Psychics and the Occult in Modern Jewish Culture

Tuition: $480 | YIVO members: $375**
Students: $240 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English.

Instructor: Samuel Glauber

Course Description:
Many Jews in the early-twentieth century had a deep interest in the occult, both as practitioners and as patrons. Modern occultism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as a loose collection of beliefs and practices concerned with hidden dimensions of reality, which were often articulated in scientific language. Jews held séances and consulted with psychics, analyzed their horoscopes and explored hidden powers of the mind. Jewish occultism flourished in a time of increasing modernization and often functioned as a spiritual bridge that linked the metaphysical unknown with an increasingly secular urban reality.

This course looks at Jewish engagement with modern occultism with a focus on eastern European Jewry and its diaspora. We will utilize primary, secondary, and digital sources to explore the social changes that led Jews in the early-twentieth century to engage with occult practices and beliefs; the role of the Yiddish press in the popularization of occultism; the Jewish psychics of Warsaw and New York City; Jewish participation in the spiritualist movement; representations of occultism in modern Yiddish literature; and rabbinic responses to Jewish occultism. We will end the semester with a discussion of the continued relevance of occultism and other alternative spiritualities in contemporary Jewish culture. All texts will be provided with English translation.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Samuel Glauber is a scholar of modern Judaism specializing in East European Jewry and its diaspora communities. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he is writing a dissertation exploring Jewish engagement with modern occult currents in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Eastern Europe. His research develops an interdisciplinary approach to processes of religious and social change with a focus on the religious landscape of Eastern Europe; particular research interests include Jewish occultism, modern religious thought, and Yiddish press culture. His work has appeared in, among other journals, Nashim, Jewish Historical Studies, In geveb, Tradition, and Kabbalah, and he is co-editor of Hillel Zeitlin, In the Secret Place of the Soul: Three Essays (Jerusalem–Berlin: Blima Books, 2021). In 2021–2022, he held the Fellowship in American Jewish Studies at YIVO, where he worked on the archive of Yiddish writer and occultist B. Rivkin.

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