TI Member and numismologist Simcha Kuritzky will offer a history of Tarot and the Kabbalistic and Jewish analogies, and offer answers to these questions:  How widespread is the use of Tarot?  How has the use of the cards changed over time?  How Jewish is the tarot, or how Jewish have card designers made their decks? 

Tarot cards first appeared in Italy in the late 1300s as a playing card deck, though with greater artistic merit than most current decks.  Some of the artwork was mysterious, and people theorized a number of origins for it:  ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Rosicrucians, and Knights Templar being the most popular.  In the mid-1800s, they were associated with Christian Kabbalah and attracted the attention of Freemasons.  Their use soon changed to fortune telling decks.  Jews did not get on board until the revival of Kabbalah in the 1970s.  Despite the halakhic prohibition against divination, today there are Jews who use Tarot cards as predictors of the future, and claim a direct link between early Tarot and mystical Kabbalah.