Is It Jewish to Read Your Horoscope?

DEUTERONOMY 18:9-13

When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. Let no one be found among you who consigns a son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead. For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to God, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you. You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God. 1

1 THIS PROHIBITION is is the source for talmudic codification of laws against astrology. The Bible, aware that the land that would be Israel was populated by people of many other faiths, warned Jews not to become like them, and to not even imitate them by bringing some of those practices into Judaism. However, readers of stars do not show up in this passage. This could be because Judaism did have a relationship with observing stars, or it could be that astrologers fell under the broader category of augurs or diviners.1 THESE TWO BIBLICAL VERSES create two parallel ways of understanding lashon hara: one takes a legalistic approach with an outright prohibition, while the other makes an ethical case encouraging us to pay attention to the language we use. These two approaches continue throughout the history of Jewish thought, where lashon hara is sometimes treated as a matter of straightforward adherence to mitzvot, and sometimes as a matter of self-improvement.

TALMUD SHABBAT 156A

Rabbi Hanina says: A constellation makes one wise and a constellation makes one wealthy, and there is a constellation for the Jewish people that influences them. Rabbi Yohanan said: There is no constellation for the Jewish people that influences them. The Jewish people are not subject to the influence of astrology. And Rabbi Yohanan follows his own reasoning, as Rabbi Yohanan said: From where is it derived that there is no constellation for the Jewish people? As it is stated: “Thus said the Lord: Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them” (Jeremiah 10:2). The nations will be dismayed by them, but not the Jewish people. 2

2 THIS IS AN EXCERPT from an extended passage in the Talmud that begins by describing the various ways that the stars influence human behaviour and actions — writing, for example, that a person born under the influence of Mars will have blood in their life, which may manifest in fates ranging from becoming a murderer to working as a slaughterer. It then declares that the constellations do not affect the Jewish people. Constellations — in Hebrew mazel (the origin of the phrase mazel tov) are clearly believed by the Talmud to have a real effect on people, but this must be reconciled with moments when this effect is overcome, either by divine intervention or our own will. The Talmud explains that, while the effect of the stars is real, Jews are uniquely positioned to alter their destinies with good deeds and prayer.

MAIMONIDES, LAWS OF FOREIGN WORSHIP 11:17-18

These practices are all false and deceptive and were means employed by the ancient idolaters to deceive the peoples of various countries and induce them to become their followers. It is not proper for Israelites who are highly intelligent to be drawn by such inanities or imagine that there is any benefit in them, as it is said “For there is no enchantment with Jacob, neither is there any divination with Israel” (Numbers 23:23); and further “For these nations that you are to dispossess hearken to the soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, The Lord your God has not suffered you so to do” (Deut. 18:14).

Whoever believes in these and similar things and, in his heart holds them to be true and scientific and only forbidden by the Torah, is nothing but a fool, deficient in understanding, who belongs to the same class with women and children whose intellects are immature. Sensible people, however, who possess sound mental faculties, know by clear proofs that all these practices which the Torah prohibited have no scientific basis but are chimerical and inane; and that only those deficient in knowledge are attracted by those follies and, for their sake, leave the ways of the truth. The Torah, therefore, in forbidding all these follies, exhorts us, “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God (Ibid 18:13).” 3

3 IN A SHARP DISSENT, MAIMONIDES, the prime example of Jewish rationalism in the Middle Ages, rejects any possibility that the stars impact the human condition. This is a classic example of the Maimonidean principle that, when Torah and reason collide, we alter our understanding of the Torah to fit with reason. In this case, he sees the many examples of astrological influence in the Bible as metaphorical. The Rambam elaborated on this anti-astrology stance in a letter he wrote to the Jewish community in Yemen, which was dealing with a charismatic individual claiming to be the Messiah, leading many in the community astray. Local leaders wondered if the community was suffering this misfortune because it was under the influence of bad astrological signs. “Dismiss such notions from your mind,” Maimonides wrote. “Cleanse your mind of them as one cleanses dirty clothes. Accomplished gentile and certainly Jewish scholars refuse to believe in the truth of this science. Its postulates can be refuted by real proofs on rational grounds.”

SHULCHAN ARUCH, YOREH DEAH 179:1-2

One is not to consult star-gazers nor cast lots [because it says, “You shall be complete with Hashem, your God.” Moreover, it is forbidden to consult diviners, enchanters or sorcerers.]

It is customary not to begin (work) on the second or fourth and not to marry women except when the moon is full. Accordingly, it is customary to begin learning at the beginning of the new month because even though it’s not a prediction, there is an omen, and what a man knows is against the constellations he should not do, so as not to rely on miracles. However, one should not investigate this matter because of the commandment, “You shall be complete.” 4

4 RABBI JOSEPH KARO, the author of the foremost code of Jewish law from which this is excerpted, tries to split the difference between the Talmud and Maimonides. While Jews are not permitted to personally consult any sort of astrologer, they can adhere to established practices that assume astrological influence: in the sixteenth century, when Karo was writing, Mondays were believed to be ruled by the moon, and Wednesdays by Mars, neither of which were seen as auspicious.

There isn’t much in the way of discussion of the topic for several centuries after this, but there are some indications of growing skepticism about astrology. In a comment on the original verse from Deuteronomy, early twentieth century Lithuanian rabbi Baruch Epstein quoted seventeenth century rabbi Moses Hagiz, who maintained that, since the light of God had now spread throughout the world (i.e., we live in a monotheistic world), the powers that are seen in the Bible no longer operate and are used only by fools.

RABBI ELIEZER MELAMED, YESHIVA HAR BRACHA WEBSITE

The halakha follows the overwhelming majority of poskim [halakhic authorities] that it is forbidden to attempt to inquire about the future through astrology. According to most poskim … the person asking violates the positive commandment “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” And there are those who say … that he also transgresses the negative commandment “Do not practice divination.”

After learning that it is forbidden to ask astrologers about the future, we are left to clarify: Is it permissible to conduct a personality assessment with the help of an astrologer?

According to those who hold that astrology sometimes contains truth, it would be permissible for a person to use astrology to deepen his understanding of his character and traits. For if one knows he is prone to a certain sin, he can be more careful to avoid it, and if he knows he has talent in a certain area, he can develop it further. As our Sages said (Shabbat 156a) about one born under the constellation of Mars, that by nature, he will tend toward bloodshed, but it is within his ability to choose whether to be a murderer, a ritual slaughterer, a doctor who performs therapeutic bloodletting, or a mohel (circumciser) … However, it is preferable to refrain from doing so, since it is difficult to know who is truly an expert. 5

5 THIS IS A GOOD SUMMATION of how contemporary Orthodoxy sees astrology. Based on the last sentence, the author would likely exclude just about all the astrological wisdom floating around today: despite his apparent permissiveness, one would be hard pressed to find sound sources of astrological insight.

JEWISH ASTROLOGER LORELAI KUDE ON HER WEBSITE

The Talmudic-era rabbis used their powerful corporate identity, personal piety, and superior knowledge exclusive to Torah scholars to triumph over the esoteric traditions of the dominant culture which threatened their authority. They institutionalized astrology in the beit midrash, which accomplished two things: first, it denuded foreign esoteric traditions of any legitimacy and condemned them along with their practitioners to the status of permanent outsiders. Secondly: it allowed them to demonstrate the superiority of Judaism’s native esoteric traditions on their own terms.

Two thousand years of Talmudic Judaism and the evolution of halacha (Jewish law) have run concurrently with Judaism’s mystical stream. Astrology is the bridge that crosses that stream, and re-crosses, and crosses it again.

Understanding astrology’s role in Jewish life throughout history is significant because it seeks to recover a rich and rewarding component of Jewish cultural heritage. Striving to resolve the dissonance between prohibitions against astrology in legal texts and the ubiquity of the artifactual evidence can reveal clues as to how community rabbis might have weighed the influence of folk life in regulating traditional communal norms. 6

6 THE AUTHOR, an astrologer and horoscope columnist, is one of the few Jewish astrologers who seem to have done some work uncovering old Jewish traditions.

Here, she argues that astrology is not akin to many other beliefs that rabbis have maintained at earlier points in history that have since been proven wrong. In other words: in her view, astrology is like a belief in the world to come, which is unprovable but fundamental to many Jews, rather than like the “fact” that the sun revolves around the earth, which at some point rabbis (along with the rest of the world) believed but now know to be false.