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Abstract
This chapter looks chronologically at a range of terms and ritual practices deemed acceptable for insiders but condemnable if performed by outsiders, from ancient Israel through Talmudic times. Various texts in the Hebrew Bible recognize the effectiveness of foreign ritual agents (mekhashef) performing prophetic signs (ʼot). Second Temple Jewish writings attribute illegitimate ritual practices to otherworldly or demonic sources, mediated by women. Finally, rabbinic literature proscribed illegitimate (kishuf) ritual in its stories, laws, and practical information, often identifying such practices with women and outsiders.
This article deals with mystical-magical activities carried out in Jerusalem by kabbalists and rabbis during the years of the Third Reich as part of their struggle against the Nazi threat. It focuses on a page written for Eliyahu Mizrahi Dehuki, a relatively unknown Jerusalem expert in practical Kabbalah, containing three magic recipes for killing Adolf Hitler. The article opens with a discussion of the tradition of practical Kabbalah and the role of aggressive magic within it. It then proceeds to describe the two-pronged (defensive and aggressive) struggle that Jerusalem kabbalists and rabbis conducted against the Nazi foe during WW2. The discussion then turns to Eliyahu Mizrahi and to the page that was sent to him. The concluding section meticulously examines these magic recipes and the ritual acts they offer in the context of other insider sources, attesting to the nature and the symbolic language of Jewish aggressive magic.
Abstract
This article deals with the Jewish tradition of magic and its relationship with Kabbalah. It begins by clarifying internal and external views of magic in Judaism, the place of “Kabbalah” and “kabbalists” in the traditional Jewish discourse of ritual power, and the role of “practical Kabbalah” in Israel’s market of New Age spiritual therapies. The focus is on the mutual relationships between the conceptual and performative foundations of Jewish magic practice and Kabbalah, as well as on Kabbalah’s actual influence on the Jewish tradition of magic.
Contributors include: Tzvi Abusch, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Jacco Dieleman, Fritz Graf, Christopher Faraone, Ithamar Gruenwald, Shaul Shaked, Dan Levene, Kocku von Stuckrad, Reimund Leicht, Yuval Harari, Gideon Bohak, and Alexander Fodor.
Contributors include: Tzvi Abusch, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Jacco Dieleman, Fritz Graf, Christopher Faraone, Ithamar Gruenwald, Shaul Shaked, Dan Levene, Kocku von Stuckrad, Reimund Leicht, Yuval Harari, Gideon Bohak, and Alexander Fodor.