By Rabbi Lauren Ben-Shoshan
It’s been a long time since I worked on a midrash — the timeless Jewish art of interpreting and reimagining our sacred stories. As the nights grow longer and the air turns crisp, I found myself drawn once again to the liminal, to the mystical and mysterious side of our texts. “Spooky Season,” after all, feels like the perfect time to return to one of the most haunting tales in the Hebrew Bible — the story of the Witch of Endor.
In the Book of Samuel, we meet this enigmatic woman who helps King Saul call upon the prophet Samuel’s spirit on the eve of Saul’s final battle. It is a tale of desperation and grief, of forbidden magic and divine silence. But beneath the fear and taboo lies something deeper — a story about compassion, memory, and the possibility of transformation, even at the edge of death.
This original midrashic retelling invites us to see the Witch of Endor not as a villain or curiosity, but as a healer — a spiritual guide who helps both the living and the dead make peace with their unfinished stories. Through her, we explore how memory, even when haunted by pain, can become a blessing.
What Is Midrash?
The word midrash comes from the Hebrew root ד־ר־ש (darash), meaning “to seek” or “to inquire.” Midrash is the Jewish practice of seeking meaning beneath the surface of sacred texts — reading not only what is written, but also what is yearned for, questioned, and imagined between the lines.
It is an act of love — a dialogue with our ancestors, our stories, and the divine questions that still echo across time. Midrash keeps scripture alive, allowing each generation to re-enter the conversation and discover new truths hidden within old words.
The Midrash of Zephaniah, the Witch of Endor
(Inspired by 1 Samuel 28)
In the valley’s hollow, where the grass grew silver beneath the moon and the wind hummed through the fig trees, there lived a woman named Zephaniah. Her house smelled of smoke and salt and lavender; herbs hung from her rafters, their scent mingling with the quiet. People said she consorted with the dead, and they were not wrong. But they mistook her purpose.
She did not summon the dead to disturb them. They called to her, asking her to comfort them. They needed help to remember who they had been, and to learn how to let go of the ache of their unfinished stories. When she was a young girl, she feared the ache of their grief. But now, as she grew into herself, she learned how to help those who had lingered too long at the doorway between this world and the next.
When the newly dead came to her — confused, regretful, still clutching the threads of their mortal lives — she guided them gently. “Tell me,” she would whisper, “what love hides inside your sorrow? What mistake do you need compassion so that it may be released? What memory will you leave glowing behind you, even when your name fades?” And she would help them shape their pain into prayer, until the air in her cottage shimmered with the light of liberation and letting go.
One night, when the wind changed, Zephaniah knew someone living was coming — a presence heavier, sharper, filled with panic. Her dogs whimpered. The oil lamp flickered. And then the knock came.
She opened the door to a man cloaked in darkness, the kind of darkness that doesn’t come from night but from fear. His hands shook. His eyes darted like hunted birds.
“I need you,” he said.
Zephaniah studied him. “The living rarely do.”
He hesitated, then whispered, “I must speak with one who has gone. My future depends on it.”
“I help the dead make peace with memory,” she replied softly, “not the living who refuse to face it.”
But as the man stepped closer, the light caught his face — and she saw what he was hiding: the unmistakable bearing of a king, the weight of a crown invisible but crushing.
“Saul,” she breathed. “My cousin’s blood.”
He sank to his knees, the disguise falling like dust around him. “Zephaniah, I am undone. The silence of Heaven is unbearable. Samuel no longer speaks, and I do not know how I will die. Tell me — what must I do so that my memory is not a curse upon my children or our people? How can I make my life, so full of ruin, a blessing?”
Her eyes softened. This was not one of her usual wanderers between worlds. But grief recognized grief.
She brought him inside. “Sit,” she said, lighting another lamp. “You come seeking prophecy. But what you need is not foresight—it is integration. Every wound you carry, every failure, can become the seed of compassion, if you let it. You must learn to make peace with your own shadow.”
Saul trembled. “How? I have broken faith, lost patience, wounded those I loved. I have lived in fear.”
Zephaniah poured him water. “Fear freezes the soul. The trauma of all these things are not the story of what happened to us — it is the story of what we do not allow ourselves to feel. You have created a dam against your feelings and your compassion, instead of carving out a place for them to live in harmony. This has caused the river of your soul to flood every other part of you. You must feel, Saul. Feel until your dam begins to deconstruct.”
She laid her hand over his trembling one. “You do not need to erase your past. You must learn to bless it. Meaning can grow even from devastation. When you make your wounds a well-spring for empathy, you change not only yourself but all who remember you. Compassion and true connection – with yourself and our people – can transform these wounds into a well of wisdom. That is how memory becomes a blessing.”
For a long time, Saul said nothing. The wind pressed against the window, and the lamp flame bent toward her as though listening. Finally he whispered, “Then perhaps my battle is not with the Philistines, but with despair.”
“Precisely,” Zephaniah said. “Go, then. Do what you must. But do it with clarity, not fear. Remember, even kings are remembered not for their victories, but for the humanity that outlives them.”
Saul rose. His shadow stretched long across her floor. He looked older, yet lighter. And as he left, Zephaniah whispered a prayer that only the dead and angels could hear:
May your end be honest.
May your memory soften in time.
May your brokenness teach your people how to heal.
Days later, the wind changed again.
Zephaniah was grinding barley when she felt it — the tremor that runs beneath the skin of the world when a soul leaves its body too suddenly. Her hands stilled. The air grew cold, and even the flame of her lamp drew back, as if in mourning.
A dove crashed against her window, then flew upward, frantic, until it vanished into the stars.
She knew.
The king had fallen.
She stepped outside into the quiet, into that thin seam of dusk when the dead come closest to the living. Her shawl caught the scent of the valley — dust and sweat and sage. From the far hills of Gilboa she could almost hear the echo of war, a faint thunder of hooves swallowed by silence.
Inside her mind, she felt a stirring. She recognized a voice, weary yet tender.
“Zephaniah,” said Samuel.
The old prophet’s tone was different now — no longer stern, but sorrowful. “He has come to me, the boy I anointed. He is not proud anymore.”
She closed her eyes. “Does he understand?”
“He is beginning to,” said Samuel. “He asked if the world remembers mercy.”
Zephaniah stepped into the doorway of her cottage, the place where worlds thinned. “Bring him to me,” she said.
And so the ghost of King Saul came — disoriented, battle-stained, the weight of unspoken regret still clinging to him. His spirit flickered like a lamp low on oil.
“Am I cursed?” he asked. “My life ended in fear. Will my name end in shame?”
Zephaniah looked upon him as one looks upon a storm that has finally exhausted itself. “You are neither curse nor shame,” she said. “You are unfinished. All that you could not bear to feel in life — your love for Jonathan, your disappointment in yourself, your loneliness in kingship — these are your teachers now. Feel them. Let them carve valleys into your heart.”
Saul wept. And she let him.
“For years you ran from the quiet,” she whispered. “Now, let the quiet hold you.”
She guided him, as she had guided so many before him — through the tender art of remembering. She showed him how to look upon his story not as a ledger of failure, but as a tapestry of longing and courage frayed by fear. She reminded him that to make one’s memory a blessing is not to erase one’s wounds, but to use them as openings through which compassion can flow.
“When you are remembered,” Zephaniah said, “it will not be only as the king who fell. It will be as the man who tried — again and again — to return to what was right. Your struggle itself will become your offering.”
The wind softened. Saul’s form shimmered, no longer rigid with guilt but loosened, luminous.
The ghost of the Prophet Samuel stood beside Saul, silent. Zephaniah reached out, placed her hand over Saul’s heart — now weightless — and whispered:
Blessed Are You, O Goddess, who brings peace to the restless.
And in that moment, Saul’s spirit became light. He looked toward the valley he once ruled, where dawn would soon rise over his people. Then he was gone — folded into the mystery from which all souls come and to which all return.
Zephaniah sat alone once more, the morning creeping toward her door. She sipped from the cup of cool water she kept for the dead and murmured, half to herself, half to God: “Even broken kings can teach us how to heal.”
Outside, the first birds began to sing. Somewhere, far away, the people of Israel prepared to bury their fallen. And in time — through tears and stories, through the slow work of remembrance — they began to speak of Saul with gentleness.
His memory had become, at last, a blessing.
Reflection: What the Witch of Endor Teaches Us Today
The story of Zephaniah and King Saul reminds us that healing often begins in the places we fear to enter — in grief, regret, and memory. Zephaniah becomes not just a “witch,” but a mirror for our own longing to make peace with the past.
Her words to Saul — “You do not need to erase your past. You must learn to bless it.” — speak across centuries. They invite us to see our wounds as wells of wisdom, and to remember that compassion, both for ourselves and others, transforms brokenness into blessing.
