Mazikim pt 1: What are they and how do we deal with them?

This is the first instalment of a two-part feature. Part 2 will follow in a couple of days.

"Mazikim" may or may not exist in any tangible sense, but they certainly feature in Pirkei Avot (at 5:8) where they are listed among the things that were created at the very end of the Six Days of Creation, just before the onset of the first Sabbath.

So what are mazikim? English translators are certainly not lost for words on this point and they usually point to some sort of force, usually a malevolent one.

Suggested meanings include “destructive spirits” (ArtScroll Publications), “vandals” (David N. Barocas, Me’am Lo’ez), “demons” (Irving M. Bunim, Ethics from Sinai; Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Philip Birnbaum in their respective prayerbooks), “destructive demons” (Rabbis Gold and Spirn, Alshich on Avos), “evil spirits” (Hyman E. Goldin, Ethics of the Fathers; R. Travers Herford, The Ethics of the Talmud).

Going beyond definitions, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chapters of the Fathers: the Hirsch Pirkei Avos, explains mazikim as being “those influences that are detrimental or damaging to continued human welfare.”

Where might one find mazikim? They are not found anywhere in the Torah, Prophets or Writings that constitute the canon of the Tanach (the Jewish Written Tradition). In the singular, the word mazik appears frequently in the mishnah and Talmud as a technical legal term for a person who causes damage to another and who is subject to a claim for compensation on the part of the nizak, or plaintiff. The mazikim we find in our mishnah are clearly not of this kind; they are more akin to the creatures of midrashic and aggadic literature.

Outside Jewish tradition, many cultures have their own equivalent of mazikim. Some are of ancient pedigree, such as the leprechaun, the tokoloshe and the poltergeist. Others, ssuch as the gremlin, are more recent. The common factors that unites them all are that (i) they are not under direct human control and that (ii) some form of harm or mischief is said to derive from their actions.

The presence of mazikim on the list of late additions to the Creation makes many people unhappy -- and not solely on account of the debate over the real-world existence of mazikim, shedim and other malevolent entities that inhabit Jewish literature. If they do exist, why is there no space for a mention of them in Tanach? But if they do not exist, what are they doing in Jewish culture and, in particular, in this mishnah? Also, every other item listed in our mishnah as being created at the end of the Six Days of Creation has some constructive or positive quality to it, while it is widely assumed that mazikim, almost by definition, do not.

Should the existence or non-existence of mazikim concern us? I think not. If they exist, it is axiomatic that God created them and that, since only man has free will, whatever mazikim do is mandated by God. Furthermore, since God is the only authentic source of power that a Jew must acknowledge, it is absolutely wrong to treat mazikim as if they held any power in their own right, and therefore wrong to seek to propitiate them.

If however mazikim do not exist in real-world terms, then it is we who have created them in our minds. And if we have done so, it is to our own minds that we must turn in order to address their apparent functional (or dysfunctional) utility within the world we inhabit and which God created. Our challenge is to see if we can find an explanation for mazikim that carries with it a positive message, in keeping with the rest of Pirkei Avot, that we can take with us into our daily lives?