In the last quarter of a century, historical scholarship has made a quiet but impressive advance in the study of magico-religious phenomena in ancient Jewish and Christian culture. This progress is most evident in two general areas of scholarly activity: on the one hand, there has been a sharp increase in translation and publication of magico-religious texts that for various reasons had been difficult to access for many students; but, just as importantly , during the same period a shift in theory and method has taken place which, by critically scrutinizing some of the key categories normally used to organize and evaluate the evidence, has facilitated a growth in awareness of how ideological interests have influenced not merely the magico-religious activities of ancient worshippers but also the interpretative manoeuvres of modern analysts.

2008

Ancient Jewish Magic is a pioneering attempt to write a broad history of ancient Jewish magic, from the Second Temple to the rabbinic period (or, roughly, from the Hellenistic period to the Muslim conquests). The roots of the Jewish magical tradition lie in the Second Temple period -- and sometimes even in the First Temple period -- but it reached maturity only in late antiquity, and as a result of its contacts with the Greco-Egyptian magical tradition. It is based both on the ancient magicians’ own compositions and products (exorcistic hymns, amulets, curses, erotic spells and so on) in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, and on the descriptions and prescriptions of non-magicians, in an effort to reconstruct a historical picture that is as balanced and nuanced as possible. Its main focus is on the cultural make-up of ancient Jewish magic, with special attention paid to processes of cross-cultural contacts and borrowings between Jews and non-Jews and to inner-Jewish cultural creativity. Another major issue is the place of magic within Jewish society at the time, the Jewish attitudes to magic -- from the Hebrew Bible, through the Second Temple period literature, to the rabbinic literature -- and the identity of its practitioners. Throughout, it seeks to explain the methodological underpinnings of any sound research in this demanding field, and to point out areas where further research is likely to prove fruitful.

2009

Recent years have seen a steady rise in the scholarly interest in Jewish magic. The present paper seeks to take stock of what has already been done, to explain how further study of Jewish magical texts and artifacts might make major contributions to the study of Judaism as a whole, and to provide a blueprint for further progress in this field. its main claim is that the number of unedited and even uncharted primary sources for the study of Jewish magic is staggering, and that these sources must serve as the starting point for any serious study of the Jewish magical tradition from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Such a study must both compare the Jewish magical texts and practices of each historical period with those of the contemporaneous non-Jewish world, and thus trace processes of cross-cultural contacts and influences, and compare the Jewish magical texts and practices of one period with those of another, so as to detect processes of inner-Jewish continuity and transmission. Finally, such a study must flesh out the place of magical practices and practitioners within the Jewish society of different periods, and within different Jewish communities.

This paper focuses on the Jewish magical tradition as practiced in the Islamicate world in the Middle Ages. It begins with a bird’s-eye survey of the available evidence – both the extant magical texts and objects, and the discussions of such texts and practices by non-practitioners – and turns to a survey of the aims and techniques of the magical rituals themselves. It then examines the sources from which medieval Oriental Jews borrowed their magical texts and practices, including the continuous transmission of Jewish magical texts from pre-Islamic times and the borrowing and adaptation of numerous Arabic and Muslim magical texts and practices. Two specific practices, namely, rituals for summoning demons and the manufacturing of astrological talismans, are discussed in greater details. Next, an attempt is made to sketch the profile of the practitioners and their clients, who clearly included both men and women – but far more men than women! – and came from all strata of Jewish society. This also helps explain the vehement polemics against Rabbanite magical practices by the Karaites, as well as Maimonides’ repeated objections to most of these practices. Finally, the wide-spread recourse to magical practices, and the many debates about them, cast an interesting light on the problem of distniguishing between “magic” and “religion” in the Jewish world, where the two supposedly-separate spheres constantly interact with each other.

2012