Iron as Protection—Our Grandmothers’ Jewish Prohibitions
It is well known that Jewish tradition attributes protective power to iron. For this reason, pieces of iron, and sometimes actual weapons—a sword, dagger, or knife—were placed under the pillow of a woman in childbirth, and later beside a baby’s cradle (among Mizrahim, scissors were placed under the pillow, and a safety pin on the baby’s clothing). The circumcision knife was considered an especially effective weapon against demons. According to popular belief, the night before the circumcision was particularly dangerous for the baby and the mother, who would often keep the circumcision knife under her pillow that night.
The Ashkenazi tradition recommends placing an iron object in drinking water during the days of the equinoxes and solstices (tekufot) “as protection from the harmful effects of these days”—for example, lowering a needle into the water, but always attached to a thread so as not to touch the iron with one’s hands. This custom gained even greater authority after it was mentioned in his glosses to the Shulchan Aruch by R. Moshe Isserles (the Rema, 1525–1572; Orach Chaim, 455:1).
It should be noted, however, that the book Orchot Chaim reports—with some doubt as to the accuracy of the statement—that the well-known nineteenth-century rabbi of Brody, Maharschak (Rabbi Shlomo Kluger), permitted omitting the iron in the water if the house where the water was kept contained any iron fixtures in its doors, walls, or roof. In his view, that would be sufficient to protect the water in the house from the harmful effects of the tekufot.
One of the most comprehensive collections of contemporary Jewish customs offers a Kabbalistic explanation for this practice: “During the four tekufot, people protect themselves with iron because the word ‘barzel’ (‘iron’) can be read as an acronym formed from the names of the four matriarchs of the Jewish people—Bilhah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Leah,—and this can overcome the four forces of impurity.” The holy matriarchs, through their merits, protect their descendants from all evil forces.
The notes to Taamei HaMinhagim, citing the work of Rabbi Yehoshua Briskin, “Tav Yehoshua,” offer another explanation for iron’s protective power: “During the first Egyptian plague, the water turned into blood ‘in vessels of stone and wood’ (Exodus 7:19), but iron vessels are not mentioned. Thus, iron protects water from calamity.”
A more elaborate mystical explanation was given by Rabbi Tzvi-Hirsch Kaidanover in his famous Kabbalistic work “Kav HaYashar” (chapter 47): “Iron (‘barzel’) therefore protected the water from blood, and therefore protects water from impurity, because the merits of the four matriarchs (Bilhah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Leah) protect us from the evil forces of the Other Side, whose symbol is blood.”
(Based on an article by Aryeh Olman in “Le-Chaim”)
