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

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! 

New July Class - Exorcists, Embodied Magic, and the Evil Eye

Rooster in the Cradle (Part Two): A Brief History of the Evil Eye and Yiddish Anti-Demonic Technologies

You are warmly invited to join us for Rooster in the Cradle (Part Two) on Tuesday evenings, July 14, 21 and 28 at 7pm EST. ($100)  To register, send an email to cjcrokhl@gmail.com

 

Everyone is invited to this class, even if you haven’t taken Part 1.

If you’ve ever put a red ribbon around a crib, or uttered a kinehore (keyn ayin-hore, Yiddish for “no evil eye”), you have drawn on a rich tradition of embodied, apotropaic (anti-demonic) magic going back thousands of years.

 

In many Eastern European towns, you could find Jewish men and women who specialized in exorcising the Evil Eye: the (op)shprekher(ke)s. Where a specialist wasn’t available, ordinary mothers and fathers had their own techniques for lifting bewitchments. When I say this was an embodied magic, I mean it quite literally. Even the simple act of “poo poo poo-ing” drew on the power of human saliva to neutralize and drive away the evil forces which plagued Yiddish-speaking Jews. 

 

The danger of the Evil Eye is hardly a thing of the past. More than any other time in history, we are now vulnerable to an infinite number of eyes, seeing us from every angle. Technology has become a force multiplier for the malevolent human gaze, as well as the greed and envy that travel with it. If you've ever posted your new car/vacation/graduation pics for all to see, you might want to learn more about the ancient dangers awaiting us online!

 

Topics in Part 2 include:

• Elijah the Prophet's role in healing and anti-demonic incantations
• More tales of (op)shprekher(ke)s - the shtetl exorcists
• The surprising story of how the Yiddish Evil Eye made its mark on American pop culture

 

 

A Brief History of the Evil Eye: Upcoming Class in June!

Rooster in the Cradle: 

A Brief History of the Evil Eye and Yiddish Anti-Demonic Technologies

Thursdays, June 11, 18 & 25 at 7pm EST (online)

Belief in the Evil Eye has been with us for 5000 years and is found all over the globe. Disease, sudden death, bad luck, sleeplessness, crop failure, and impotence have all been blamed on the power of a malevolent human gaze. Jewish belief in the Evil Eye (ayin-hore) appears in core rabbinic texts, as well as in Jewish folk cultures around the world.

If you’ve ever put a red ribbon around a crib, or uttered a kinehore (keyn ayin-hore, Yiddish for “no evil eye”), you have drawn on a rich tradition of apotropaic (anti-demonic) magic that goes back thousands of years.

But the history of the Evil Eye, and the Jewish defense against it, goes far beyond red ribbons and kinehores. Indeed, in many shtetls and towns, you could find Jewish men and women who specialized in exorcising the Evil Eye. Where a specialist wasn’t available, ordinary mothers and fathers often had their own techniques for lifting bewitchments. 

If you think the danger of the Evil Eye is a thing of the past, you might want to reconsider. More than any other time in history, we are now vulnerable to an infinite number of eyes, seeing us from every angle. Technology has been a force multiplier for the malevolent human gaze. If you've ever posted your new car/vacation/graduation pics, you might want to learn more about the ancient dangers awaiting us online.

Join me this June for an entertaining and eye-opening exploration of the Jewish evil eye and its global context. All classes are recorded and available to watch afterwards.

 

Email with questions or to register ($100): cjcrokhl@gmail.com 

New Leyenkrayz (reading circle) starting June 10

This June I'm offering a new leyenkrayz: we will read six short stories from Found Treasures over six weeks. (Six consecutive Wednesdays starting June 10 at 7pm) This is really a hybrid-leyenkrayz. Each week we will read the story in English translation ahead of time. I send out the Yiddish text and in class, we read selections from the Yiddish out loud, along with a class discussion of the story in English. 

This new leyenkrayz is coming after the success of my first leyenkrayz over April-May. We read the wonderful new translation of Rokhl Faygenberg's 1905 memoir, The Winding Road. Each week we read part of the Yiddish and for week 4, we had a visit from the translator, Tamara Helfer. 

This hybrid format turned out to be perfect for Yiddish learners who aren't ready to read an entire Yiddish novel on their own. Reading the English ahead of the Yiddish aids comprehension tremendously. It also allows beginner and intermediate students the opportunity to think about translation in a more complex way, as reading aloud in class naturally leads to discussion of the many layers of translation choices. 

The Found Treasures leyenkrayz begins Wednesday, June 10 at 7pm (EST). Roughly half of each class session is for reading the Yiddish text out loud, then we discuss the story. In addition, where appropriate, I give short talks about various elements of the story and context. We might even have supplemental readings that illuminate the main text. In The Winding Road, Rokhl Faygenberg describes how important "shund" novels were for her as a teenager, especially those of Shomer and Yankev Dinezon. In fact, her first literary creation was fanfic based on the characters in Dinezon's Young Dark Man. We when we got to that section of the book, I sent around a sample chapter of Young Dark Man so we could get a sense of what Faygenberg was actually reading. 

If you're interested in joining the upcoming leyenkrayz ($200 for six sessions) drop me an email and you'll get payment and registration info. I'd love to see you there!

Questions or to sign up and pay, email: cjcrokhl@ gmail dot com