Jews used to conjure spirits and snakes in Belarusian

Évaluation

A new YIVO exhibition explores Jewish occult practices, revealing a previously little known body of spirit incantations and magical recipes transcribed in Yiddish letters but written in the Belarusian language. This discovery suggests deeper cross cultural exchange between Jews and their Slavic neighbors than typically acknowledged. The public opening on May 26 will likely spur further scholarly attention to how folk magic operated at the intersection of linguistic and religious identities.