A 16th-Century Collection of Kabbalistic Magic, and the Story behind It

The great scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem distinguished between “speculative” Kabbalah, which focuses on understanding the esoteric meanings of Jewish texts and the mysterious workings of the Godhead, and “practical” Kabbalah, which focuses on harnessing esoteric knowledge to achieve useful results—healing the sick or arranging successful marriages, for instance. Zsofi Buda describes a rare handwritten 16th-century volume belonging to the latter genre, written by one Elisha ben Gad of Ancona. What makes this codex unusual is its introduction, in which Elisha describes how he collected the spells it contains:

Elisha is overcome with a great thirst for knowledge, and he starts on a journey to satisfy it. He wanders from town to town until he arrives in Venice, a great city full of wise and knowledgeable sages. There, thanks to God’s mercy, he wins the trust of Rabbi Judah Alkabets, and gains access to the rabbi’s library. He soon discovers that the rabbi’s collection contains precious kabbalistic volumes “that emerged for fame and praise, and all written with the finger [of God].” So he swears in his heart that he will not leave the library until he has collected all its secrets.

As he is looking through the books, he notices “a book hidden and sealed, in a chest within another chest covered with a cloth and sealed.” When he opens this hidden book, he finds in it all sorts of magic spells, and decides to copy them. After Alkabetz’s death, Elisha leaves Venice and continues his journey, and eventually arrives in Safed, in the Land of Israel. He spends a long time there before he gains the trust of the [local] sages, but eventually they share their secret wisdom with him. His book, which he calls the Tree of Knowledge, is based on the secrets he acquired in Venice and in Safed.

Among the 52 spells using divine names contained in the [book’s] first section, there are many amulets providing protection against illnesses like nosebleeds, fever, and earaches, spells for enhancing intellectual capabilities, . . . and various other incantations.

Read more at Asian and African Studies Blog

More about: Kabbalah, Magic, Rare books, Safed

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