New Class in July: Everyday Ashkenazi Magic and the Demons of Summer

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Introduction to Everyday Ashkenazi Magic – The Demons of Summer

Wednesday afternoons: July, 15th, 22nd, and 29th at 2pm EST. ($125). All sessions are recorded and available to watch afterwards.

To sign up, send an email to cjcrokhl@gmail.com  

Summer school is in session

You are warmly invited to join me for the newest edition of “Introduction to Everyday Ashkenazi Magic," summer session. 

 

What is Everyday Ashkenazi Magic? We often associate Jewish magic with kabbalists and wonder working rabbis, men who study the Zohar and who use their mastery of sacred names and mystical techniques to write amulets and perform miracles. But what about everyone else? What about that 50% of the population (at minimum) who did not, and could not, study those sacred texts? Everyday Ashkenazi Magic is our frame for finding the magic wielded by everyone else, especially women. Our primary source texts are mostly in Yiddish, the language of everyday life, rather than Hebrew-Aramaic. Our archive is rich and diverse: Yiddish-prayer books, newspapers, memoir, poetry, song, and ethnography.

 

Our first class will be devoted to the magic and folklore of the season, including cemetery visits and the demons of summer. In our other two sessions, we will go into some of the conceptual foundations of what I call “Everyday Ashkenazi Magic” as well as key beliefs and rituals. We’ll also talk about how figures like Satan, angels, and the spirits of the dead were very much present to Eastern European Jews, and why they are so absent from much of American Judaism. 

 

I hope you'll join me for this thought-provoking and fun look at a very different side of Jewish life! 

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