Part 1, Chapter 1

Introduction

The Eilat Tarot deck is named for the small desert town on the Red Sea. While it includes the well-known imagery of Pamela Colman Smith's art, it was inspried by elements of Jewish mysticism, especially insights from the Sefer Yetzirah 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.

My Journey with Tarot

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 me, but also left me puzzled. 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 next decades, I 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 of Kabbalah, and between the court cards and the Four Worlds.

I briefly abandoned tarot, feeling it was not part of my journey, but later realized it is an essential component of my spiritual life, allowing me to connect with my intuition and my soul.

It seemed to me that Kabbalah and tarot were two distinct traditions which, for some reason, people really wanted to link to one another. Although I was certain that tarot wasn't Kabbalah, I tried to find the figures, stories, and lessons of Torah in tarot.

Years later, Donald Tyson’s Portable Magic offered a clear explanation of the Golden Dawn’s restructuring of the Major Arcana. It was at this time that I began making notes and outlines for my own tarot deck.

The Raziel Tarot by Rachel Pollack 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 his earlier Kabbalistic Tarot.)

Tarot as Companion

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 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.

Eventually, I stopped looking to the cards only for answers and began seeing them as mirrors of my own inner knowing. My life experience began to shape how I understood the cards, and the cards, in turn, helped me see my life more clearly.

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. That insight resonated with me. Tarot helped me develop some of that inner sight.

My Journey with Kabbalah

My introduction to Jewish mysticism began with The Way of Splendor by Edward Hoffman. His book offered an accessible entry point into the history of Jewish mysticism and eventually led me to deeper study. Lawrence Kushner’s 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.

I abandoned tarot briefly, feeling it wasn't permitted in Judaism. However, I realized it's an important tool, helping me to connect with my intuition and know myself. 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, 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 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. The Eilat Tarot continues that conversation.

Inspiration for the Eilat Tarot

Over the years, I searched for a tarot deck that felt genuinely Jewish, not one with Hebrew letters pasted on the cards, but a deck that engaged deeply with Jewish texts, themes, and questions. I wanted a deck that would resonate with Torah, not merely echo Christian occult readings of Kabbalah.

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

I 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. The Sefer Yetzirah, a short, enigmatic text, dated somewhere between the 2nd and 10th centuries, was the foundation for later Kabbalistic mysticism, 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 more than a sourcebook; it 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 study partner, so my conclusions may be quirky, but I hope they are meaningful.

I 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 gave the deck its name. Surrounded by desert, mountains, and sea while reading and rereading that text, 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.

The deck emerged in less than two weeks. 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.

Just 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 has been my finest teacher.

The Eilat Tarot does not attempt to make tarot “fit” Kabbalah. Instead, it simply invites the Rider-Waite imagery into conversation with the Sefer Yetzirah, the Tree of Life, and Jewish ideas of emanation and divine presence. It hopefully conveys 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 learning.

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. Howeer, what began as a “little white book” quickly grew into a very large white book. Writing about the deck became an almost all-consuming project, fueled by a sense of urgency, and the joy I felt in sharing it.

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 will become your companion. I invite you to write in it, to scribble in the margins, to question what no longer speaks to you and expand on what does. That practice has shaped my own journey. For nearly 40 years, I’ve been annotating Norma Cowie’s Exploring the Patterns of the Tarot. That well-worn copy, its spine long gone, remains one of my most valued companions. I hope this guide becomes something like that for you.

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