It’s a question that’s haunted humanity for millennia, and Jewish tradition has some pretty specific – and unsettling – answers. According to Jewish folklore, demons can be born from impurity. The Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, tells us that any impurity can engender demons. But the tradition goes even further.
One particularly potent source? Wasted seed.
Think about it: what happens when a man's seed is spilled? Well, according to tradition, his demon offspring are conceived. And who often steals that seed? None other than Lilith, or one of her daughters. Just a drop is all it takes. These demon sons regard the man as their father and then find a place to live... in his house! Whether it's in the attic, the cellar, or even a closet, they make themselves at home.
And it’s not just unmarried men who are at risk. Even married men aren’t safe from Lilith’s allure. No sooner do their wives turn their backs than Lilith seeks out victims among them, appearing to them in dreams during the night and as visions during the day. Sometimes, Lilith so sways a man that she becomes his secret wife.
There's a story, recounted in the Kav ha-Yashar, a famous 17th-century ethical text, that really brings this to life. It's about a goldsmith in the city of Posen who was secretly married to Lilith. The demoness lived in the cellar, where the goldsmith had his workshop. He spent time with his demon lover every day, keeping her existence secret from his family. Little by little, the goldsmith yielded everything to her, lusting after her day and night.
One Passover, it got so bad that the goldsmith got up in the middle of the Seder – the ritual Passover meal – when the words, "And they went down into Egypt" were read, and he went down to the cellar. His wife, worried he was ill, followed him. Peering through the keyhole of the cellar door, she saw the cellar had been transformed into a palatial chamber, and her husband lay naked in the arms of a lover.
Imagine what she must have felt.
Maintaining her composure, she returned to the Seder and revealed nothing to the rest of the family. But the next day, she went to the rabbi and told him everything. The rabbi confronted the man with his sin, and he confessed. The rabbi then gave him an amulet to protect himself against Lilith, and he used it to free himself from her.
But Lilith didn't let go easily. Before she would release him, she demanded that the cellar be bequeathed to her and their demon offspring for all time, and the man took a vow to this effect. He escaped her powers for the rest of his life, but as he lay on his deathbed, his demon children swarmed around him, invisible to his human family, crying out his name. Talk about a haunting image.
After his death, the house became known as haunted. Eventually, it was sold, and the new owner had a workman break open the door to the cellar, which had been nailed shut. When that workman was found dead on the threshold, Rabbi Yoel Ba'al Shem was sent to investigate. He confirmed that the cellar was infested with demons and ordered a rabbinic court, a Beit Din, to be convened. The court ruled against the demons' right to live there, on the grounds that they transgressed the boundaries of the cellar, and they were expelled into the wilderness.
According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, the belief that Lilith or one of her daughters, the Lilin, seek to steal a man's seed to create half-human, half-demon offspring is popular and pervasive in Jewish folk tradition. These demonic sons are said to haunt their fathers all their lives. The struggle portrayed in this and similar tales can be seen as one between humans and demons, with offspring who are half-human, half-demonic.
Or, as some interpretations suggest, it's a struggle between Jews and Gentiles, where Jewish men are lured by Gentile women, and their offspring are half-Jewish, half-Gentile. In both cases, the offspring are spurned by both sides.
Lilith, in this context, plays a major role in Jewish lore as the incarnation of lust. She haunts men in their dreams and imaginations. Every time a man had a sexual dream or fantasy, he was believed to have had intercourse with Lilith, and the product of this intercourse were mutant demons, half human and half demon, who were spurned by humans and by demons alike. As we find in Midrash Rabbah, these encounters have consequences.
So, what does this all mean? Is it just a scary story to keep men in line? Perhaps. But it also speaks to the anxieties around temptation, the dangers of unchecked desire, and the fear of the "other" – whatever that "other" may be. It's a reminder that our actions, even the ones we think are private, can have far-reaching consequences, not just for ourselves but for generations to come. And maybe, just maybe, it's a warning to be careful what you keep hidden in your cellar.