The Torah in the Tarot

A beautiful Tarot deck and booklet revealing the lost and forgotten Jewish origins of the Tarot--featuring a foreword by poet Ariana Reines.

For hundreds of years, the original meaning of the Tarot de Marseille, the artistic ancestor of the contemporary Tarot, has been a source of mystery, speculation, and debate. When Torah student Stav Appel encountered the Jean Noblet Tarot--one of the oldest preserved decks in the tradition of the Tarot de Marseille--he found something curious: the Magician held his arms in the shape of the Hebrew letter aleph א, the Hermit wore a Jewish prayer shawl, and three pieces of matzah hid beneath the Moon.

In The Torah in the Tarot, Appel carefully analyzes the Noblet Tarot, uncovering a rich array of Jewish symbols ingeniously concealed in its images. Given the deck’s origin circa 1650, during the Catholic Church’s centuries-long campaign to eradicate Judaism, Appel argues persuasively that its secret content suggests it originally served as a tool for clandestine Jewish education. Writing in a rich style that draws on rabbinic literary forms, Appel has presented a landmark contribution to the field of Tarot studies--revealing that when we perceive the Tarot through a Jewish lens, we can, at long last, recognize the Torah hidden in the Tarot.

The Torah in the Tarot includes a booklet written by Stav Appel with a foreword by Ariana Reines, as well as a historically accurate, 78-card color reproduction of the Jean Noblet Tarot--the only modern copy that preserves the full scope of the deck’s original Judaica--created by the French artist Florent Giraud of Tarotgraphe.

Stav Appel is a data scientist and a lifelong student of the 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 North Salem, NY.

Ariana Reines is the author of The Rose (2025), Wave of Blood (2024), A Sand Book (2020), Mercury (2011), the Obie-winning play ＂Telephone＂ (2009), Coeur de Lion (2007), and The Cow (2006). She has created performances for Stuart Shave/Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Performance Space NY, and many others. In 2020, while a divinity student at Harvard, she founded Invisible College, a hub for the study of sacred texts and poetry online. She lives in New York, NY.