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Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?
Imagine you were a Jewish converso, secretly living in Italy or France after King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had expelled your family from Spain. You could not affix a mezuzah to your door or light Shabbat candles. If you were caught avoiding treyf, or if you were a male converso and someone discovered you were circumcised, your life and that of your family were in immediate danger. In these circumstances, how could a secret Jew living in antisemitic medieval Europe learn about Judaism?
Enter tarot — the deck of playing cards used in fortune-telling and divination — and specifically, the Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille deck. Each tarot card represents a specific archetype that the “reader” of the deck uses to try and understand their future, or answer a specific question.
According to Stav Appel, an amateur tarot historian and author of The Torah in the Tarot — a new guidebook and reissued deck of the Jean Noblet Tarot, the contemporary tarot deck may have been a medieval Jewish invention to preserve Jewish knowledge in the face of overwhelming antisemitic oppression. Each card is replete with hidden Jewish knowledge, Appel says, and the deck as a whole functioned as a crypto-Jewish educational tool.
The deck, Appel writes, can be “understood as a parade of crypto-Jews, each card bearing a false name and a false face to mask its true identity from a hostile world.”
An accidental tarot historian
Appel is not a historian by training. He lives in upstate New York, has an MBA from Yale and has spent his professional life as an organizational design consultant and data analyst. Some of his formative years were spent in Israel, where he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but he is not a rabbi or any sort of formal Torah educator. Rather, Appel is the sort of humble, mundane Torah scholar that is increasingly rare in 21st-century Jewish life.
Orthodox synagogues are full of scholars more learned in Torah than he is, he said, but “when you study a little bit of Torah every day for 40 years, it accumulates.”
According to Appel, tarot “had no presence in his life whatsoever” until about 10 years ago, when his wife visited a bookstore that was closing and had a shelf full of tarot cards at bargain prices. On a whim, she bought a deck — a version of the Tarot de Marseille — and suggested to a bemused Appel that he use them to make up stories for their children.
When Appel and his kids started playing with the cards, he instantly noticed that they were filled with Bible stories: On one card, four divine animals that the prophet Ezekiel sees in his vision; on another, a collapsing grand building that looked like a depiction of the destruction of the Second Temple.
“The Judaic references were obvious,” he said, but he thought they were merely references to the Old Testament, and not indicative of a Jewish backstory to tarot. Nevertheless intrigued, he joined a Facebook group about tarot and began to research on his own. He wanted to know “who put all these Bible stories in a deck of playing cards?”
The Rider-Waite tarot deck (also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck) was released in 1909 and is one of the most popular tarot decks ever created, with thousands of variations. Though the Rider-Waite contains a hodge-podge of esoteric traditions, numerous cards bear Hebrew letters.
Appel learned that the Rider-Waite had been copied from a much, much older deck called the Tarot de Marseille, which dates back to at least the late 15th century. The older the version of the Tarot de Marseille deck Appel saw, the clearer the biblical references were. When he tracked down a replica of a 1650 deck, he recalled thinking, “Oh my God.”
“These aren’t Bible stories at all,” he thought. “These are Torah stories. This is Judaica.’”
The discovery
One card in the Jean Noblet deck was particularly stunning: The Magician.
In Rider-Waite and other tarot decks, the Magician is typically depicted holding aloft what looks like a wand. In the Noblet deck, however, it’s slightly different.
“What do you think he’s holding in his hand?” Appel asked me.
I leaned in to look, and realized it was obvious: “A circumcised penis” — the symbol of Abraham’s eternal covenant with God.
In his written guide for the reissued deck, Appel points out that on the table before the Magician is a complete antique circumcision kit, including a knife and its sheath for cutting the foreskin, and a shield to protect the penis.
Once your eyes are trained to see the Judaica, Appel’s right; it can be obvious. The top of the hat the Magician wears, for example, is the tip of a circumcised penis emerging from its cut foreskin. The helmet of the Emperor in another card is a disguised dreidel tipped onto its side. On the Chariot card, the Chariot itself resembles a bimah, and its wheels are Torah scrolls.
Often, though, finding the hidden Judaica can require a considerable level of Torah knowledge, a sophisticated eye for symbology and a dash of imagination. For example, each card has a secret Hebrew letter within it. In the Magician, the Hebrew letter aleph (א) is hidden in the figure’s curved arms.
How did this remain hidden?
There had been speculation for years about the Jewish influence on tarot, particularly given that there are 22 Major Arcana cards (a tarot deck is divided into 22 named Major Arcana cards and 56 numbered Minor Arcana cards), and there are 22 letters in the Hebrew aleph bet. Yet over the centuries, Jewish mysticism had been widely distorted by Christian occultists. Tarot historians believed that any traces of Hebrew or biblical influence left on the tarot cards were evidence of this appropriation, and not of any inherent Jewish origins.
As Appel studied the Noblet deck and found more and more hidden Judaica, he reached out to tarot historians who told him he was speaking “utter nonsense.”
“Their emotional response was quite fascinating,” Appel reflected. “It’s a real challenge to these very accomplished tarot historians who have built a very different narrative that does not make space for Jews and Judaism.”
Jewish historians were more receptive, but dubious. If the tarot deck was a hidden educational tool of Torah study, why hadn’t this been discovered already by a rabbi or someone with, say, a Ph.D.?
Appel decided to self-publish a deck, and started an Instagram account, where he posted images of the cards and shared his theories on their Judaic origins. Many people began pointing out additional hidden Jewish objects and symbols that he had missed. “People really pushed me, and collectively, we went much deeper into the cards,” he said.
Crypto-teaching aid
With each new Judaic subtlety revealed, Appel and his online community marveled at the sophistication of the Judaic knowledge they contained, and the skillfulness with which it was hidden. “It’s a masterpiece of art and a major accomplishment of cryptography,” he said, describing the cards as an “incredibly efficient system” to teach about Jewish practice — the Jean Noblet deck contains a full curriculum of Judaic studies.
Appel emphasizes that he is not a formal historian and cannot be 100% certain of his hypotheses. Perhaps the cards were just Jewish fortune-telling cards, or an example of Jewish mystical art. But the density of Judaic content seemed to support his contention that the cards were used as a tool for Jewish education. “The only reason someone would be motivated to conceal so much information is they wanted it to be a memory device for a teacher,” Appel said. “It’s like a really fancy teaching aid.”
Appel has lectured at synagogues and community centers and given a presentation at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, where he says he was received warmly. One of the attendees, Corinne Brown, the chair of the conference, told me in an email that Appel’s arguments were “iron clad.” She compared his discovery to that of finding King Tut’s tomb, where “an entire culture had been assembled for an unknown afterlife.”
Academics at the conference told him there had been studies where crypto-Jews had reported the tradition of gathering over playing cards as a cover story to learn Torah. In a note included with the deck’s reissue, the society wrote that while they are not tarot historians, “we can confirm the development of clandestine means of Jewish continuity was a common practice in crypto-Jewish communities following the exile of Spanish Jewry in 1492.”
The origins of the word tarot potentially lend Appel’s ideas some credibility. The word tarot comes from an Italian dialect word tarocci, which means “the fool,” and was first documented in 1516 in Ferrara, Italy. It supplanted, somehow, the name trionfi (meaning “cards”), which was first used to describe 13th- and 14th-century Italian playing cards that had allegorical images.
Tarot historians do not have any answers as to how the word tarocci replaced trionfi, and why it happened specifically in the early 1500s and in cities like Ferrara and Avignon, France. Appel thinks the etymological shift was due to a wave of conversos fleeing Spain who began using the cards as a secret Jewish tool, as both Ferrara and Avignon were home to many crypto-Jews. There is currently no evidence to support this theory, but it is a compelling possible explanation.
What now?
Appel’s hope in reissuing the deck is that it will provoke more serious scholarship and research. He has also come to a new appreciation of tarot and the Jewish magical and esoteric rituals that went underground in the face of violent Christian persecution.
Given that divination is explicitly outlawed in the Torah, I was curious if Appel had received any rabbinic pushback to his claims that Jews may have invented the preeminent tool of fortune telling in an effort to preserve Jewish continuity. There was some, he acknowledged, but it was ironic given the rich history of Jewish mysticism, magic and esoteric practice. Jews were seen by their Christian neighbors as a source of magic in the Middle Ages, Appel told me, with “a robust culture of spell casting.”
“In the 20th century, we’ve done a really good job of cleaning up Judaism to make it look really neat and tidy, as if it was always this hyper-rationalist religion,” Appel said. “That’s a contemporary invention, and it’s just not the truth.”
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Pro-Israel Adrian Boafo beats crowded field to replace Maryland’s Steny Hoyer
(JTA) — Pro-Israel candidate Adrian Boafo won Maryland’s Democratic primary to fill longtime Rep. Steny Hoyer’s seat on Tuesday, after waging a campaign supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at a time when other members of his party are disavowing the pro-Israel lobbying group.
Boafo, 32, is a state delegate who entered the contest with low name recognition. Hoyer hand-picked his former staffer, who managed some of Hoyer’s recent campaigns.
The octogenarian worked hard to get his protege past the finish line in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, garnering the support of much of the state’s Democratic establishment and appearing in an ad for him. Hoyer, who was for decades the number two Democratic leader in the House, is a staunch Israel advocate and AIPAC ally who will retire this January after 45 years. Boafo won with 32% of the vote in the crowded Democratic field, with 68% of votes counted on Wednesday morning.
Boafo thanked his supporters and Hoyer late Tuesday night and said that he was Hoyer’s natural successor. “At first glance it might not seem obvious, but our stories are actually very similar,” he said. “Steny and I are both the sons of immigrants. We grew up believing in an America that drew our parents from across the sea.” Boafo’s parents are Ghanaian and Hoyer’s father was Danish.
His victory offered a glimmer of hope to the party’s pro-Israel wing, coming on the same night that three progressives who ran hard against AIPAC and the war in Gaza swept New York’s primaries, toppling powerful pro-Israel Democrats. Boafo sent a message that AIPAC still has the power to buoy Democratic candidates even as criticism of Israel surges in the progressive wing of the party and the Democratic electorate. The lobby, once seen as a necessary bipartisan stamp of approval, has become a stand-in for Israel’s influence on U.S. politics.
AIPAC poured $5.7 million into Boafo’s campaign through its super PAC, United Democracy Project.
Boafo pledged during the campaign to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” and “mobilize humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians,” as well as to “ensure Israel has the security assistance it needs.” Military aid packages to Israel have increasingly divided Democrats amid the deeply unpopular wars fought by Israel in Gaza and Iran.
AIPAC celebrated Boafo’s victory on Tuesday night. “Boafo has made clear his vision to carry forward the strong pro-Israel legacy of Congressman Steny Hoyer, one of Congress’s most steadfast champions of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” the group said on X, adding that it was proud to “help ensure this seat remains represented by pro-Israel leadership.”
Boafo also benefited from crypto money. Protect Progress, a super PAC affiliated with the crypto industry, spent $5.5 million on the race largely to boost Boafo, who previously worked as a federal lobbyist for the technology firm Oracle.
The deluge of outside spending sparked a rebuke from Boafo’s opponents during the race. Candidates Harry Dunn, Quincy Bareebe and Rushern Baker teamed up to denounce the outlays last week, with Baker saying on a press call, “Special interests don’t spend money out of civic goodwill. They spend the kind of money that we see because they expect someone to work for them.”
Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also criticized the spending this month and accused the pro-Israel and crypto groups of attempting to “buy this congressional seat.”
“Voters need to understand that these groups are not investing in this race out of charity,” Van Hollen said in a press conference this month. “They are spending because they believe the beneficiary of their spending — in this case, one candidate, Adrian Boafo — will be a dependable vote in support of their special interests.”
Boafo will face small business owner Chris Chaffee, the winner of the Republican primary, in November’s general election. Boafo is all but assured to win the deep-blue district.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘Mensch of Manhattan’ Lasher wins over Bores in fight for Nadler’s seat, media projects
(New York Jewish Week) — Micah Lasher has defeated Alex Bores in the battle for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s Manhattan congressional seat, according to media projections Tuesday night.
In the race for the 12th Congressional District, the most Jewish in the country, Lasher had 40,106 votes, or 39.1 percent, and Bores collected 35,822 votes, or 35 percent, with 87 percent of the ballots counted.
The crowded field in the Democratic primary also included John F. Kennedy grandson Jack Kennedy Shlossberg, public health expert Nina Schwalbe, and George Conway, a Republican-turned-Democrat and Trump antagonist. All three were trailing well behind Lasher.
During his victory speech, Lasher pointed to both his and the district’s Jewish identity.
“It is an enormous point of pride that I will be representing the most Jewish congressional district in the country,” Lasher said. “I will always stand up for our community with pride.”
He also received a loud ovation after he thanked “the rabbis and Jewish community leaders” who helped the campaign.
A number of Lasher’s political allies and former bosses spoke, including Nadler, who’s represented the upper West Side since 1992, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Comptroller Mark Levine, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who told the JTA that Lasher would be a bridge between Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Jewish community.
Holyman-Sigal called Lasher the “mensch of Manhattan.”
Lasher thanked Nadler for his decades of service and mentorship, saying he taught Lasher things like “vision, compassion, and how to canvass voters outside Zabar’s.”
Nadler is “as much an institution in Manhattan as Central Park and pastrami on rye,” Lasher said.
The House seat — which covers the Upper West and Upper East sides and midtown Manhattan, and is seen as a crown jewel in New York politics — opened up after Nadler announced last fall that he would retire at the end of this term.
Nadler’s preferred heir was Lasher, a Jewish State Assembly member who has worked for the progressive stalwart and other prominent politicians such as Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Lasher has the support of those former bosses, plus much of the West Side political establishment.
Fellow Assembly member Bores, meanwhile, has built a coalition that includes both pro-Israel moderates and progressive groups critical of the Jewish state by emphasizing that he will be tough on artificial intelligence companies. Former congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who represented much of Manhattan’s East Side from 1993 until 2023, is among Bores’ supporters.
On the subject of Israel, the makeup of the NY-12 race has been unlike other contested New York City races: Elsewhere, at least one of the two leading candidates has accmused Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza and supports placing conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel.
But Lasher and Bores both describe themselves as pro-Israel and anti-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and neither one supports blocking weapons sales to the Jewish state.
Mamdani is himself a voter in the district as a resident of Gracie Mansion and who cast his ballot a few days ago, during the early voting period, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has declined to weigh in publicly on the race. The mayor endorsed two democratic socialist candidates and Brad Lander — his Jewish ally who accuses Israel of genocide, and has positioned himself against both offensive and defensive military aid to Israel — in other races.
Lasher and Bores have both consistently advocated for universally applying the existing Leahy Law, which bars the U.S. from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity.
Schlossberg has criticized Lasher and Bores for their stance, calling it an “insufficient answer,” and advocates for blocking offensive weapons sales to Israel while still funding the Iron Dome defensive missile system. He is the only of the top-four candidates to call for conditions on aid to Israel and halting any weapons sales. After initially leading in early polls, Schlossberg’s support appears to have fallen amid questions over his lack of experience.
Conway, an anti-Trumper and longtime attorney who was married to former Donald Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway, rounds out the top four in the polling.
Throughout the election, candidates convened for forums at numerous synagogues in the heavily Jewish district — 23.3% of constituents are Jewish, according to a 2024 study — and answered questions related to antisemitism, Israel and other Jewish-related issues.
Lasher has said at multiple forums that he doesn’t see anti-Zionism as being precisely the same thing as antisemitism, but that “often when you see one you see the other.”
He and Bores have both touted their support for a statewide “buffer zone” bill — which Lasher introduced in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside synagogues — that would curb protests outside houses of worship. Meanwhile, Schlossberg has pointed out at Jewish forums that the first policy his campaign released was “Jack’s Fast-Track Plan,” which would fast-track a doubling of funds for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program that funds security at houses of worship and community centers.
During a June forum at Upper West Side synagogue B’nai Jeshurun, Lasher said he felt “exhausted” by how much the political dialogue — both in the NY-12 race and more broadly — is “obsessed” with Israel.
Lasher is sure to win in November’s general election in the heavily Democratic district where he will face only token Republican opposition.
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I helped sell Obama’s Iran deal. Its critics owe us all an explanation.
(JTA) — Neoconservatives have some ‘splainin’ to do, as Lucy’s television husband, Ricky Ricardo used to say.
The war on Iran has turned out to be a debacle of historic proportions.
After months of military escalation, tens of billions of dollars expended, critical weapons stockpiles depleted, and a region once again thrown into crisis, the United States now finds itself humiliated. The memorandum of understanding reportedly concluded last week does not represent the culmination of victory. It represents the codification of failure.
Many understood that nuclear disarmament and regime change in Iran could not be achieved through force. As I wrote in these pages a few months ago, more than a decade ago, we reached a solution designed to avert precisely the calamity that has unfolded. It was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or, in layman’s parlance, the Iran nuclear deal.
As a certified denizen of the Swamp — I served in the Clinton White House’s communications shop and later founded a Washington, DC strategic communications firm — I was at the forefront of selling the Obama administration’s agreement to the American public.
I remember those days well — and I do not miss them.
JCPOA defenders, particularly those of us in the Jewish community, were attacked in the ugliest terms imaginable. We were called appeasers, sellouts, self-hating Jews and worse. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington and outrageously warned Congress that the deal might pave the way to a second Holocaust.
JCPOA advocates never argued that the agreement signed in Vienna was perfect.
Its critics pointed to the sunset provisions. They objected that the deal did not address every malign activity undertaken by the Islamic Republic throughout the Middle East. These were legitimate concerns. Politics, however, is the art of the possible; geopolitics doubly so.
That agreement nevertheless achieved something extraordinary. Iran shipped out the overwhelming majority of its enriched uranium. International inspectors gained unprecedented access. A mechanism existed to monitor and constrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The prospect of military confrontation receded.
The regime’s hardliners hated the agreement. The Revolutionary Guard fought it tooth and nail. Integration into the global economy threatened entrenched interests within the Islamic Republic. A growing middle class and increasing international engagement carried risks for those whose power depended on its isolation and perpetual confrontation.
Unfortunately, hardliners were not confined to Tehran.
The maximal-pressure advocates in Washington ultimately prevailed. During the first Trump administration, the United States withdrew from the agreement. Tore it up, as the president bragged. Despite the best efforts of our European partners, who had also signed the accord, the framework collapsed beneath the weight of renewed sanctions and diplomatic abandonment.
What followed, we were promised, was supposed to vindicate the critics.
Instead, it vindicated the critics’ critics.
The maximal-pressure advocates have spent years moving the goalposts. First, we were told, sanctions would bring the regime to its knees. They did not. Then economic isolation would force Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. It did not. Then military pressure would succeed where sanctions had failed. It did not. Then leadership decapitation, covert action, and military escalation would produce regime change. They did not.
Each promised but failed breakthrough gave way to another promised breakthrough.
And now comes the final indignity: the so-called memorandum of understanding.
After years of threats, sanctions, covert action, military escalation and open warfare, the United States has agreed to resume negotiations with the very regime it set out to break. The Islamic Republic remains in power. Its leadership and political system remain intact.
Nor is that all.
The agreement reportedly provides waivers for Iranian oil exports and opens the door to sanctions relief and renewed access to many billions in frozen assets. It establishes yet another negotiating process on the nuclear question rather than resolving it. It leaves unresolved many of the issues that maximal-pressure advocates once described as non-negotiable, including Iran’s missile capabilities, its regional proxy network, or the many canisters of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium — what the president calls nuclear dust.
Even the future status of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical passage for oil open before the war, and now established as a lever for Iran to exert pressure, appears destined for further negotiation rather than decisive resolution.
The advocates of maximal pressure promised a better deal than the JCPOA. They promised that Iran would be forced to make concessions unavailable through diplomacy.
Instead, after years of confrontation, Washington finds itself lifting pressure, restoring economic benefits, negotiating with a surviving regime and postponing the most difficult questions to future talks.
Hell, in Paris last week, Trump actually made the case for Iran to retain, build or buy missiles and maintain at least some nuclear power.
So, what, precisely, was achieved?
The tragedy is not merely that the war failed to accomplish its objectives. It is that we already possessed a framework that constrained Iran’s nuclear program without requiring military confrontation. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was imperfect, to be sure. Its supporters never claimed otherwise. But it reduced risk, established verification mechanisms and avoided precisely the cycle of escalation that has consumed the past decade.
Its opponents insisted there was a better way.
History has now rendered its verdict.
The United States ultimately abandoned a functioning diplomatic framework in pursuit of fantasies that proved unattainable. Having exhausted sanctions, threats and military force, it has arrived back at the negotiating table poorer, weaker and in possession of less leverage than before.
I’m afraid I told you so.
The defenders of the JCPOA were mocked as appeasers. Yet the memorandum of understanding now before us amounts to an admission of the very proposition we advanced all along: However distasteful it may be, the Islamic Republic is not a problem that can be bombed or sanctioned out of existence.
Diplomacy could have spared us the war.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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