Monday, March 10, 2025
7 pm ET (NYC time)

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Beliefs in magic and the occult in Judaism arise out of a complicated relationship that Jews have with the supernatural. While the Bible contains clear prohibitions against the use of divination, witchcraft, and other forms of occult practices, the actual lived experience (and literature) of Judaism is replete with demons, witches, magic spells, and of course, golems.

Peter Bebergal will present a lively overview of Jewish magic and the supernatural from Biblical, Talmudic, and Midrashic sources, magical grimoires, and folktales to uncover a treasure trove of legends and stories, from the summoning of demons to build mighty temples to the folk magic of ordinary people.

Peter Bebergal is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, Tablet, The New Yorker, TLS, Slate, and The Believer, among others. His most recent books on the occult and the supernatural are Strange Frequencies and Season of the Witch. He is the editor of Appendix N, an edited volume of pulp fantasy fiction for Strange Attractor Press. He is also the co-author of The Faith Between Us: A Jew and Catholic Search for the Meaning of God with Scott Korb. He is currently working on a book about monster culture in the 1970s, forthcoming from The University of California Press.