Rabbi yaacov wazana: A Jewish healer in the atlas mountains

Rabbi Yaacov Wazana, a Jewish healer who died more than 30 years ago in the Atlas Mountains, was a "deviant" type within the Jewish Moroccan curing system. Despite his deviant features, or rather because of them, his memory still vividly reverberates among former members of his community living today in Israel. In seeking to construe a meaningful reading of Wazana's life-story, this work takes into account the fact that he is a mediated object of study whose life can only be examined through historically situated texts. Wazana's script is interpreted on two levels. First, an attempt is made to illuminate the possible motivational structures that fuelled his inexhaustible therapeutic energies and shaped his unique life-style. Dwelling on Wazana's special relations with his parents (and their internalized representations), this psychological interpretation should be evaluated with caution as it cuts across two levels of mediation and may reflect on the informants' or the researcher's psychology imposed on Wazana. Second, a symbolic reading of Wazana's calling is suggested centering on his marginality and unique location at the edge of the social order. Being at once human and demonbound, Jew and Muslim, old and young, holy and impure, he dissolved the boundaries of the major contrasting social categories of his culture and integrated them. This bridging function may have nurtured his image as an omnipotent healer.