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Posted on 05/23/2026 12:47:31 PM PDT by mac_truck
BOSTON — Researcher Stav Appel shows a tarot card via the Zoom screen. Its French-language title is Le Pendu, “the hanged man,” and that’s exactly what the card depicts — a man’s body hanging by one leg upside-down. Pretty straightforward, right?
But Appel is digging deeper to find a hidden Jewish context in these cards used in fortune-telling ever since the Middle Ages. Consider Le Pendu. To Appel, the body is contorted into a shape that suggests the Hebrew letter lamed. And who might the hanged man actually be? Appel posits that he is Haman, the arch villain of the Purim story. Haman was hung from a tree on the 14th day of Adar, the 12th month of the Hebrew calendar. Wearing a 14-buttoned outfit, Le Pendu also hangs from a tree, and it is card number 12 in the deck. Haman was executed with his 10 sons — matching the total of cut-off branches on the tree. And the dead man’s tongue is sticking out, evoking a custom of eating pickled tongue on Purim.
It is widely accepted that the 22 Major Arcana cards in a tarot deck reflect the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, but Appel sees a larger Jewish story here. He contends that in medieval France, Jews seeking to preserve their religion in the shadow of hostile ecclesiastical policies did so through tarot cards. They embedded messages about their scripture, alphabet, liturgy and holidays into the cards, knowing that this risked punishment by the Catholic Church.
Now Appel is bringing it all into the open, through “Torah in the Tarot,” an exhibition at the Vilna Shul Jewish arts and cultural center in Boston. The display has recently been extended through the month of June, with open gallery viewings on May 20 and June 26.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
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Were Tarot cards invented by Jews? Did they establish the popular iconography for them? Or were distinct decks created and used by Jews with the subtle clues (described in the article) that aren’t found on other decks?
We were playing poker with Tarot cards. Four people died.
It all seems plausible and understandable to me. Just wondering at what point in the development of Tarot cards were the covert clues embedded.
I have read developed in 12th/13th century Italy\France.
That’s a stretch!
I always that tarot cards were dark, bad, to be avoided by believers in God?
Tarot cards date from the medieval ages and I believe the oldest deck found was in Italy. The cards can be translated into any mythological archetypes. I’ve seen cards depicted as the Greek myths, the Arthurian romances, Celtic lore, Norse, Biblical, etc. This is the first I have heard of the Torah, but it would not surprise me. The cards and their symbols can be used to suit any set of archetypes and myths… it’s what makes them endlessly fascinating.
If you have ever used regular playing cards, you are using the Pip deck (Minor Arcana) from the tarot.
They were originally designed to play games with.
Human beings look for meaning everywhere. In the shapes of clouds, by reading tea leaves, etc.
The cards are just cards.
The Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley, saw the tarot deck as explictly an expression of Qabalah. It’s esoteric Judaism which may go back to Egypt and the time of the bondage of the Israelites. Depending on the deck being used, there are just tons of correspondences in a tarot deck that trace to Qabalah.
As a teen I could read the fortunes of the girls with a regular deck of cards or by holding their hand and reading their palm, and tell them all about themselves and their inner thoughts and deepest feelings, and they were amazed, it was so easy that I did it enough to verify what I was seeing but then I quit doing it because while it would have been the ultimate seduction tool, the ease of it and their gullibility was shocking and creepy, they would melt at the empathic insight and description of themselves.
Aleister Crowley was a jerk.
Wonder what Tucker Carlson would have to say about this?
It is a cheap and tacky way to get into their pants, it disappointed me that it was too shady for me because it was fun and fascinating to do and it is always disappointing to have to not do something you are good at.
He’ll say whatever generates the most clicks!
Click = ka-ching $
Exploitive is the word I meant to use, it is one thing to seduce women, to win them over, but it is wrong to exploit them or to accept their favors if you tricked them out of them.
Understood.
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