Tuesday, March 01, 2022

The Evil Eye and the law firm

 There are ads that run on Haredi websites, with titles like "Remote Removal of Ayin Harah: Now 178 Yeshuos! 52 Verified By Law Firm!".  "Ayin Harah" is Hebrew for Evil Eye, and "Yeshuos" means "salvations, e.g. Evil Eye removed with success (how does one know?  I suppose by whatever problem going away, possibly by the placebo effect).

But what is a law firm doing in this story?  Is The Evil Eye a legal matter?  Is a Devil's Advocate involved?  Is this an updated version of "The Devil and Daniel Webster"?



How do they verify the claims of success?  The ad claims 

ALL(!) the emails published on his website (until 03/9/20) confirming his accurate reading of the lead, AND the emails people have sent him about the yeshuos they had after the procedure- ARE VERIFIED to be 100% genuine by an independent law firm!

But if you read the letter, it says that emails were sent by satisfied customers, and the law firm does "state unequivocally" that between certain dates, there are "indeed genuine emails from clients" and others "are 100% accurate quotes from emails".  How the law firm verified even this is not made clear, but it turns out that rather than verifying that someone's ill-fortunes improved, all they do is verify that someone sent an email saying so. 

The service offered by this ad "involves pouring molten lead into a pot of water (with various other ingredients)".  Success is not guaranteed.  But you have to pay first, because the Evil Eye, very conveniently, " is known to return if payment is not made."  Amulets are also available, which "protect not only from ayin horah- but "from ALL HARM" and have been  "tried and tested a thousand times".  The Evil Eye guy uses them himself, he "used to regularly become ill after doing the procedure of pouring the lead until he started to wear this". 

Prices: $130 for Evil Eye removal, $140 for an amulet (plus $10 for shipping).  

For more information about this alleged magical cure, see the Wikipedia article on Molybdomancy  The website being advertised is here.



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