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

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society