← Back
Can you be Jewish and a Witch?
By /u/PracticalKabbalist
This was a post I originally wrote to submit as a comment on r/Witchcraft to someone asking if you can be Jewish and a Witch, but Reddit was having none of it and refused to post it. Then I realised you can post to your own profile. So here we are!
The people telling you this is fine from a Witch-y perspective are absolutely right - the Craft is a craft, not a religion. It goes naturally hand-in-hand with Paganism but it isn't the same thing. From the Jewish perspective things are more complex, but I will give you my view and advice as a Jewish Witch.
The Torah famously contains a prohibition on witchcraft. Of course, it famously contains prohibitions on many things the vast majority of Jews today have found compelling theological and moral resolutions to - gay love for instance. As Jews, we know the Torah is never to be taken at face value. G-d has spoken once; I have heard this twice (Psalm 62:11).
Jewish commentators and scholars have, in true Jewish form, been arguing over what exactly this prohibition means for a long time. As you know we love to argue - hell, the Talmud even contains a debate over whether if you were going to summon a demon, would it be better or worse to summon a demon on Shabbat? (The Gemara answers: if you're summoning a demon you should probably be more worried about the literal demon in the kitchen than whether it's Saturday).
One of the most popular primers on Jewish law, Ganzfried's redaction of the Shulchan Arukh, establishes that the principle of pikuach nefesh applies to witchcraft. In other words it is acceptable to turn to magic when human life is at threat; you are not expected to put adherence to the mitzvot before your own life. If witchcraft is a sin it is a lesser sin than, say, murder or idolatry.
This is important because when we explore the wider body of Jewish literature condemning witchcraft, we see two consistently recurring themes:
- Witchcraft is a form of idolatry, involving the worship of forces other than HaShem, which leads people astray.
- Witchcraft is a baneful and malicious practice intended to manipulate, injure or undermine others.
Maimonides wrote in his 12th century Guide to the Perplexed, one of the most famous works of Jewish philosophy, that witchcraft is wrong because "all witches are idolaters". He saw witchcraft as synonymous with astrology and was concerned it would lead to people putting faith in stars, not G-d. Modern commentaries on the Torah (e.g. Steinsaltz) usually affirm the connection between Witchcraft and idolatry.
Jewish mystical tradition describes witchcraft as something powered by the "impure spirit of defilement"; the Zohar, the foundational work of kabbalah, speculates that the magic of Bilaam originated from having sex with a donkey; ritualised sacrifice of snakes; or direct consultation with two particular fallen angels. The Sefer HaChinukh - a very popular 13th century medieval summary of Jewish law - captures the contemporary Jewish understanding of magic as "always only done to destroy".
Throughout Jewish discussions of magic you will find repeated references to it being associated with Egypt - to which 90% of the magic in the world supposedly belongs - combining the themes of idolatry and its use for evil (Ancient Egypt being conceived as a place of hate, oppression, deception and wickedness in the Jewish religious psyche). This is consistently the framing that Jewish writers and thinkers have when they're dealing with the issue of magic.
But one problem Jewish thinkers had to tangle with was if magic was wrong, how could it be that magic existed. The most influential text in the medieval Jewish world, the Mishneh Torah of the Ramban, tried to resolve this problem by arguing magic was a falsehood and an ignorant superstition. But the ancient Rabbis clearly believed in it. The Tanakh contains a famous story of it being used effectively when Saul instructs the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of the Prophet Samuel, unambiguously presented as a genuine summoning and not an illusion or trick.
The Derashot HaRan (lectures on the fundamentals of Judaism) rationalised in the 14th century that if ancient Rabbis clearly believed magic was real then it must have a divine origin but due to its destructive character, come from fallen angels working against G-d. In Gate 65 of his Akeidat Yitzchak, Isaac ben Moses Arama argues that the story of Saul and the Witch of Endor points to some commonality between magic and divine power, and that the summoning of Samuel must have been more the latter than the former.
So this is the historic Jewish position: magic is real but it is used for destructive purposes always, with the goal of leading people astray. There are suggestions even that in other religions, magic is a bad practice because it goes against the norms of all faiths. So is there any room for a positive interpretation of magic? If we return to the Sefer HaChinukh, in 511 we find an explanation that there is a difference between magic and "things done through the power of nature and in permissible ways".
Why? Because the Talmud, the same text we derive detail about the fundamentals of the ban on magic from, tells us that "anything that contains an element of healing and seems to be effective does not contain an element of the prohibition against following the ways of the Amorite. There is no cause for suspicion of one who engages in their practice, gentile or Jew", the ways of the Amorite being a short-hand for idolatrous and magical practices (Shabbat 67a). The same tract goes on to explain some practices that seem superstitious are effective because they encourage people to focus their prayers and thoughts on G-d.
The Sefer HaChinukh emphasises that it is critical Jewish judges know the difference between magic and these natural practices. Why? Because so much of Judaism looks magical! "Behold, acts are found in the Gemara that if we did not know them from their mouth, may their memory be blessed, we would have forbidden them from a concern about this prohibition". Thus Jewish authorities need to learn the difference between magic and 'natural practices' that have positive, restorative properties.
Add to this the contemporary cultural context. Witchcraft is gender-neutral as a concept in Judaism but the Torah, the Talmud and the Zohar all speak of it as a practice linked especially with women. Hillel, whose teachings shaped the formation of modern Judaism, famously is thought to have claimed that the more women there are in a space, the more witchcraft there is. The Zohar especially claims women are vulnerable to the promises of witchcraft because they have been traditionally excluded from Torah study. There is a clear, problematic implication in these books - written by men for men - that when it's from men it's religion; when it's from women it's magic. Funny that!
So the superficial condemnation of witchcraft in the Torah isn't so clean-cut when you delve into the reeds of Jewish law. What emerges is a clear distinction between magic based on where it comes from, how it works and why it's used. Do the practices of the average witch you read about today sound like they come from fallen angels or, crucially, have destructive outcomes? This - so I believe at least - is the fundamental test for what constitutes witchcraft as defined by the Torah. The use of the natural and supernatural for constructive purposes is not what the Torah means.
Add to this the existence of practical kabbalah. Although today Hasidic groups disavow it is possible or right for most people (or in some thinking anyone before Moshiach comes), the principles of kabbalah affirm it is possible to do many things very similar or identical to what people call witchcraft/magic, and there are abundant references to Rabbis and other leaders who sought to use practical kabbalah from the ancient world up to the modern.
We also know that magical practices were common throughout the Jewish world even outside of formal kabbalah, like the famous fortune tellers of the shtetl. Many kabbalistic ideas are also found in Jewish folklore and folk custom and it's not always clear which came first. Some clearly mystical practices - like tashlich - that are today very popular with Orthodox Jews were condemned by medieval or early modern Rabbis for being superstitious or magical in nature. Hasidic mysticism likely sought to distance itself from practical kabbalah in part to prove it wasn't as magical as it critics claimed.
So yes, as far as I'm concerned, you can be a Jewish Witch in the modern sense of the word. I consider my Craft to be practical kabbalah, and practical kabbalah to be a particular Jewish form of what the rest of the world calls witchcraft. Sometimes it looks identical to pagan Witchcraft and sometimes it looks totally different. I still pray, observe all the Jewish holidays, study Torah, try to keep kosher and all that good stuff.