Are Jewitches (or Jewish Pagans) moronic, oxymoronic, or neither?
The idea of Jewish mysticism is certainly not alien (especially, unfortunately, to some in Hollywood)
Those Rabbis in some of the links above who insist magic and Judaism are polar opposites have forgotten about Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, and his golem. Or the Hassidic concept of a Tzaddik or ‘holy man’ with the ability to “see far, travel quickly, read minds, and produce miracles.”
There’s no question that goddess worship appears at first glance to be in violation of one of what Kinky Friedman calls “The Top 10 Commandments.”
[In Judaism all 613 commandments given in the Five Books of Moses are on equal footing, but Christianity’s emphasis on the Ten has seeped in through the culture and some less observant Jews think the Ten are more important. Christianity, while emphasizing the Ten, also seem to emphasize a few selected commandments from the other 603, such as the one against homosexuality, and “love thy neighbor as thyself”]
Where was I, yes, Goddess worship. It appears to be anti-monotheistic, but that’s only if you view G-d as distinctly male. There is a tradition of the Shekhina representing the feminine aspect of the divine.
Leonard Nimoy, the photographer, compiled a book of photographs entitled Shekhina. Some of the photographs have been critiqued as soft porn. (Nimoy is also known by some as an actor from a short-lived television series of the 1960s…)
Currently I am role-playing about once a month with a group of friends in the Mage universe, based on Laws of Ascension. (Our gaming lies somewhere between tabletop gaming and Live Action Role Playing, in that we generally remain seated, and roll die to decide outcomes, but we don’t use miniatures and we don’t have dungeon maps, and we normally don’t sit around a table. It’s almost comparable to LARPs in the same way the read-throughs stage performers do of plays are comparable to the actual performance. Though I have never actually participated in a LARP.) My character is Rabbi Moishe ben Chaim. He has some cool abilities. (Far beyond the use of his Star of David to kill some vampires he’s run across, ala Roman Polanski. I almost wrote ‘Mel Brooks’. It almost seems that should be one of his movies, but Polanski did it.)