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adnesadeh.bsky.social
Adne Sadeh
@adnesadeh.bsky.social
630 followers 170 following 1.8K posts
Apprentice Jewish monster hunter, podcaster, storyteller, teacher (occasionally), blogger (and AI researcher by day). He/him. https://linktr.ee/adnesadeh
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adnesadeh.bsky.social
Mizrach is Hebrew for East, the direction of prayer for Jews in the Diaspora west of Jerusalem. A mizrach is a plaque hung to point out the direction. I own an Alphonse Levy postcard mizrach that I bought, without realizing what it was, as a source for my Joe the Demon trading card. Now to hang it!
Alphonse Levy Mizrach postcard Jewish Monster and Magic Trading Card
January 4, 2026 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by Adne Sadeh
deepcuts.blog
22. "Definition of "shekinah" from Webster's Unabridged"

@adnesadeh.bsky.social
Lovecraft's handwritten copy of "Definition of "shekinah" from Webster's Unabridged" Source: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:926663/
January 2, 2026 at 5:31 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Ok, here's a first cut on my Centaurs trading card. I was posting a ton about centaurs so thought I'd follow through with the card.

(For info on my first two published decks of Jewish Monster and Magic trading cards, check out ko-fi.com/adnesadeh/shop. This card will be in the third deck)
Centaurs trading card
December 28, 2025 at 2:15 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Ok...time for a poll. Are you on team House Spirits? Or Team Spirits of the field?
adnesadeh.bsky.social Adne Sadeh @adnesadeh.bsky.social · 13d
Yikes. Sorry house spirits, I'm here for the spirits of the fields.
There is one opinion that says that house spirits are better [for the resident of the house], because they grow up with him. And there is an opinion that says that they are worse, because they are intimately familiar with his sinful thoughts. There is an opinion that says that spirits of the field are worse for a person because they did not grow up with him. And there is an opinion that they are better, because are not intimately familiar with his sinful thoughts.
December 26, 2025 at 8:51 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Yikes. Sorry house spirits, I'm here for the spirits of the fields.
There is one opinion that says that house spirits are better [for the resident of the house], because they grow up with him. And there is an opinion that says that they are worse, because they are intimately familiar with his sinful thoughts. There is an opinion that says that spirits of the field are worse for a person because they did not grow up with him. And there is an opinion that they are better, because are not intimately familiar with his sinful thoughts.
December 26, 2025 at 7:53 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Geller's article "A Horse is a Horse" describes the use of centaurs by Jewish writers Primo Levi, Bernard Malamud, & Moacyr Scliar. Levi, Geller notes, describes man as being a "centaur, a tangle of flesh & mind, of divine breath & dust” & "The Hebrew people…lived this conflict long & painfully” 1/6
Odian Redon's painting "Centaur reading"
December 26, 2025 at 3:03 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Found Jewish centaurs! Genesis Rabbah 23.6 did have it but it was mis-translated. What should have been "there the generations were corrupted and Kinturin (centaurs, from Greek) were created" was translated as "were created in a deformed state" h/t to @deepcuts.blog & Jay Geller's "Horse" article
adnesadeh.bsky.social Adne Sadeh @adnesadeh.bsky.social · 16d
Jewish centaurs? Schwartz' "Mythology of Judaism" has a legend of humans becoming bestial but the source texts in Sefaria don't substantiate it. Sklar, in an essay about the word הימם in Torah (Anah is he who found הימם in the desert. Gen 36:24) picks up trail. seforimblog.com/2025/12/of-c...
Adam was created in the likeness and the image of God, as was Adam's son Seth, and Seth's son, Enosh. But after that the resemblance came to an end, and the generations became corrupt. Beginning with Enosh, humans came to practice magic and divination, and the art of controlling the heavenly forces. Before long, their faces became apelike and they became vulnerable to demons. They had all manner of intercourse with humans and beasts, and that is when centaurs came into being. So too did people begin to gather gold, silver, and all kinds of precious gems, and with them they constructed idols, and prayed to them. They even used the Name of God for sacrilegious purposes. This myth demonstrates a kind of devolution in which men become corrupt and regress into beastlike beings. The sexual sins listed here, as well as the use of black magic, and the lust for possessions are offered to justify God's decision to destroy the generation of the Flood. Although the centaur, half man, half horse, is a figure out of Greek mythology, here its existence is explained as the product of human intercourse with beasts and as further evidence of the kind of sin that led God to the decision to destroy all life on earth except for Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. Sources: Genesis Rabbah 23:6; Midrash Tanhuma, Noah 5; Zohar 1:56a.
December 25, 2025 at 11:42 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
new YIVO class."FOLKSONG, DEMONS, AND THE EVIL EYE:
FOLKLORE OF ASHKENAZ"
Take a journey into the richness of Jewish folk life with Itzik Gottesman and explore the music, folktales, rituals, and superstitions of Jewish Eastern Europe. yivo.org/Folklore-of-...
Folksong, Demons, and the Evil Eye: Folklore of Ashkenaz | YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Explore the music, folktales, rituals, and superstitions of Jewish Eastern Europe with Prof. Itzik Gottesman and special guests.
yivo.org
December 25, 2025 at 7:26 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Jewish centaurs? Schwartz' "Mythology of Judaism" has a legend of humans becoming bestial but the source texts in Sefaria don't substantiate it. Sklar, in an essay about the word הימם in Torah (Anah is he who found הימם in the desert. Gen 36:24) picks up trail. seforimblog.com/2025/12/of-c...
Adam was created in the likeness and the image of God, as was Adam's son Seth, and Seth's son, Enosh. But after that the resemblance came to an end, and the generations became corrupt. Beginning with Enosh, humans came to practice magic and divination, and the art of controlling the heavenly forces. Before long, their faces became apelike and they became vulnerable to demons. They had all manner of intercourse with humans and beasts, and that is when centaurs came into being. So too did people begin to gather gold, silver, and all kinds of precious gems, and with them they constructed idols, and prayed to them. They even used the Name of God for sacrilegious purposes. This myth demonstrates a kind of devolution in which men become corrupt and regress into beastlike beings. The sexual sins listed here, as well as the use of black magic, and the lust for possessions are offered to justify God's decision to destroy the generation of the Flood. Although the centaur, half man, half horse, is a figure out of Greek mythology, here its existence is explained as the product of human intercourse with beasts and as further evidence of the kind of sin that led God to the decision to destroy all life on earth except for Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. Sources: Genesis Rabbah 23:6; Midrash Tanhuma, Noah 5; Zohar 1:56a.
December 24, 2025 at 2:23 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Woot! @Columbia came through. They scanned Beatrice Weinreich's 1957 Masters Thesis "The Prophet Elijah in Modern Yiddish Folktales" for me. It's really cool. Hit me up if you want a copy or if you have Adobe Acrobat and can help me get the annoying watermark out of it.
cover page of Beatrice Weinreich's Masters Thesis 1st page of the masters thesis
December 23, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Reposted by Adne Sadeh
wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social
Would like to see these two swap roles.

Cherdolaomer! I choose you!
December 22, 2025 at 7:36 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
note to self:

Cherdolaomer is the king in Genesis who fought a war with giant tribes that dragged in Abraham and Lot.

Charmander is a cute, but moody, bi-pedal lizard Pokemon whose tail is on fire.
December 22, 2025 at 1:08 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Fun! My blog post on banim shovavim, half-demons, got quoted recently in Intelexual Media's YouTube video "A Brief History of Sex & Horror." The video is well done and I'm dying over the MS Paint style shout out. Check it out! (h/t to @danispaghetti.bsky.social)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG_W...
MS Paint screen with the quote "In addition to inspiring rabbinic exhortations for young men to keep their hands out of their pants, the banim shovavim add an additional fear to funerals...The daily had to worry that the departed or the departed's human children might be attacked by his banim shovavim children" - Jack Zaientz
December 21, 2025 at 7:42 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Just noticed my copy of Levy and Zumwalt’s “Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women” has a typo in the book cover title. That should be “Spirits” not “Spirtis” oops :)
Book cover
December 18, 2025 at 8:09 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Niddah 25b is one of my fave bits in the Talmud. I love the image. It references a huge Og the Giant, riffing off how tall he'd need to stand in the waters of the flood to have his head be at the level of the ark. (there are small versions too, such as the story of his 9 cubit bed (15 feet or so).
It is taught in a baraita that Abba Shaul says the following, and some say that Rabbi Yoḥanan said it: I used to be a gravedigger. Once I ran after a deer, and I entered the thighbone of a corpse; and it was so large that I ran after the deer for three parasangs inside the thighbone, and although I did not reach the deer, the thighbone did not end. When I came back and related this to the Sages, they said to me: It was evidently the thighbone of Og, king of Bashan, a known giant.
December 17, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Adne Sadeh
posts.by.emilyk.art
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December 17, 2025 at 11:20 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Happy Hanukkah everyone. Thought I'd re-share an article I did for the @jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social a couple of years ago.

jewishreviewofbooks.com/uncategorize...
As the Story Goes: Hanukkah Spears, Cheese, and Goblins - Jewish Review of Books
Where did all the Hanukkah stories go?
jewishreviewofbooks.com
December 16, 2025 at 12:25 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Just preordered Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis' new book "The Book of Brilliance: Selections from the Sefer ha-Bahir" a gentle intro to Jewish mysticism from @madnessheartpress.bsky.social. Dennis is also the author "The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism" madnessheart.press/product/the-...
book cover To read Sefer ha-Bahir, “The Book of Brilliance,” is to discover where Kabbalah began. Gershom Scholem, the dean of modern Jewish mystical studies, has said that the Bahir is “…assuredly one of the most astonishing, not to say incredible, books in the Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages.” In ways unlike any Hebrew text before it, it brims with innovative imagery, opaque language, and what Daniel Abrams calls a “hermeneutic self-confidence.” It set a new standard for mystical rhetoric and speculation. There are more well-known works of Kabbalah — the Zohar, the teachings of Isaac Luria, Hasidic literature – but all these emanate, at least in part, from this radiant book. Collected in this volume are selections from the Sefer ha-Bahir that have been translated, annotated, and interpreted by renowned author and scholar Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis, the author of the celebrated Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, & Monsters. This book is intended to be a primer, an introduction and guide to the world of Jewish mysticism and spiritual thought. Easy to read and digest, with deep layers of meaning just waiting to be pulled back and explored.
December 16, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Adne Sadeh
racheaissance.com
Every year for Hanukkah I like to share panels from this special holiday comic I edited when I was on staff at Marvel. There remains a dearth of specifically Hanukkah stories in comics and this one only ever appeared in print once.

Every year I am proud to share and celebrate the light of Hanukkah:
Comic panel from MARVEL COMICS DIGITAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: ROCK OF AGES! by Stan Lee and Nick Dragotta featuring The Thing, Mister Fantastic, and the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four surrounded by holiday gifts; a menorah is on the fireplace: "We wanted to write a 'Happy Holiday' message on your gift cards, but--" "We're not sure how to spell your holiday!" Comic panel from MARVEL COMICS DIGITAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: ROCK OF AGES! with Sue and Reed Richards, and the Human Torch, Johnny Storm, discussing the spelling of Hanukkah: "I said it’s H-A-N-U-K-A-H!" "I figured it was C-H-A-N-U-K-A-H!" "And I thought it has two 'K's!" Panel from MARVEL COMICS DIGITAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: ROCK OF AGES! featuring The Thing, Ben Grimm: "Hey, no big deal! Each of you is right! We spell it all those ways!"
December 14, 2025 at 6:50 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Found it! The "mouse rebbe" is Reb Shaya'le (Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner of Kerestir) who lived in the early part of the 20th century. Here's the original story from
kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/bodrogkeresz....
H/t to Natan Slifkin's Rationalist Judaism blog. www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/bnei-braks...
One motzo'ay Shabbos, while Reb Shaya'le was eating this special melave malka meal, a chossid came to him with an urgent request. He was a man who had a warehouse full of foodstuffs and he made his living by buying an selling food. For the past number of months, his warehouse had been taken over by mice who were eating his grain and other commodities and his entire livelihood was threatened. He asked Reb Shaya'le for a blessing that the mice should leave his warehouse. At that time, each small town in Europe was ruled by the local church pastor. Some of the pastors were kind towards the Jews and others were very harsh. Reb Shaya'le asked the chossid if the pastor of the town he lived in was kind or harsh. The chossid replied that he was very harsh toward the Jews. Reb Shaya'le then instructed the chossid to go to his warehouse and to tell the mice, "Reb Shaya'le says to go to the estate of the pastor." The chossid followed the Rebbe's advice and instantly hundreds of mice raced out of the warehouse all heading in the direction of the pastor's estate. The chossid's business was saved and ever since Jews who have been plagued with this problem have used Reb Shaya'le's picture to accomplish the ridding of mice from their homes.
December 11, 2025 at 1:14 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
"This rabbi can get rid of the rats in your home!" Fun story that appeard on Dropout TV. Not sure the actor's name that tells the story. Anyone know who the rabbi is? h/t @kaijupoet.bsky.social

youtube.com/shorts/mGjN4...
picture of a rabbi
December 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Check it out! I've got a story in the Dec Washtenaw Jewish News. I was invited to contribute a winter-themed story so re-told "Og the Giant and the Tailor" which I originally read in Harold Schwartz' "Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism." It's matched by my "Og, King of Bashan" trading card.
Photo of my story on a newsprint page
December 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
Just got the best Hanukkah present from Rabbi Josh Fixler (@fixler.bsky.social) of the Golem Museum. He 3D-printed a cool storage box for the Jewish Monster Hunting kit he bought from me during my kickstarter and he made me one too! It's amazing! Check it out!
It's a 3D printed hardback book that says "Jewish Monster Hunting"! Inside the book is a tray with specific slots for each of the monster kit elements!
December 2, 2025 at 12:09 AM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
A kinda bitchy Talmudic anti-water demon charm (Pesachim 112a)

"If he is thirsty, what is his remedy? He should say… Lul, Shafan, Anigron, Anirdafin, which are names of demons, I sit between the stars, I walk between thin and fat people, take any of them…but leave me alone"
December 1, 2025 at 2:05 AM
adnesadeh.bsky.social
@shvlman
I'm digging through Yiddish illustrated books tonight and ran across Israel Steinbaum's "Leyenbikher far der yidisher shul" which has some excellent alef's.
Illustrated Yiddish Alef Illustrated Yiddish Alef Illustrated Yiddish Alef Illustrated Yiddish Alef
December 1, 2025 at 1:09 AM