Thank you for joining the conversation on The Torah in the Tarot between author Stav Appel and poet Ariana Reines.
Special thanks to our cosponsors Reboot, Vilna Shul, Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, Invisible College, and the Jewish Museum of Buffalo.
Overview
When Torah student Stav Appel encountered the Jean Noblet Tarot, one of the oldest known versions of the Tarot de Marseille, he found something curious: the Magician held his arms in the shape of the Hebrew letter aleph א, the Hermit wore a Jewish prayer shawl, and three pieces of matzah hid beneath the Moon. Given that the Tarot de Marseille was created during the Catholic Church’s centuries long campaign to abolish Judaism, Appel argues persuasively that its secret content suggests the deck originally served as a tool for clandestine Jewish education.
The Torah in the Tarot is a historically accurate reproduction of the Noblet Tarot accompanied by Appel’s fascinating review of the concealed Judaica that emerges once we are granted permission to interpret its images through a Judaic lens of understanding. In its pages readers discover that the cards contain a veiled depiction of the language, rituals and legends of Judaism too detailed and precise to possibly be ascribed to chance; a startling realization that completely upends the known history of the Tarot.
Ariana and Stav will be in conversation, moderated by Ayin’s editorial director Eden Pearlstein. Together, they will explore the Tarot as a multifaceted cultural artifact—at once a compelling work of visual art, a game, a mystical catalyst, and, when viewed through the newest lens of The Torah in the Tarot, a powerful expression of spiritual protest.
They will consider how the unlikely convergence of Renaissance-era gambling culture and the crypto-Jewish experience gave rise to the global phenomenon of the occult Tarot. Seen in this fuller light, the history of the Tarot offers a precious glimpse into the inescapable fragility of collective memory in which fact, myth and belief continually intermingle and evolve across centuries, no matter how earnestly we attempt to grasp a fixed and enduring truth.
Bios
Stav Appel is a retired data scientist and lifelong student of Torah. Earlier in his career he was the director of the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence organization Nitzanei Shalom, and the director of International Service Programs for American Jewish World Service. He holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and has studied Biblical Hebrew at Hebrew University and Yale Divinity School. He currently resides in North Salem, NY. Find Stav on Instagram @torah.tarot.
Ariana Reines (Foreword) is the author of The Rose (2025), Wave of Blood (2024), A Sand Book (2020), Mercury (2011), the Obie-winning play “Telephone” (2009), Coeur de Lion (2007), and The Cow (2006). She has created performances for Stuart Shave/Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Performance Space NY, and many others. In 2020, while a divinity student at Harvard, she founded Invisible College, a hub for the study of sacred texts and poetry online. She lives in New York, NY.
Eden Pearlstein is a multimedia language–artist and cofounder of Ayin Press. He is the author of Nothing Is for Everyone: Poems, a creative contributor to SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide by Cannupa Hanska Luger, and editor of Selah: A Báyò Akómoláfé Reader. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children.