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Da’at Tevunot, a Kabbalistic text attributed to Rabbi Isaac Luria (the ARI), delves into this very idea. It tackles the notion of whether anything, even something seemingly empower...
And when we talk about the most sacred name of all, the Tetragrammaton, HaVaYaH (יהוה)—often referred to as "the Name"—we're diving into a universe of meaning. But what if I told y...
The Tikkun (spiritual repair)ei Zohar, a central work of Kabbalah, wrestles with this very question. It starts with the beginning, with Bereishit, the first word of the Torah, whic...
Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews bore a reputation as the most powerful sorcerers in Europe. As scholar Joshua Trachtenberg documented in his 1939 study, this belief was so widespr...
Strip away the medieval slander and a real tradition of Jewish magic emerges—one that Joshua Trachtenberg traced from the Bible through the Talmud and into the folk practices of me...
Jewish demonology recognizes three main classes of evil spirits, though as Joshua Trachtenberg noted, medieval Jews had long stopped distinguishing between them. The shedim (שדים) ...
Demons were not abstract theology for medieval Jews. They were a daily hazard requiring specific countermeasures, and Joshua Trachtenberg catalogued an elaborate system of protecti...
If demons crowded the dark spaces of medieval Jewish life, angels filled the light. Joshua Trachtenberg showed that Jewish angelology was not merely theological—it was operational....
The most potent force in Jewish magic was not an herb, a stone, or a demon. It was a name. Joshua Trachtenberg demonstrated that the entire architecture of Jewish supernatural prac...
The most widely practiced form of Jewish magic required no special training, no secret names, no angelic invocations. It required only a Bible. As Joshua Trachtenberg documented, m...
Medieval Jewish magic was not freestyle improvisation. It was governed by strict rules, precise ingredients, and exact timing—a technology of the supernatural with its own internal...
Amulets were everywhere in medieval Jewish life. Pregnant women wore them to prevent miscarriage. Children carried them against the evil eye. Men tucked inscribed parchments into t...
Medieval Jews did not merely fear demons. They fought them—systematically, ritually, and with an arsenal of weapons that combined Talmudic tradition, Kabbalistic innovation, and sh...
Medieval Jewish folk belief wove a dense web of connections between the natural world and the supernatural. Certain plants healed. Certain foods enhanced memory or destroyed it. Th...
The boundary between medicine and magic barely existed in medieval Jewish life. Physicians recited psalms over patients. Rabbis prescribed amulets alongside herbal remedies. And th...
Despite the Torah's explicit prohibition against divination (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), medieval Jews practiced it extensively—and spent centuries debating exactly where the line fell ...
Dreams occupied a unique space in Jewish tradition—neither fully trusted nor fully dismissed, they hovered between divine communication and meaningless noise. The Talmud devotes ex...
The Hebrew word mazal (מזל) originally meant "constellation" or "star." Only gradually did it shift to mean "luck"—and the journey of that word tells the story of Jewish astrology ...
The Mekhilta observes that the nations surrounding Israel relied on one consistent tool to guide their decisions: divination. The evidence runs through multiple books of the Torah ...
R. Yehudah says: It is written (Leviticus 20:27) "And a man or a woman, if there be in them an ov or a yidoni" (shall be stoned). Now "ov" and "yidoni" are types of witchcraft. Why...
Some traditions say it was all water. Just a vast, unending universe of water. But how did we get from that to the world we know? Well, according to one beautiful myth, God took sn...
The idea, as explored in Tree of Souls, is that the order of the Torah scrolls we hold in our hands might not be the "correct" one. What does that even mean? Well, imagine if the s...
There's a story, a rather incredible one, about a rabbi who supposedly did just that. It all revolves around Rabbi Judah Loew, also known as the Maharal of Prague. This was a truly...
That's kind of what went down between Moses and the Egyptian magicians, according to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinating early medieval text that delves into biblical narratives....
Sometimes, the answers are staring you right in the face, buried in the very place you're trying to escape. In the book of Devarim, Deuteronomy, we find a poignant moment of reflec...
For millennia, people have sought guidance from… well, some pretty unusual places.This is a fascinating peek into the beliefs and practices that our ancestors wrestled with, trying...
Our ancestors grappled with these questions too, trying to decipher the hidden language of the world around them. And that's what leads us into the fascinating, and sometimes murky...
Sifrei Devarim, a collection of legal and ethical teachings associated with the Book of Deuteronomy, touches on those very impulses. And it does so in a way that feels surprisingly...
R. Nathan said: There is no love like the love for the Torah, no wisdom like the wisdom of the land of Israel,1So MSS. and GRA; V, ‘worldly affairs’. no beauty like the beauty of J...
Leviticus 20 prescribes death penalties for violations listed in the previous chapter. The Targum Jonathan specifies four distinct methods of execution that the Hebrew Bible leaves...
Our rabbis taught: An incident once took place with a Jewish man who had one cow [which he used] for ploughing. [Then], his hand [fortune] was diminished and he sold her [the cow] ...
Nimrod declared himself a god to be worshipped. He made a round tower of stone planted in the midst of the earth, and placed a throne of cedar on the stone, and upon this one of ir...
An heathen said to R. Johanan b. Zakkai: “The ceremonies of the red heifer look like witchcraft/' He replied: “What are you doing against demoniac possession?’’— “Herbs and fumigat...
Simeon ben Rabbi forgot to invite Bar Kappara to dinner. The latter wrote on the door: ‘‘After joy death.” Invited afterwards to another dinner, he kept the guests so amused by his...
A gentile once confronted Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai with a cutting observation: "Your ceremony of the red heifer looks exactly like witchcraft. You take a cow, burn it, grind it up,...
The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 27b) preserves a disturbing account of the dangers that healing spells could pose to the rabbis. Ben Dama, the nephew of Rabbi Ishmael, was bitten by a ser...
The sage known for his extraordinary carefulness was Rav, and his caution extended even to the smallest details of daily life. The Talmud in Hullin (95b) preserves a teaching about...
There was once a man so wicked that the entire town avoided him. He cheated in business, spoke cruelty to strangers, and mocked the sages when they tried to rebuke him. Everyone ag...
Three brothers set out on a journey — and encountered a witch who tested them with riddles, tricks, and dark magic. The tale, preserved in Jewish and comparative folklore collectio...
In a certain town, a young woman had been married for years but could not conceive. Her husband loved her, and they prayed together for a child, but month after month passed with n...
Angelology constitutes the theological branch examining "superhuman beings dwelling in heaven, who, on occasion, reveal to man God's will and execute His commands." This doctrine d...
Lilith is described as a female demon in Jewish tradition. The name appears in (Isaiah 34:14) and derives from Assyrian demon mythology, though scholars debate whether it connects ...
The forecasting of the future by certain signs or movements of external things, or by visions in certain ecstatic states of the soul (see Dreams and Prophecy). Divination rests on ...
Plural word of unknown derivation used in the Hebrew Bible to denote the primitive Semitic house-gods whose cult had been handed down to historical times from the earlier period of...
Two words haunted ancient Israel: shedim (demons) and se'irim. The Israelites were forbidden from sacrificing to either. They sacrificed anyway. The se'irim were the hairy ones, sa...
Divination using the deceased was reportedly widespread among Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The Israelites likely adopted this practice from Persian sources and engaged in it exten...
The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accor...
Magic is described as "the pretended art of producing preternatural effects," constituting one of two principal divisions of occultism alongside divination. Effects produced may be...
