Join Stav Appel as he discusses his upcoming book The Torah in the Tarot, to be published by Ayin Press. The Torah in the Tarot presents the startling thesis that the original Tarot de Marseille, the artistic ancestor of contemporary Tarot cards, served as a tool for clandestine Jewish education during the Roman Catholic Church’s centuries long campaign to eradicate Judaism. When one of the oldest known versions of the Tarot de Marseille – the Jean Noblet of 1650 Paris – is viewed through a Judaic lens of understanding, it is revealed to be a secret vessel for Hebrew letters, Torah stories, Judaic ritual objects, and Jewish Holy Days. The recognition of Torah systematically hidden in the Tarot completely shatters the current popular and academic understanding of the history of the Tarot.

Stav Appel is a data scientist and a lifelong student of Torah. Earlier in his career he was the director of the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence organization Nitzanei Shalom, and the director of International Service Programs for American Jewish World Service. He holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and has studied Biblical Hebrew at Hebrew University and Yale Divinity School.

After a chance encounter with an old deck of Tarot cards, Stav began to explore the origins and meaning of the biblical references he recognized in its images. He is now a frequent speaker and popular writer on the Torah in the Tarot, the lost and forgotten Judaic origins of the mysterious Tarot de Marseille. He currently resides in Upstate New York.