 am

No offense, but I’m pretty sure this stuff is beyond my pay grade. When moshiach comes I’ll ask Eliyahu HaNavi about this whole Lilith business if I’m curious, but until then I’m going to view this whole convo with a bucket of salt (especially given how my first intro to the whole concept was by a rabid civil war fan at Gettysburg on Culp’s Hill.) this sounds a lot like medrash warped into something it isn’t with a healthy dose of Other (religions, the occult, fiction, Wiccan etc) mixed in. I’d be very very wary of wading into this without a reputable Rabbi translating and interpreting it for me first.

As far as the connection between PPD and devilry fears read Bella Calof’s biography (set at the turn of the previous century). As far as I understand it however the European understanding of these matters was more superstition viewed as religion, which is always a terribly slippery slope and was a mentality possibly responsible for many immigrants wanting to transcend the “old superstitious ways of the Old World” and abandon yiddishkeit with it.

Just be careful is all I’m saying.

If your baby smiles in his/her sleep, and it stresses you out, ask your rabbi. Don’t drag demons into it!

ExtraCredit

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 1:05 am

MiriFr wrote:

And Kayin married Lilith’s daughter and together they had a baby son who smiled in his sleep...

WitchKitty

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 2:17 am

Oooh, I read this smiling thing in a book before I gave birth. A book from 1990, light blue cover, don't remember the name.
It also said the safest way to put a baby to sleep is on its stomach.
Promptly forgot about the whole thing.

ETA- slowly remembering more facts. I think the book said to tap them on the nose and say some sort of posuk.

Last edited by WitchKitty on Tue, Dec 01 2020, 2:35 am; edited 1 time in total

WitchKitty

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 2:20 am

bigsis144 wrote:

Talmud Bavli (Shabbat151a)
“It is forbidden for a man to sleep alone in a house, lest Lilith get hold of him.”
Lilith is said to fertilize herself with male sperm to give birth to other demons. (Pretty much the classic definition of a succubus.)

You're kidding me. This is only for men???
I asked my rav about sleeping alone and he said that I have to sleep with a light on. I slept in light for years AND NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME IT'S ONLY FOR MEN.

amother

Linen

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 2:28 am

Wake babies up when they smile in their sleep?
Shake babies when they smile in their sleep?

Sounds cruel.

Who would do that?

There have been people who declare themselves to be rabbis (or rather gurus?) and who instruct parents to be cruel to their children.

Please, please don't follow them. Don't allow anyone to make you be cruel to your children. think for yourself when it come to education and dealing with your children.

seeker

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 2:37 am

Scotty wrote:

Liking this post wasn't enough.

If you need to pick a superstitious creed to live by, it should be "let sleeping babies lie."

As for the playing with angels, I highly doubt that has any meaningful origin, it seems like the kind of thing that gets invented to go along with "awwwww"

Chickensoupprof

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 11:32 am

MiriFr wrote:

Ya it’s kabbalistic.
Basically, Lilith was a night demon and raped Adam in his sleep. Got pregnant with Kayin, and then left him for Samael, another demon.
Chava is created and marries Adam. They have Hevel together.

I've learned this too because I had a question about Lilith so I asked a Rabbi known for his knowledge in kabbalah.
But a little different Adam thought he had to have relations with Lilith so he could have realy spiritual children and he thought to be with Lilith he could have highly spiritual children. He realises that he needs to have children made from flesh/blood basically. Lilith has something to do with darkness and night indeed because he didn't saw the truth of the Hakodesh Borechu

Chickensoupprof

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 11:47 am

bigsis144 wrote:

Basically, Bereshis describes the creation of humanity TWICE.

In Bereshis 1:27 it says, “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
- male and female at the same time

Then in Perek Beis, the story is repeated:
Bereishis 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul.”
...
Bereishis 2:18 “And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man is alone; I shall make him a helpmate opposite him."

- Etc. Etc. the story of Adam going to sleep and HaShem making Chava out of his rib.

—

In the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 22:7), this repetition/contradiction is explained by saying there were TWO “first” women. The first created at the same time as Adam, and the second, the Chava that we know, from his rib.

But the first first woman is *not* named as Lilith here.

That comes in a medieval (ie much later!!) text called The Alphabet of Ben Sirach, where the story of Adam and Lilith and Chava is told in much more detail.

Now Ben Sirach is from sfarim chitzoniyim, a category of apocryphal texts historically linked to Judaism, but are not part of our canon of belief. Like, the gospels of Xtianity fit this category - there may some historical truth to them, they involve Jewish people etc., but they are NOT Jewish religious texts.

So take Ben Sirach’s tale with a grain of salt - it may tell us how old this legend is, and that people were already passing this version around, but just because it exists doesn’t mean it’s true.

Omg girlfriend did you study at a great sem? Or whaat?

Anyhoo... What I know about Ben Sirach is that at least the book Alphabet of Sirach is pseudepigraphical: texts whose claimed author is not the true author or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Most books in the Xtian bible are like that. So you are right it is not our canon and it might have been written as satiric text at the time. There exist lots of texts like that in the middelages.

gamanit

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 12:33 pm

bigsis144 wrote:

We learned that Adam was created as both male and female. He didn't originally need a partner to have children. When Hashem created Chava, He made her out of all the female parts and that extra bone (which no longer exists). So basically created male and female then female created from the male.

As far as I know the story of "Lilith" isn't of Jewish origin. I first encountered it in the Narnia books which are quite xtian. Either way this idea that a baby smiling means anything other than that the baby is happy makes no sense to me. To me it always looked like my baby was dreaming about eating while smiling.

bigsis144

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 12:43 pm

Chickensoupprof wrote:

Oh, I didn’t learn any of this in seminary! This is independent research done as an adult! I went to a very text-intensive Bais Yaakov seminary, so it was gloriously intellectual, but these kinds of esoteric midrashim were not our focus at all.

Last edited by bigsis144 on Tue, Dec 01 2020, 1:04 pm; edited 1 time in total