Yuval Harari’s thoroughly researched book Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah treats its subject with an academic’s love of ideas. Harari divides the book into two sections, “Research and Method” and “Sources.” The first is made up of four chapters, and the second three, with a special section of plates between chapters 5 and 6. While this book is not for the casual reader, serious students and scholars of Jewish magic will be rewarded with a new depth of knowledge and appreciation for the subject.
The first chapter provides a general overview of “Magic and the Study of Religion.” Before addressing Jewish magic specifically, Harari writes, “notes that he will discuss magic outside of Jewish studies first in order to then focus on his own research. The author discusses giants of classical anthropology, including E.B.Tylor, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, and Bronislaw Malinowski, among others, to explore magic and its relationship to religion and society. By doing so, the chapter provides framing for the study of Jewish magic in Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic period (from the Mishnah to the classic Genizah period), but it is not necessarily essential to the subject of Jewish magic per se. With its focus on academic theory, this chapter will most likely be of interest to scholars of religion.
Chapter 2, entitled “Magic, Mysticism, Religion, Society: the Study of Early Jewish Magic,” is where Harari begins to turn to actual Jewish magic. He discusses briefly magic and religion in the broader context of the Helenistic world where Late-Antique Judaism was situated. Harari organizes the chapter into three sections that apply to magic in rabbinic literature, magic and early Jewish mysticism, and Jewish Magic literature (81). He situates the beginning of the study of Jewish magic in its historical context within Wissenschaft des Judentums (the social scientific study of Judaism) from the mid-19th century in which those scholars began discussing magic in rabbinic literature. Harari then moves onto early Jewish mysticism by noting that the discussion of magic in early Jewish mysticism was guided for decades by Gershom Scholem’s dismissal of magic as having little to do with mysticism. The final section of this chapter deals with Jewish magic literature which also includes artifacts on which are written words of incantation, curse, and blessing such as incantation bowls and amulets.
In chapter 3, Harari turns to what he claims is his main purpose of the book: “the essence of magic and its definition” (159). He is helped in this endeavor by Wittengenstein and his linguistic principle of “family resemblance.” (163-164) Through a refining process Harari, using this principle, comes to a loosely defined idea of what magic is. He writes, “Accepting the family resemblance principle means forgoing the objective of a precise dictionary definition of magic and shifting to a looser perception of it based on quasi-ostensive definition, that is a descriptive definition pointing to what we wish to refer to as magic and a statement that these and other similar phenomena are magic” (167-168). He finishes the third chapter with a detailed discussion of what counts as an adjuration, or incantation, text, and provides eight distinguishing features for these texts. The more features a text has the more likely it is to be a Jewish magical text.
Harari changes tack with chapter 4 in which he introduces J. L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory into the mix along with the idea of what an adjuration is. This chapter was a somewhat jarring detour from the general discussion of magic and religion in Late-Antiquity and the Early Islamic period to Jewish magic during this period, and then to the adjuration, or incantation, in Jewish magic.
Part 2 of the book has three quite interesting chapters for those who are keen on the artifacts and the literature of Jewish magic. Chapters 5,6, and 7 are consecutively entitled, “Jewish Magic and Literature: Magical Texts and Artifacts,” “Angels, Demons, Sorceries: Beliefs, Actions, and Attitudes in Non Magic Literature,” and “Knowledge, Power, and Hegemony: Sorcery, Demonology, and Divination in Rabbinic Literature.” Between chapters 5 and 6 there is a fascinating set of plates depicting different artifacts from amulets to incantation bowls and magic recipes from the 3rd century CE to those found within the Cairo Genizah. Harari writes, “The discovery and publication of primary magic literature made possible systematic transformation in the study of Jewish magic . . .” (208). He notes that “all these texts [those discussed in chapter 5] reflect a persistent cultural phenomenon resting on a stable picture of reality and of performative patterns, based on the use of adjurations” (209-210). In his analysis of performative artifacts, he shows an adeptness with his subject matter and an abundant knowledge—going into detail but also making the topic interesting. Rounding out this chapter are magic treatises and recipes for which he shows the same exacting detail in analysis of their place in the study of Jewish magic.
The final two chapters of the book engage with three related topics: angelology, demonology, and sorcery in non-magic literature of two kinds. Chapter 6 is from the vast perspective of Second Temple literature, Early Jewish mystical writings, Karaite, and Geonic writings, and even Maimonides. The lengthy chapter 7 deals with those topics in rabbinic literature. Again, these two chapters are filled with Harari’s extremely knowledgeable discourses on his subjects. These long chapters will likely be enjoyed by the academic with a particular interest in this or an adjacent area.
Overall this is a tome that adds quite a lot to the recent interest in Jewish magic and will be an invaluable academic resource for those studying this field and adjacent fields. While ancillary parts of it which did not add to the overall theme and argument of the book could have been cut in order to make a trimmer volume that would have read faster, this book is quite an achievement in the ever burgeoning field of Jewish magic.
Laurie Fisher is an adjunct professor at Gratz College (Philadelphia).
Laurie Fisher
Date Of Review:
September 30, 2024