Belief in the Evil Eye among the Christian Syrian-Lebanese in America

Abstract

THE STRONG MEDITERRANEAN BELIEF in the power of the evil eye was imported intact with the cultural baggage of the Christian Syrian-Lebanese immigrants who joined the tide of new immigrants to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But despite the significant place the eye once held in the beliefs of these tradition-bound people, its practice in America is greatly diminished. This was evident from conversations with first-generation immigrants whom had the opportunity to interview in the summer of I962.1 Of 87 informants only 21, all women whose average age was about 65, responded to questions about the evil eye, frequently with embarrassment. And of those who did proffer any information, credence ranged from strong conviction to complete disavowal, while the majority were skeptical. An early immigrant, expressing the skeptical view, frankly admitted that she had once strongly feared the evil eye, . . but then, she added, I got to thinking and it didn't make sense to me so stopped believing in it. This development can be partly attributed to their remarkable integration into American life which was accomplished within the lifetime of many of the first generation. The Christian Syrian-Lebanese who came to America had been predominantly small land-owning peasants and minor craftsmen from the villages of Syria and Lebanon. Many of the immigrants interviewed emigrated from an area which before World War was a part of Syria and was annexed to Lebanon only after their departure to America. Until Lebanese independence in I94I they had always referred to themselves as Syrians and some among them still retain that identification. No reliable figures on the number of Christian Syrian-Lebanese in the United States are available, but a rough estimate is 200,000. The majority of the immigrants began life in America as notions and dry goods peddlers operating from several scattered communities all over the country. Peddling as a way of life was generally temporary but its contribution to their integration was substantial. While it both demanded intercourse with the American community and tended to keep their own communities relatively loose and fluid, it was also a means for these highly individualistic people, unfamiliar with the English language and American customs, to accumulate capital, establish a business of their own, and move up the ladder of economic success. In addition to being scattered, mobile, and success-oriented, they suffered no particular group discrimination. Their integration process on the whole was favorable enough to minimize anxieties which in turn not only devitalized superstitions but gradually weakened the transmission of folk beliefs to subsequent generations. Where the belief in the evil eye does persist, it is in relatively isolated small-town communities or in rural areas. Here, the children of early immigrants and those who came with their parents at a young age seem to fear the evil eye more than the older women of the first generation. The Christian Syrian-Lebanese belief in the evil eye contains many of the typical characteristics generally associated with that widespread superstition. It is, for example, the manifestation of envy or jealousy and is thrust or struck at its

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.