Listen to the Rain

A few days ago, I was talking with thosesocks about what I described as "deliberate superstition"--i.e., things that are fun to believe even though you know they're not true. When I described what I meant, she thought of astrology and how she likes to consider how her behavior reflects her astrological sign, but would never make an important life decision about jobs or romance based on astrological compatibility. She immediately pointed out my red hair and my love of the dramatic when I said I was a Leo, and I was going to argue with the latter point, but I realized that if you think about how much I like the way Lovecraft or later Tolkien wrote their stories and how I like deliberately flowery or "overwrought" language, or even music like the one attached to this post, well, I see what she means.

I was thinking about this because of an extremely old superstition among the Children of Israel called זוגות zugot, "pairs." The Talmud has a bunch of stuff about how dangerous pairs are, and how to avoid dangers resulting from them:

"The Gemara asks: How could the Sages establish a matter through which one will come to expose himself to danger? But wasn’t it taught in a baraita: A person should not eat pairs, i.e., an even number of food items; and he should not drink pairs of cups; and he should not wipe himself with pairs; and he should not attend to his sexual needs in pairs. The concern was that one who uses pairs exposes himself to sorcery or demons."
-Pesachim 109b

I mostly use this an excuse to say, "Oops, I'd better have another drink--I don't want to stick with a pair," not something where I'm actually worried about being bothered by the mazikin if I don't do it. And no modern Jew is worried about this either, because even by the time of the Shulchan Aruch, published 1565, this superstition had completely fallen out of fashion and no one thought it necessary to worry about pairs at all.

Belief in shedim lasted a lot longer, though: here's a story about a 17th century rabbi in Poland calling a rabbinic court to throw demons out of a house.

Which reminds me that another deliberate superstition is that I don't leave books lying open, because there's a sheyd that hovers over open books and causes troubles. I'm inconsistent about leaving my iPad out without a cover.

There's a list of more traditional Jewish superstitions in this book, some of which are familiar to pop culture (light candles on a child's birthday equal to how many years the child has lived), and some of which aren't (the reason we have a philtrum is that before a child is born, the angel Raphael teachs them all the secrets of creation, but right before birth, it puts its finger on the child;s lips and says "Shh!").

Do you have anything that falls into the "deliberate superstition" category?