This interview with Stav Appel explores the Jewish origins of the Tarot, its transformation from a gambling tool to a secret educational text, and the broader themes of individualism, collectivism, and the power of interpretation in both Tarot and Judaism.
Nika Dubrovsky
Okay, let’s start from the beginning.
Stav Appel
My name is Stav Appel, and I’m a researcher specializing in the history of Tarot. My work focuses on the Tarot de Marseille, one of the oldest versions of Tarot, which I believe contains a systematic depiction of Judaism. By this, I mean the 22 Hebrew letters, eight Jewish holy days, various Judaic ritual objects, and Torah stories. My core thesis is that the original symbolic template of the Tarot de Marseille likely served as a secret tool for Jewish education during the Inquisition.
Nika Dubrovsky
Can you describe the difference between the earlier cards and how they were transformed in the deck now known as Tarot de Marseille?
Stav Appel
The Tarot de Marseille wasn’t originally Jewish. In Italy during the 1400s, there was already a tradition of using highly decorated playing cards, primarily for gambling. Gambling was very popular during the Renaissance and my theory is that in the early 1500s, when Northern Italy became a refuge for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, someone took these older Italian cards—called triumph or trionfi cards—and reinvented them. These cards, which originally depicted parades of characters, were cleverly redesigned to conceal Hebrew letters, Jewish ritual objects, and holidays. Essentially, they transformed these gambling cards into Torah cards. The word “Tarot” itself may have been a play on the word “Torah.”
Nika Dubrovsky
How many cards were in this original deck, and what kind of characters were depicted?
Stav Appel
The deck has 78 cards in total, but most of them are what we call “pip cards,” which are simply numbered cards with symbols. The 22 unique picture cards, known as the Major Arcana, are the most significant. These include figures like the Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess. The number 22 is crucial because it corresponds to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the alef-bet. For centuries, occult theories have suggested a connection between the 22 Hebrew letters and the 22 Major Arcana cards.
Nika Dubrovsky
So, the original deck had 78 cards, and then Jewish refugees took 22 of them? So they kind of repurposed gaming cards to preserve religious identity under persecution, creating a paradoxical fusion of play and sacred pedagogy.
Stav Appel
Yes, but it’s a bit more complicated. The earliest Italian cards from the 1400s didn’t have a standard number of cards. There were many different decks with varying numbers. At some point in the 1500s, the 78-card deck with 22 Major Arcana became the standard. However, the exact moment when this transformation occurred is lost to history. We only have about 100 surviving decks out of an estimated million produced over the centuries, so there are many gaps in our knowledge.
Nika Dubrovsky
What’s fascinating to me is how these gambling cards, which were originally about individual fate and chance, became a vehicle for communal religious education. Gambling is such an individualistic practice—you’re alone against fate. But Judaism is deeply communal, with its 613 laws governing life within the community. How do you see this shift from individualism to collectivism in the Tarot?
Stav Appel
That’s a great observation. Gambling is indeed existential—you’re alone, facing fate, hoping for the best. Judaism, on the other hand, is all about community and shared rituals. The transformation of these cards into a tool for Jewish education introduced a communal framework into what was once a solitary practice. The rules of the Tarot, as it evolved, became a way to encode and preserve Jewish traditions in a time of persecution.
Nika Dubrovsky
It’s interesting how this mirrors the tension between individualism and collectivity manifested itselv in the contemporary psychotherapy, which David Graeber was very critical of as a neoliberal practise that individualizes structural suffering. This reminds me of Graeber’s analysis of “performative practices” in late capitalism. Just as bureaucracy invents meaningless jobs, psychotherapy often sustains the myth of individual agency over systemic oppression. What would be your comparison with Taro in this case?
Stav Appel
Absolutely. There’s an element of magical thinking in psychotherapy. People often have unrealistic expectations of what therapists can do, and the medium itself can ignore the root causes of problems, like loneliness. In contrast, fortune-telling, including Tarot, is more honest. When you go to a fortune teller, you’re acknowledging that you’re engaging in something irrational, but you’re also seeking advice and reassurance. It’s a form of performance art, a creative act for an audience of one. Therapy, on the other hand, often promises to fix problems that are structural, like poverty or abuse, which it can’t truly address.
Nika Dubrovsky
That’s a great point. Therapy can become another financial burden with the illusion of making a difference. But let’s return to Tarot. How do you see the balance between individual interpretation and the communal or historical meanings of the cards?
Stav Appel
This is where I become a bit of a heretic in the Tarot world. My research reveals objective meanings behind the cards, which goes against the foundational principle of Tarot—that the cards are open to infinite interpretation. For example, in the oldest Tarot de Marseille, the Magician isn’t holding a magic wand; he’s holding a circumcised penis, a symbol of sexual morality and self-mastery in Judaism. This is a very specific meaning, unlike the more open-ended symbolism of a magic wand. While my research provides historical context, it risks destroying the creative, poetic aspect of Tarot that allows individuals to project their own meanings onto the cards.
Nika Dubrovsky
That’s fascinating. It reminds me of the tension in Judaism between the traditionalists and the mystics, like the Kabbalists. There’s a similar pull between fixed meanings and open interpretation.
Stav Appel
Exactly. In Judaism, there’s a long history of tension between the Talmudic scholars, who focus on the law, and the Kabbalists, who interpret the law mystically and poetically. This tension even led to historical figures like Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th-century Jewish mystic who declared himself the Messiah and broke many traditional Jewish laws, including introducing communal sex rituals. He was eventually forced to convert to Islam but continued to practice Judaism in secret. His “sex magic” rituals and staged heresies exposed religious law’s arbitrariness, prefiguring modern identity fluidity. Zevi’s followers didn’t abandon Judaism—they performed hyper-compliance to reveal its absurdity, like Dadaists mocking bourgeois art.
Nika Dubrovsky
It’s interesting how these themes of rules, play, and transformation keep recurring. Sabbatai Zevi essentially changed the rules of the game, much like how the Tarot transformed from a gambling tool to a religious text. Looks like both embodied performative paradox.
Stav Appel:
Yes, and it’s worth noting that Judaism itself has a tradition of debate and disagreement. There’s no central authority declaring the “correct” interpretation of the Torah. This openness to interpretation is part of what makes Judaism so dynamic. In contrast, the Catholic Church historically prohibited laypeople from reading the Bible, fearing they might misinterpret it. This cultural difference highlights how Judaism values literacy and individual engagement with sacred texts.
Nika Dubrovsky
That’s a great point. Judaism has always been a tradition of questioning and debate, which is why it’s often seen as anarchic.For thousands of years, Judaism had no central authority., just a network of autonomous communities formed around a key text, interconnected and engaged in constant dialogue. Can you imagine what a community might look like where the sovereign is not a person or an institution, but a text? This is why so many anarchists are Jewish—they didn’t need to invent anarchism; they just needed to return to their heritage.
Stav Appel
Exactly. Judaism is fundamentally about scholarship and community, not materialism. This is why I think Judaism struggles in a materialistic culture like the United States. The American dream, with its focus on wealth and success, is antithetical to the values of Judaism, which prioritize learning and communal responsibility.
Nika Dubrovsky
It’s fascinating to think of Judaism as a kind of distributed publishing house, commenting, producing and reproducing texts for thousands of years. And the Tarot, in your view, is another evolutionary product of this tradition—a way for Jewish knowledge to survive and adapt in the face of persecution; but also as a way of constant commentary and schismogenesis in relation to the many other cultures in which Jews lived.
Stav Appel
Yes, that’s a beautiful way to put it. The Tarot is like an unintentional love child of the Torah, born out of necessity. When the traditional avenues of Jewish education were threatened, the knowledge found new ways to survive, mutating and evolving into something new. The characters of the Torah, like King David or Moses, live on in our collective imagination, and the Tarot is just another way for these symbols to endure.
Nika Dubrovsky
This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights. Let’s wrap up here, and we can continue talking off the record.