Fellowship Report

I was a MagEIA senior fellow from March to August 2025. Most of my time in Würzburg was devoted to the Pishra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa, a long anti-witchcraft spell written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic in late-antique Mesopotamia, and attested in manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries. This is a collaborative project, co-authored with my colleague Dr. Ohad Abudraham, who is a member of my ERC-funded research group (about which more below). We worked together via emails and Zoom-meetings, and completed the bulk of the work during my stay at the MagEIA Centre. Our book – consisting of an edition, a commentary, and detailed analysis of the Pishra, its place within ancient Jewish magic, and its transmission history, will be published by Brill in 2026, in the series “Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity.” (For a detailed discussion of the Pishra, see here - https://shwep.net/roots-of-magic/gideon-bohak-on-the-pishra-de-rabbi-%E1%B8%A5anina-ben-dosa/).

Other than the Pishra, I was also working on several smaller studies, including a paper on “Medieval Jewish Amulets to Facilitate Childbirth and Ensure a Quick Delivery” which will soon be published in a Festschrift, and a paper on “Circular Greek Magical Gem Designs in the Cairo Genizah,” which also is forthcoming in a Festschrift. And I also worked on a paper titled “Polyangelic Monotheism in Late-Antique Judaism,” which I have been intermittently working on since 2023, and which might one day serve as the basis for a monograph on ancient Jewish angelology.

During my six months in Würzburg I also participated in several conferences – at a conference in Paris I spoke about woman and magic in the Jewish world; at a Manchester conference (which I joined via Zoom) I spoke about the Genizah fragments owned by the Rabbi and scholar Moses Gaster; at a Berlin conference (which I also joined via Zoom) I spoke about the Pishra, and in a Jerusalem conference I spoke about the transmission of a divinatory manual in Aramaic, Judaeo-Arabic and Syriac. Finally, at the MagEIA workshop on haptic acts, I spoke about the practice of writing spells on one’s body and then licking them off, in order to be healed by the power of the ingested spell.

During the by-weekly meetings at the MagEIA Centre I had the chance to present my work on the Pishra to all the other members and to benefit greatly from their comments and suggestions. Moreover, when the other members presented their work, I had a chance to learn a lot about other magical traditions, as we were reading through texts in many different languages (accompanied by English translations) and exploring the similarities and differences between them. In the past, I have been reading magical texts with Jewish Studies scholars, with Classicists, and with Arabists, but reading such texts in Akkadian, Egyptian, Ge’ez, Armenian, and Coptic was a new – and very interesting – experience. Equally enlightening were the less-formal encounters, and the lively conversations we all had in the cafeteria, in various restaurants, and during our excursion to the Jewish Museum and to Veitshöchheim.

While in Würzburg, I was also working closely with my ERC-funded research group at Tel Aviv University, which is devoted to “The Jewish Library in Late Antiquity: Forgotten Texts and Non-Rabbinic Jews.” The group is made up of three post-doctoral students, two doctoral students, two MA students and an administrative assistant. Throughout my absence, we kept on meeting via Zoom, and in early August, when I went to Jerusalem for five days, we all presented our work at a large Jewish Studies conference.

Finally, and on a more personal level, let me add that spending six months in Würzburg was great fun, both for me and for Dvorah, my wife. The MagEIA Centre is an excellent proof that rigorous scholarship and a friendly atmosphere can go hand in hand, and Würzburg itself is an excellent example of a town that combines medieval charms, modern amenities, and wonderful parks and forests. And as we came in early March, Dvorah and I could really see how winter gave way to a lovely spring, which slowly turned into a mild and friendly summer. But all things must pass, and at end of August we had to go back home. So let me end by thanking Professors Daniel Schwemer, Daniel Kölligan, and Martin Stadler – and the indefatigable Anne Noster, who helped us cope with the German bureaucracy – for making our six-month stay so productive and so enjoyable.