More in ‘magic’

Shane Baker was about 5 years old, growing up in Kansas City in the 1970s, when he heard a Yiddish word for the first time. He had gone to see the Marx Brothers classic Animal Crackers, in which Groucho sings, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding//The African explorer//Did somebody call me schnorrer?” Baker asked his father what ...

While some Jewish families see Halloween as a pagan holiday that should not be observed, the fact is, Jewish tradition is itself no stranger to the otherworldly, with its own history of golem-makers, sorcerers, and demon wranglers, and throughout the centuries Jews have been as afraid of evil spirits as anyone else.
As early as the ...