Jewish law is unequivocal: We are never allowed to practice magic. Despite the fact that it is condemned no fewer than eight times in the Torah, Jews have always practiced magic; many of the “sorcerers” were the rabbis themselves! By studying texts and artifacts from several eras of Jewish history we will discover an exquisite and mysterious world of amulets, necromancers, astrologers, exorcisms, the ability to control both angelic and demonic forces, along with spells of various kinds. Despite the alleged ban on magic in Judaism, we will see that such practices thrived at all levels of Jewish society at every point in history.
