Part 1, Chapter 1 - Newly Re-Revised!

Introduction

The Eilat Tarot [1] was born in the desert, shaped by the stillness of Eilat, the shimmer of the Red Sea, and the quiet companionship of ancient texts. It draws on the familiar imagery of Pamela Colman Smith’s art and brings it into conversation with Jewish mysticism, especially the Sefer Yetzirah [2] and the Tree of Life.

The first part of this companion book explains the deck's sources and structure. The second part explores possible meanings of each individual card.

Chapter 1 - Reflections

Rather than offer a formal introduction to either tarot or Kabbalah, this chapter shares the inspiration behind the Eilat Tarot. I reference some of the books and decks that shaped this project. The Eilat Tarot is the result of decades of study, practice, and living. Much of what I’ve learned has become second nature, with roots I can no longer trace. I offer my heartfelt thanks, and my apologies, to the many teachers, artists, and thinkers whose insights have shaped this work but go unnamed in these pages.

Tarot as Companion

In high school, a friend had a tarot deck that she never used because some cards were missing. After graduating in 1983 and moving to the "big city," I began a search for my own tarot deck. After many months, I finally found one–in a toy store of all places! It was David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot. The images intrigued and puzzled me. Bookstores at the time carried only one guidebook: A.E. Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a famously cryptic text. So for years, I shuffled the cards and gazed at them, learning the images by heart but not understanding what they meant.

Eventually, I came across Norma Cowie’s excellent book, Exploring the Patterns of the Tarot. Over the decades, I have filled its margins with notes and ideas. That spine-broken volume, now housed in a small three-ring binder, is still my most loved tarot guide.

Later still, The Robin Wood Tarot, featuring brighter, more narrative imagery, helped me understand tarot symbolism a little better. Isabel Radow Kliegman’s Tarot and the Tree of Life spelled out the link between the numbered Minor Arcana cards and the ten sefirot [3] of Kabbalah, and between the court cards and the Four Worlds.

It had always seemed to me that Kabbalah and tarot are two distinct traditions which, for some reason, people really wanted to link to one another. I knew tarot and Kabbalah were distinct traditions, yet I kept trying to find the figures, stories, and lessons of Torah in the cards.

Three decades after I bought my first tarot deck, Donald Tyson’s Portable Magic offered a clear explanation of the Golden Dawn’s [4] restructuring of the Major Arcana. After reading that book, I began making notes and outlines for my own tarot deck.

The Raziel Tarot by Rachel Pollack [5] and Robert Place revealed that tarot could be renewed through authentic Jewish learning and mystical tradition. Eugene Vinitski's artistic and beautiful Tarot of Magical Correspondences suggested to me how I, not an artist by any means, might create a colorful deck of my own through collage. (Ultimately, that's not how I created the Eilat Tarot, but the inspiration kept me working on ideas for a deck. In the end, the deck resembles my original vision for it, which coincidentally, is very similar to Vinitski's earlier Kabbalistic Tarot.)

Over the years, my understanding of the tarot cards evolved alongside my life. I can see that growing understanding in the changing notes I wrote in the margins of Norma Cowie’s book. The cards helped me make sense of events and better understand myself. More importantly, they helped me stay grounded in a world that is always changing.

The world challenges us because it is always changing. That challenge is what spurs us to continue seeking and questioning. Tools like tarot or the weekly parashah [6] offer steady points of reference in life’s shifting currents. These images and texts help us stay rooted as we grow, offering new insights each time we return to them.

Over time, I stopped treating the cards as something that knew more than I did, and began seeing them as mirrors of my own soul. They didn’t answer my questions; they helped me ask better ones.

In his commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, Aryeh Kaplan suggests that the text is less about contemplating mystical symbols and more about cultivating a way of seeing the world [7]. That insight resonated with me. Tarot helped me develop my own conscious view of the world.

My Journey with Kabbalah

My introduction to Jewish mysticism began with The Way of Splendor by Edward Hoffman which I read about eleven years after I bought my first tarot deck. Hoffman's book offered an accessible entry point into the history of Jewish mysticism and eventually led me to deeper study. Lawrence Kushner’s work was elusive and when Danny Matt taught a class on the Zohar at my synagogue, using a Kinko’s copy of what would later become his famous translation, I appreciated his warmth, but understood no part of the text.

At the UAHC Meditation Kallah in Prescott, Arizona in 2000 and 2001, Rabbi Ted Falcon introduced me to Kabbalistic prayer and meditation. After that, I was shocked to learn, in Robert Wang’s The Rape of Jewish Mysticism by Christian Theologians, that Renaissance theologians had studied Kabbalah to aid their efforts to convert Jews. (Later, they become captivated by its spiritual beauty, and reframed it in Christian terms, making it foundational to Western occultism [8].)

I abandoned tarot briefly, feeling it was not part of a Jewish life journey. Eventually, I realized that it is an essential component of my spiritual life, helping me to connect with my intuition and know myself. (Intuition is so central to a good life that I sometimes wonder if it comes from the soul–except that I’m certain it arises in my body. But maybe those aren’t opposites. If I take the Shema, the declaration that God is One, to its logical conclusion, then perhaps the body is soul. Then again, God is transcendent as well as immanent. Maybe intuition is an expression of body and soul working together.) Surprisingly, it was studying a Jewish text in a six week course on Sefer Yetzirah taught by Rabbi Jill Hammer, that returned me to my tarot project.

Aryeh Kaplan’s translation and commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah arrived at a significant time in my life. It became a companion while living in Eilat, during my struggles with aliyah [11], and in the months before a series of surgeries that would save and transform my life. The mystical path doesn’t yield to effort alone; it opens only when we’re ready.

Tarot and Kabbalah

Many tarot decks include Hebrew letters on the cards, suggesting a long-standing connection between tarot and Kabbalah. In fact, the two systems arose in entirely different cultures and for different purposes. Tarot emerged in 15th-century Christian Europe as a set of playing cards, which only later took on divinatory and esoteric meanings.

Kabbalah, by contrast, is the Jewish mystical tradition, rooted in antiquity and still evolving. It explores the revelation and concealment of the Divine, the transmission of Torah, and the nature of creation itself. Its symbols, ethics, rituals, and stories arise from and inform Jewish life and learning.

Over the centuries, people have noticed resonances between the two traditions. There are twenty-two Major Arcana cards in the tarot and twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. There are ten numbered cards in each suit of the tarot and ten sefirot on the Tree of Life. The Golden Dawn’s system of correspondences sought to unify tarot, astrology, alchemy, and Kabbalah into one symbolic framework. Syncretism is not new. In the ancient Mediterranean world, spiritual traditions often borrowed, blended, and reshaped one another. Greek philosophy left its mark on Jewish mysticism, just as Jewish thought helped shape the spiritual imagination of late antiquity.

While Kabbalah is not an inherent part of tarot, Jewish writers and deck creators like Isabel Radow Kliegman, Rachel Pollack, and Betzalel Arieli have shown that it is possible to bring authentic Jewish thought into conversation with tarot [9]. The Eilat Tarot attempts to continue that conversation.

Inspiration for the Eilat Tarot

For decades, I searched for a tarot deck that felt genuinely Jewish, not one with Hebrew letters simply stamped on it, but one that engaged deeply with Jewish texts, themes, and questions. I wanted a deck that would resonate with Torah, not simply echo interpretations rooted in Christian occultism.

The Eilat Tarot emerged from my desire to combine tarot’s symbolic language with the spiritual and ethical wisdom of Judaism [10]. I believed that together, they could speak meaningfully about human experience.

I had struggled and failed to find figures or stories from Torah in the cards. However, Aryeh Kaplan’s translation and commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah showed me a poetic structure capable of illuminating tarot in new ways, not through rigid correspondences, but through the harmonies of nefesh, shanah, and olam (soul, time, and world) that are hinted at in the Sefer Yetzirah.

That book, a short enigmatic text, composed sometime between the 2nd and 10th centuries CE, was the foundation for later Kabbalistic mysticism and was distinct from the earlier Merkavah and Hekhalot traditions. Its meditations on letters, breath, and creation became central to the emergence of this deck.

I began studying the text while living in Eilat, just before a series of major surgeries that saved and transformed my life. The Sefer Yetzirah became a companion through pain, healing, and renewal. My study of it relied primarily on the English translation and did not include a knowledgeable teacher or chevruta [12], so my conclusions may be quirky, but I hope they are meaningful.

I came to understand why so many people have linked this particular Jewish text to the cards. Kaplan’s commentary, grounded in his careful translation, helped me imagine a tarot rooted in Jewish thought and shaped by Jewish questions, a tarot that would not dictate fixed meanings, but invite the reader into the unfolding experience of revelation.

The southern city of Eilat, with its desert, mountains, and sea, gave the deck its name. I found in that silence and solitude a place where I could study and listen to the shimmering presence of creation. Out of that stillness, a vision of tarot began to take form.

After creating the deck, I found a book that I had read years earlier, Carol Bridges’s The Medicine Woman Inner Guidebook. Her work may have influenced the structure of the Eilat Tarot, more than I was aware while creating it.

Equally as significant as Kaplan's text was the influence of my best friend, Arlan Wareham, who taught me by example that a logical mind can live in harmony with a reverent spirit. He also showed me that our outlook shapes how the world meets us. His unwavering optimism, grounded in kindness and thoughtfulness, has been one of my greatest sources of wisdom. Mr. Pollyanna [13] has been my finest teacher.

The Eilat Tarot does not attempt to make tarot “fit” Kabbalah. Instead, it simply brings the Rider-Waite imagery into conversation with the Sefer Yetzirah, the Tree of Life, and Jewish ideas of emanation and divine presence. It strives to convey that creation is ongoing, that each person carries a spark of divine creativity, and that we can begin to see the world more clearly through intuition and experience.

The Eilat Tarot is a response to the question: Can the ancient symbols of one tradition illuminate the mystical insights of another without either losing its integrity? This deck offers one answer.

The Creation of the Deck and Guidebook

The deck itself emerged rapidly. I completed it in less than two weeks. However, what began as a “little white book” quickly grew into a very large white book, one that would take years to complete. Writing about the deck became an almost all-consuming project, fueled by a sense of urgency and a feeling I hadn’t felt in years: joy.

Tarot had become my prayer, a Jewish prayer, with Hebrew letters whispering back.

This book explores how I believe the 78 tarot cards align with the spiritual architecture of the Sefer Yetzirah. Alongside that structure, I offer reflections on Pamela Colman Smith’s images and how they continue to reveal new meanings over time.

I hope this book becomes your companion. Write in it, scribble in the margins, question what no longer speaks to you, and expand on what does. That kind of engagement has shaped my own path. For over forty years, I’ve been annotating my copy of Norma Cowie’s Exploring the Patterns of the Tarot, a copy so well-loved its spine is long gone. It remains one of my most valued companions, alongside a newer copy of Aryeh Kaplan’s Sefer Yetzirah, purchased in the U.S. because I had to leave my original behind in Eilat. These texts continue to challenge and deepen my understanding. I hope this guide offers something like that for you, a place to begin, return to, and grow with.

Tarot doesn’t reveal its wisdom all at once. Its meaning unfolds over time.

_____

Footnotes:

1. Pronounced ay-LAHT
2. The Book of Formation. In modern Hebrew it is pronounced SEH-fehr Yet-tzee-RAH. (Ashkenazim may say SEY-fer Ye-tsi-RAH.)
3. Sefirot (סְפִירוֹת, s’fee-ROTE) is the plural form of a Hebrew word meaning “spheres,” “enumerations,” or “emanations,” used in Kabbalistic thought to describe the ten divine attributes or stages through which the Divine Will manifests. The singular form is Sefirah (סְפִירָה, s’FEE-rah).
4. The Golden Dawn was a late 19th-century occult society that experimented with integrating tarot, astrology, and Sefer Yetzirah. Although their original tarot deck has been lost, later creations by its members (The Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith) became highly influential.
5. Rachel Pollack based the deck on the Sefer Raziel, perhaps aligning her work more with the mystical traditions of Hekhalot and Merkavah literature than with later Kabbalah.
6. The weekly Torah portion read in synagogue services. Pronounced pah-rah-SHAH in Modern Hebrew; Ashkenazi pronunciation is often shortened to par-sha. Plural: Parashot (פָּרָשׁוֹת), pronounced pah-rah-SHOHT; Ashkenazi plural: Parshiyos.
7. Kaplan’s commentary on section 1:4, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation. Translated and commented by Aryeh Kaplan, Weiser Books, 1997
8. Freemasons later combined Christian Kabbalah with Hermetic philosophy. This was further elaborated by the Rosicrucians and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who developed a form of Kabbalah oriented toward ritual magic, incorporating alchemy, tarot, astrology, and ceremonial rites. In these currents, Kabbalah was reinterpreted independently of its traditional Torah-based framework.
9. While I was finishing this guidebook, Stav Appel published Torah in Tarot, an enhanced reproduction of a medieval French deck, accompanied by a fascinating companion text in which he argues convincingly that the Jean Noblet Tarot is a cipher safeguarding Jewish tradition within the already existing Italian playing cards, during a time when the Church sought to erase Jewish heritage and learning among recently converted Christians. Even the word ‘tarot’ itself may derive from a play on the word ‘Torah.’ His book is exciting and revelatory for anyone who has looked for Torah in the tarot!
10. Expressed more frankly, I wanted a Jewish tarot deck.
11. Aliyah (עֲלִיָּה, ah-lee-YAH) A Hebrew word meaning “ascent.” In a synagogue, it refers to the honor of being called up to recite blessings over the Torah. It also denotes the act of going up to the Land of Israel, a term used since ancient times for pilgrimage to Jerusalem or returning from exile. In modern usage, it also refers to Jewish immigration to Israel. Plural: aliyot (עֲלִיּוֹת, ah-lee-YOHT); Ashkenazi pronunciation: uh-LEE-uh, plural aliyos.
12. A friend and study partner.
13. From Arlan Wareham’s autobiography: “Our Adventist family never went to movie theaters, but sometimes suitable family films were shown on Saturday nights in Burden Hall, the same college lecture hall where we also went to church. Most of these, of course, I don’t remember at all, but one of them made a big impression on me: Pollyanna. I remember loving her positive attitude and attempts to help everyone see the bright side of things. I also remember feeling disappointed in her when her optimism seemed to fail her after she fell, seriously injuring her leg and causing her to be paralyzed from the waist down. Somehow, I grasped the importance of maintaining a positive outlook on everything, and it has served me well throughout my life.”