New books! Vera Basch Moreen's "In Queen Esther's Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature" (2000) and Debra Kaplan & Elisheva Carlebach's "A Woman is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe" (2025).

On Sunday talked demons and divination with a Jewish urban fantasy writer and yesterday talked ba'al shem, cemetery measuring, and dybbuks with a Jewish tv writer. super fun and hopefully useful for them.

Sitting in a coffee shop (for the first time in weeks) reading Devir Kahan's discussion of Hashgacha Partis "Divine Intervention" in prep for my necromancy class. Nothing like a Rambam vs Ramban argument to get the day going :) dafaleph.com/home/2015/11...

When I teach Jewish werewolves tomorrow I want to get everyone out of monster movie territory, so we're starting by reading from H. Leyvik's magnificent Yiddish poem The Wolf. Here's Dara Horn's thoughts about it www.tabletmag.com/sections/art... h/t to @bluma.bsky.social who introduced me to Leyvik

Prepping for tomorrow's Werewolves in Jewish Lore class and ran across the Sefer Ha-Yashar story of Jacob and the wolf. At Jacob's instance, his sons have brought him the beast they claimed killed Joseph. God has opened the wolfs mouth and he claims innocence and that he too has lost a son.

Shabbat shalom everyone. Dunno about you but I need Shabbat extra this week.

The giants, from the Nephalim in Genesis through the rabbinic stories of Og to Joshua, Caleb, and David's battles with the Anakites, play such an outsized and complex role in the Tanakh that it's sometimes amazes that, unlike, shedim, their story just ends. I wonder if God misses them?

There seems to be a moment when, according to Jewish lore, there were no more giants. I know of two candidates for the last giants: Achimen, Sheshal, and Talmi who were allowed to live until the 2nd temple (Sotah 35b, Meam Loez) & the Anakite giant tribes in Gaza, Gat, Ashdod (Joshua). Any others?

Initial-word panel at the beginning of Torah portion Beshalach (בְּשַׁלַּח) inhabited by two tiny creatures. #ParashahPictures BL Or 2696; Torah with Rash's commentary; 14th century; Germany; f.131r

prepping for tomorrow's Jewish Monster and Magic class at Temple Beth Emeth, we're talking about giants, and hoping that the snow doesn't keep folks away (though it probably will). Oh well. That's what Zoom is for.

"Kvittel is a Yiddish word that means a note or a ticket…the piece of paper on which some people write their name and their request or need…Sometimes notes like these were left on the graves of saintly figures who were expected to pray for the people whose names were inscribed on these notes" 1/4

New books! Rabbi Yaakov Goldstein’s The Laws and customs of Mourning and “Mlynov-Muravica Memorial Book” a yizkor book. Very excited.

Mizrach is Hebrew for East, the direction of prayer for Jews in the Diaspora west of Jerusalem. A mizrach is a plaque hung to point out the direction. I own an Alphonse Levy postcard mizrach that I bought, without realizing what it was, as a source for my Joe the Demon trading card. Now to hang it!

22. "Definition of "shekinah" from Webster's Unabridged" @adnesadeh.bsky.social

Ok, here's a first cut on my Centaurs trading card. I was posting a ton about centaurs so thought I'd follow through with the card. (For info on my first two published decks of Jewish Monster and Magic trading cards, check out ko-fi.com/adnesadeh/shop. This card will be in the third deck)

Ok...time for a poll. Are you on team House Spirits? Or Team Spirits of the field?

Yikes. Sorry house spirits, I'm here for the spirits of the fields.

Geller's article "A Horse is a Horse" describes the use of centaurs by Jewish writers Primo Levi, Bernard Malamud, & Moacyr Scliar. Levi, Geller notes, describes man as being a "centaur, a tangle of flesh & mind, of divine breath & dust” & "The Hebrew people…lived this conflict long & painfully” 1/6

Found Jewish centaurs! Genesis Rabbah 23.6 did have it but it was mis-translated. What should have been "there the generations were corrupted and Kinturin (centaurs, from Greek) were created" was translated as "were created in a deformed state" h/t to @deepcuts.blog & Jay Geller's "Horse" article

new YIVO class."FOLKSONG, DEMONS, AND THE EVIL EYE: FOLKLORE OF ASHKENAZ" Take a journey into the richness of Jewish folk life with Itzik Gottesman and explore the music, folktales, rituals, and superstitions of Jewish Eastern Europe. yivo.org/Folklore-of-...

Jewish centaurs? Schwartz' "Mythology of Judaism" has a legend of humans becoming bestial but the source texts in Sefaria don't substantiate it. Sklar, in an essay about the word הימם in Torah (Anah is he who found הימם in the desert. Gen 36:24) picks up trail. seforimblog.com/2025/12/of-c...

Woot! @Columbia came through. They scanned Beatrice Weinreich's 1957 Masters Thesis "The Prophet Elijah in Modern Yiddish Folktales" for me. It's really cool. Hit me up if you want a copy or if you have Adobe Acrobat and can help me get the annoying watermark out of it.

Would like to see these two swap roles. Cherdolaomer! I choose you!

note to self: Cherdolaomer is the king in Genesis who fought a war with giant tribes that dragged in Abraham and Lot. Charmander is a cute, but moody, bi-pedal lizard Pokemon whose tail is on fire.

Fun! My blog post on banim shovavim, half-demons, got quoted recently in Intelexual Media's YouTube video "A Brief History of Sex & Horror." The video is well done and I'm dying over the MS Paint style shout out. Check it out! (h/t to @danispaghetti.bsky.social) www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG_W...

Just noticed my copy of Levy and Zumwalt’s “Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women” has a typo in the book cover title. That should be “Spirits” not “Spirtis” oops :)

Niddah 25b is one of my fave bits in the Talmud. I love the image. It references a huge Og the Giant, riffing off how tall he'd need to stand in the waters of the flood to have his head be at the level of the ark. (there are small versions too, such as the story of his 9 cubit bed (15 feet or so).

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Happy Hanukkah everyone. Thought I'd re-share an article I did for the @jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social a couple of years ago. jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorize...

Just preordered Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis' new book "The Book of Brilliance: Selections from the Sefer ha-Bahir" a gentle intro to Jewish mysticism from @madnessheartpress.bsky.social. Dennis is also the author "The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism" madnessheart.press/product/the-...

Every year for Hanukkah I like to share panels from this special holiday comic I edited when I was on staff at Marvel. There remains a dearth of specifically Hanukkah stories in comics and this one only ever appeared in print once. Every year I am proud to share and celebrate the light of Hanukkah:

Found it! The "mouse rebbe" is Reb Shaya'le (Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner of Kerestir) who lived in the early part of the 20th century. Here's the original story from kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/bodrogkeresz.... H/t to Natan Slifkin's Rationalist Judaism blog. www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/bnei-braks...

"This rabbi can get rid of the rats in your home!" Fun story that appeard on Dropout TV. Not sure the actor's name that tells the story. Anyone know who the rabbi is? h/t @kaijupoet.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/mGjN4...

Check it out! I've got a story in the Dec Washtenaw Jewish News. I was invited to contribute a winter-themed story so re-told "Og the Giant and the Tailor" which I originally read in Harold Schwartz' "Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism." It's matched by my "Og, King of Bashan" trading card.

Just got the best Hanukkah present from Rabbi Josh Fixler (@fixler.bsky.social) of the Golem Museum. He 3D-printed a cool storage box for the Jewish Monster Hunting kit he bought from me during my kickstarter and he made me one too! It's amazing! Check it out!

A kinda bitchy Talmudic anti-water demon charm (Pesachim 112a) "If he is thirsty, what is his remedy? He should say… Lul, Shafan, Anigron, Anirdafin, which are names of demons, I sit between the stars, I walk between thin and fat people, take any of them…but leave me alone"

@shvlman I'm digging through Yiddish illustrated books tonight and ran across Israel Steinbaum's "Leyenbikher far der yidisher shul" which has some excellent alef's.

Listening to a fantastic d'var torah for Parshat No-ah about the destruction of the giants by the same guy who was lead signer of Sha Na Na at Woodstock, Dr. Alan Cooper of emeritus prof at JTS. (He's singing lead with the shiny vest) www.jtsa.edu/torah/why-di... www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXLs...

My Shabbat reading is Hans Jonas 1984 lecture “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice” which is a Jewish Process Theology focusing on evil. It’s a great read. I landed on it while studying giants in Tanakh.

Am making a second attempt to get a .pdf copy of Beatrice Weinreich's 1957 dissertation "The prophet Elijah in modern Yiddish folktales" from Columbia's library. Last time they were were short staffed. If they are again I'll shell out $ and pay a grad student there to do scan it for me.

rereading Jacob Z. Lauterbach's "The Ceremony of Breaking a Glass at Weddings" again (I re-read it regularly. It's all about shedim, ya know?) and am again marveling that's 100 years old this year.

New book! “The Writer” by Josh Gad, the Berkowitz Bros, Ariel Olivetti and Frank Cvetkovic. A comic book about a Jewish comic book writer loaded with Jewish monsters and magic. It’s wild. I don’t love it, it’s a bit to chaotic for me. But it’s fun and with checking out.

Shabbat Shalom everyone

@miriamanzovin.bsky.social & @adnesadeh.bsky.social Something that might interest you: www.guyshilo.com/tevel

Bought a Hanukkah Latke golem sweater from @martifuerst.bsky.social. Am very excited.

New book! Josephson-Storm’s “The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences.” It focuses on western philosophy with passing reference to Kabbalah. It’ll be a great companion for Gideon Bohak’s article “How Jewish Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World”

I love this illustration by Yosl Kottler. Looking for inspiration for my “Water Shedim” card and found Kottler, who was a Yiddish speaking Jewish American poet, artist, puppeteer and composer at the beginning of the 1900’s

Fascinating 1891 anthropological description of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Turkey. Very judgmental at times, but paints a fascinating picture. I originally ran across it looking at Jewish burial practices, like this one....

One of my buddies took a cool shot of me telling stories at Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor. Very dramatic. Lol. And yeah, I’m sporting a Marti Fuerst giant frog shirt. 🤩🐸 www.martifuerst.com

The best part of the storytelling last night was when a dad brought his 11 year old daughter over to look at my trading cards. She said that her friend had wanted Percy Jackson books to have Jewish mythology but that she didn't know if there was any...but she did now. She was pumped. Made my night