The Secrets of an 18th-Century Kabbalistic Cookbook

Composed by a Polish Jew identified only as Elḥanan—probably in the 1730s—Virtues and Medicines: A Large Volume of Virtues, Medicines, Amulets, and Fortunes consists of 290 handwritten folio pages dealing with what scholars call the “practical kabbalah”: mystical knowledge, in this case in the form of recipes, that could be used to cure diseases, bring material or marital success, ward away demons, and so forth. Agata Paluch describes its contents:

Elḥanan’s manuscript contains a well-known recipe for the production of gold ink. It recommends emptying an eggshell and filling it with mercury. After the shell is sealed with wax or tar, it is supposed to be put under a hen among the eggs that are waiting to hatch. In this case, the result of the mercury egg’s hatching would be an ink that has all the features of gold. . . .

The idea of augmenting the qualities of certain materials was a straightforward consequence of understanding matter as imbued with creative and active forces. Kabbalistic practitioners often attempted to tap into and manipulate these forces with the abilities of their minds. A prayer recitation and mental focus (kavannah or “intention”) on a divine name would seemingly add to the potency of matter or help to change its qualities. . . .

Elḥanan’s compilation offers a number of recipes to treat koltun, [a] disease that causes hair-matting, also known plica polonica. One of the recipes to cure this unfortunate condition recommends, among other things, an adjuration that employs a series of divine names intended to get rid of the demonic element responsible for causing the ailment in human hair. After adjuring an angel whose power extends over [this particular demon], one is to strike it with “the name of eyes”—that is, with the Tetragrammaton written with circles and lines that resemble the shape of eyes—and thus focus his intention on both the ocular shape of the Tetragrammaton and the numerical value of 1,600 for the number of “forces” accompanying the culpable spirit.

Read more at History of Knowledge

More about: Kabbalah, Magic, Polish Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF