 I think most people enjoy seeing magic tricks done. I've been interested in magic since I was a little kid. And of course, magic is very popular in our culture. We're surrounded by it. And the question is, does the Torah have anything to say about the performance of magic? So there are two chapters in the Torah that speak about sorcery, witchcraft, and black magic. And this is called, in Hebrew, kishuf. The person doing it is called a mehasef. And so the first source is in Exodus, chapter 22, verse 17, which speaks about the prohibition against kishuf. And then there's a longer passage in the book of Dvariem and Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 10. And I just want to read that verse for you, because it lists a whole number of prohibited things. So the Torah speaks here in the following way. It says, starting in verse 9, chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, when you come to the land that Hashem, your God, gives you, you shall not learn to act according to the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you one who causes their son or daughter to pass through the fire, or one who practices divination, or an astrologer, or one who reads omens, or a sorcerer. That's the mehasef. Or in verse 11, an animal charmer, or one who inquires of ove or yidoni, or one who consults with the dead. So the Torah prohibits a whole range of what seems to be occult or superstitious practices. Now clearly, when we see magic done today, we're not seeing what we could refer to as black magic, or sorcery, or witchcraft. That's not what we're talking about tonight. What I'm going to be dealing with is what seems to be more innocuous, what we call stage magic. You show your friend a car trick, or your uncle pulls a coin out of your ear, or you see David Copperfield make an elephant appear in the back of the shul. These are the kind of magical performances that we're all very used to. So what about this? What about this kind of magic? So we just spoke about sorcery, kishuf. But the sages say that there is sort of a lower level of kishuf, and it's called achizat enayim, literally seizing the eyes. And this is basically creating an illusion that you did sorcery. Creating the illusion that you didn't do sorcery. You didn't do anything with witchcraft. But through sleight of hand, or through some kind of optical illusion, you created the impression that you've done something that would normally be done through sorcery. This is considered to be a serious violation of the Torah. But then there's another source, because our verse that we just read in Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 10, spoke about someone called, not the Mechashef, someone called the Me'onayn. Now Me'onayn is also taught in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 26. And the basic prohibition of the Me'onayn is divining auspicious times. That's the basic prohibition. Someone that divines by auspicious times. For example, they will say that this particular hour is the appropriate time to do some certain activity. And if you do the activity at another time, you won't succeed. So this kind of superstition is prohibited in the Torah. However, the Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin 65b teaches that Me'onayn includes creating optical illusions through sleight of hand. Through sleight of hand. So this seems to be a second place where the Torah touches on this issue of sleight of hand. And there's a third problem with magic, which is the Torah, as we all know, has serious prohibitions against theft, gnava. And our sages teach that there's something called gnavat dat, literally stealing someone's mind or deception. So this is not lifting their wallet out of their back pocket, but this is creating a false impression and deceiving someone, and effectively you're stealing your mind. And so this would be another problem, possibly with magic. So based upon these issues that I've just enumerated, there are numerous authorities on Jewish law that prohibit doing magic tricks or watching them. An actual outright prohibition against going to a magic show or performing magic tricks, this is according to many authorities on Jewish law. However, just about the greatest authority on Jewish law, in the 20th century by Moshe Feinstein, wrote that it's implausible that sleight of hand could be a violation of the Torah. And he writes that people who are gifted with special talents, it's obvious that they're allowed to use those talents, even if people may mistakenly assume that they are supernatural forces that are being used. For example, in the Bible, Samson had incredible strength, and yet he was able to use his strength against the Philistines. And there was no concern that people are gonna say, oh, look, he's using some kind of a dark magic or some kind of occult forces. He had this talent, he had this ability, and he was able to use it. Since I've been a young kid, I've been a chess player and one of my most greatest heroes when I was growing up was a Belgium chess player named George Kultynowski. You probably never heard of him. George Kultynowski was famous because he was able to play 50 games of chess simultaneously at the same time without looking at the boards. So he was able to keep in his mind 50 games of chess, not playing against four-year-olds, playing against adults, where there was a bit of a fight going on, and he was able to play 50 games of chess simultaneously in his head. Would the Torah prohibit that? Because he had this ability, and people might say, oh, that's not possible for human being to do that. That's gotta be some kind of, you know, employing supernatural means. By the same token, the late chief rabbi of Montreal, Rabbi Pinchas Hersprunk, was someone who knew the entire Talmud by heart, and they say he was able to do the pin test, where if you took any page in the Talmud and you put a pin through it, he would know the word it hit on the other side of the page. That's mind-blowing. And yet, no one is going to say that he wouldn't be allowed to demonstrate that ability. So Ramosia Feinstein said, it doesn't make sense that if someone is skilled as a magician and can do sleight of hand, the Torah's gonna be all bent out of shape if this person does those tricks. So Ramosia Feinstein maintained that sleight of hand or other stage illusions are basically just a human skill that are permissible, but Ramosia Feinstein basically gave a caveat. He said as long as the magician makes it clear that he or she is not invoking any supernatural forces, meaning in case someone might be misled into thinking that this is a person that's using supernatural forces, the magician should make it clear that they're just doing magic tricks and don't think it's anything more than that. Other authorities, however, rule that even if the magician doesn't announce that anything supernatural is taking place, it is okay because today, we are so used to magic performances. It's not like we're living now in the 17th century where it might have been something unusual that people wouldn't know how to interpret. Now basically, we're so used to these kind of performances, no one is going to think that it's a supernatural power. Everyone is gonna know that the person is simply performing a trick and therefore it's okay, even if the magician does not announce that it's only a trick. Now commentaries point out that the problem with Achizat E'nayim, we refer to that as seizing the eyes, fooling the eye, pulling the wool over someone. So the commentaries point out that the problem with this is that the audience may come to believe that things that are totally impossible are possible, even without being a miracle from the creator. Meaning normally, if the sea splits, that's something that the creator did. But the problem with the magician that's doing Achizat E'nayim is that from the audience's point of view, they might think that, look, something that is normally impossible, it's possible. And they might assume and God didn't do anything. So what happened here? So they might come to believe that either there are powers in the world other than God, or people might even come to deny God's existence. Meaning once people see this kind of magic and they can think that maybe there are powers that are not God doing things, the concern was that people might come to the very wrong theological conclusions. However, for today's audiences, this is not going to happen because they know that magic trick can be done by anyone who learns how to do the trick. You can look up any magic trick today on the internet and there are videos being made by renegade magicians that spill the beans and tell everybody how it's done. So again, because of the time we're living in, the concerns of the past are no really, not really concerns any longer. Now let's just conclude with one final issue which I mentioned before, which is the issue of Geneva dot of deception. We're basically deceiving people and doesn't the Torah prohibit that? So the answer is that deceiving people is only a problem when the motivation to deceive is nefarious and you're not doing it for the other person's benefit. But creating a false impression in order to entertain people is perfectly okay. In addition, because no one today is being tricked into believing that the magician is employing supernatural means, the issue of deception is not really an issue. So what we saw so far tonight was that even though there are potential problems with performing and watching magic tricks based upon the issues I've mentioned, today there is certainly room to view this kind of activity leniently and it can be seen as permissible.