Can Astrology be Kosher?

Before embracing observant Judaism, I took a brief detour into the world of the occult.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with magic and fortune telling. The idea that you could understand core truths about yourself, those around you, or even the cosmos itself greatly appealed to my constant thirst for more knowledge and my committed quest for Truth in an otherwise confusing world.

Tarot cards became a particular hobby of mine. I purchased a deck, performed a basic “cleansing ritual” over the next day, and used it regularly meditatively and in reading others. I was impressed by how accurate it was and made a bit of a name for myself online as someone with a talent for Tarot. Of course, I soon discovered the art of cold reading (explained well in this conversation between Derren Brown and Richard Dawkins) and quickly embraced a more skeptical worldview. Rather than a tool to uncover the Truths of the cosmos, I saw Tarot cards as what they were - tools to give random, general pictures that allow those who are using them to see themselves in the narrative that’s dealt, not dissimilar to a Rorschach test.

By the time I was Orthodox, Tarot cards were nothing more than a prop in my mentalism show (that I used with the blessing of a local rabbi to demonstrate how people see what they want in them rather than the cards possessing any supernatural powers). At the time, I knew that Judaism had a negative opinion about fortune telling and the like but would not have been able to articulate the specifics.

While Tarot cards and astrology are different things, I had always considered them to be in the same category. The two are often seen together on the signposts of professional “psychics” and the same types of people who were interested in Tarot readings also tended to know their Zodiac signs and also ask if I knew astrology. Similarly, skeptics who set out to debunk one often target the other as well. James Randi included it in his Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, Hoaxes of the Occult, and Supernatural and did not have kind things to say about the field in his book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and other Delusions:

We are told that the most important general astrological influence is the position of the sun in the zodiac (the set of twelve constellations girdling the sky) at the moment of birth. Thus, an examination of this claim alone should teach us something about the degree of rationality and the general quality of astrological theory.

One of the obvious questions that comes to mind concerning the influence of this “birth sign” on the character and future of each person arises when we consider those born on exactly the same day, at the same hour, and (another important consideration in astrology) in the same geographical location. Would not these persons have similar horoscopes - indeed, identical horoscopes - and therefore the same future and personality? Not necessarily, say the astrologers. We are told that the exact time of birth (meaning within several minutes) can make a great differences because the “ascendent sign” (the one rising on the horizon at the moment of birth), as well as the position of the moon in the zodiac band of twelve astrological signs, can be very important. But, we counter, what of twins, who are certainly born at nearly the same time and assuredly in the same geographical location? There is a handy explanation for any discrepancy here too. IT is said that in such cases there is a shift in the heavenly bodies during the short period of time separating the two births.

But when astrology “experts” seek to explain away any dissimilar characteristics of twins with this “change of ascendent and/or moon position” malarky, is this not merely fitting the facts to the theory? I maintain that it is. Similarities in character and fortune are ascribed to similarities in horoscope details, and dissimilarities are attributed to even the most minor discrepancies among the charts. It is a procedure that satisfied uncritical observers but not skeptics.

Nonetheless, a 2017 a Pew Research poll showed that no less than 29% of US adults believe in astrology. Geoffrey Dean, in his contribution to A Critical Analysis of Paranormal Claims, assumes that 50% of Americans have a superficial interest in astrology - that is, they know the signs and find entertainment in astrology and that 2% have some knowledge of the subject, having a copy of their own birth-chart somewhere and seek self-understanding via astrology. 0.02% of Americans actively calculate charts and use astrology to chart out their lives. For comparison, he notes that approximately 0.05% of Americans are dentists. Dean, like Randi, notes that “it is always possible to fit any birth chart to any person, making it a most efficient focus for therapy by conversation. Once the astrologer and client are talking, the birth chart can mostly be ignored except as a convenient means of changing the subject.” Unlike Randi, however, Dean writes that “attacking it would be like attacking Superman comics or a religious faith” since “astrologers now officially judge astrology on how helpful it is, whereas critics have always judged it on how true it is. It is from this confusion that most shouting matches arise.”

Interestingly, the French researcher Michel Gauquelin seems to have found at least some replicable data on astrology to the dismay of critics in his multitude of scientific studies and publications, but much debate continues to over whether it can be explained by selection bias.

I became interested in astrology last year when several participants in a young adult kiruv program I was running asked me how I felt about the subject. I told them, truthfully, that I didn’t know much about astrology in particular but that I was vaguely aware that the Talmud and several mainstream rabbinic commentators assumed astrology was a real thing with at least some power over Jews. Once I thought about it, it became clear that even wishing someone mazal tov has clear astrological roots.

A quick search led me to Rabbi Yitzchok Aharon Pinkesz, a “Torah-observant astrologer who has been practicing astrology in accordance with the Torah for over a decade. He was just finishing his book Kosher Astrology: A Jewish Guide to Celestial Wisdom, which has just been made available from Mosaica Press and his website Kosher Astro.

Rabbi Pinkesz is a true mensch. In addition to taking over an hour to speak to me about his perspective, he also graciously sent me a copy of the book to review. Kosher Astrology is a gorgeously produced hardcover volume of nearly 500 pages, complete with full-color charts and English translations of every major source with the original Hebrew texts footnoted for reference. Both the author and publisher went out of their way to make this the book on the subject for anyone interested in astrology from an Orthodox Jewish perspective and its haskama from Rav Dovid Cohen, who found himself “impressed by its lucidity, breadth of many areas of knowledge, and above all, by the giluy kavod shamayim that one experiences by being exposed to it” makes sure that Orthodox Jews know they ought to take the volume quite seriously. Despite sounding like many other volumes prefaced with the word “kosher”, Kosher Astrology is a substantive and in-depth exploration of the subject.

Rabbi Pinkesz’s argument, in a nutshell, is that what most people colloquially refer to as “astrology” can be divided into three distinct categories. Astral Magic involves worshipping planets (either as deities in their own right or as messengers of Hashem) and attempting to bribe or manipulate them for personal benefit. Astromancy involves attempting to predict specific details and outcomes of events surrounding specific people and events by making unchangeable, fatalistic predictions. Both of those categories are unambiguously forbidden. Kosher astrology, on the other hand,

“is based on acknowledging that G-d created everything in the universe to serve a purpose, and that the stars and planets are tasked with helping humanity achieve greatness. Kosher astrology was designed for our personal growth, not for predicting the future. It is not a quick fix to solve problems or a way to avoid difficulties. It is primarily about understanding ourselves, our challenges, our strengths, and our potential.

It can also specify which particular times of our lives are designated for personal growth. During those windows of opportunity, out innate potential is ready to blossom. These are the times when we are likely to experience major life developments or reach critical turning points. External events that deeply affect us can be the catalyst for powerfully transformative inner growth. Kosher astrology can help us understand the meaning behind these crucial events and developments in our lives.

Kosher astrology is essentially a tool for psychological and spiritual development. This is its main purpose - to help us understand our personality, how we function, and how we can grow into our highest selves. In short, Kosher astrology is a roadmap, a guide given by G-d to help us understand ourselves and the purpose of major events in our lives.”

Kosher astrology, Rabbi Pinkesz writes, affects absolutely everyone. It is, however, neither deterministic nor fatalistic. That is to say that we can channel our personality traits and character in any number of ways (“someone with a predisposition to draw blood can be a mohel or a butcher instead of a murderer”) and, even more, we can completely overcome negative fates via prayer and charity (“teshuva, tefilah, and tzedakah push away the evil decree”). Properly utilized, Kosher astrology “is a direct pathway toward appreciating G-d’s love and care for every human being… It we are open to exploring its wisdom, it can bring us closer to truly appreciating G-d’s love for us and His unique plan for our lives.”

Kosher Astrology presents a thorough and compelling argument, rooted in sources and impeccably cited, in favor of Orthodox Judaism embracing astrology as not only a permitted practice, but as religiously beneficial if not perhaps obligatory to some degree (my biggest qualm is Rabbi Pinkecz’s use of a quote from Rav Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man but since it’s just a poetic opener and not part of his argument I’m willing to give it a pass).

What about the question of astrology’s veracity? If astrology doesn’t actually work, what’s the point of the book? Kosher Astrology, R. Pinkesz explicitly notes, “was primarily written for… believers and questioners. As for the third group of deniers, it is understandable that some feel this way. There are some doctrines that are not going to mesh well with everyone, so the concept of astrology just won’t speak to some people, and that’s OK.” Indeed, if astrology is only meant to supplement out self-understanding by giving us points to meditate on rather than determine our fates then it doesn’t need to really work at all.

On the other hand, Rabbi Pinesz does go to great length to try to prove the truth of astrology in addition to its therapeutic benefits. Since “many deniers have made unfounded claims as to why astrology is untrue” he takes it upon himself to “set the record straight.” His case effectively boils down to the idea that those who deny astrology tend to “select antiquated ideas about astrology that are no longer seen as relevant by contemporary astrologers, and then go on to disprove these ideas.”

I’ll leave it to readers to determine whether his case for astrology fails or succeeds and will close the review on an uncharacteristic note: To give me “the full experience,” Rabbi Pinkesz was kind enough to give me a full astrological reading, complete with several charts based on my exact birth time and place. While much information came up that could easily have been found out about me by a quick Google search, there were also many specific dates mentioned (written down and sent to me before the conversation began) which were not only accurate but also not things that anyone would have known. While I’m very used to the idea that sometimes coincidences like that do happen (I’ve correctly guessed - truly guessed - what card someone was thinking of on more than one occasion), the experience was genuinely spooky and gave me pause in a way that I did not expect. I’ve been on the giving side of psychic readings and know what it’s like to speak in generalities and allow the participant to fill in blanks. This, genuinely, was not that as far as I could tell. Was it enough to turn me into a believer? Not quite. But it was enough to give me significant pause and to admit that just maybe there’s more to Kosher astrology than a Jewishly permitted meditation on one’s personality and experiences.

By the end of the book, readers will be ready and able to create their own birth charts and start practice Kosher astrology for themselves. Rabbi Pinkesz’s case for this to be part of Judaism rather than in contradiction to it is a strong one. My biggest concern is that the book may risk opening an unintended can of worms. To quote a friend, “What’s the sequel, Kosher Avodah Zarah?” Put differently, if astrology is kosher, what else can be kashered?

Benebell Wen, in her book Holistic Tarot: An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth, writes that Tarot cards “do not tell us what to do. Rather, they help us think about our problems from a different perspective and, like a diagnostics tool for decision-making, help chard a road map for the solution.” Wen emphatically states that “I do not support fortune-telling and I do not believe in future-felling.” Instead, in the approach she teaches in her book, “the signs and symbols of the cards facilitate retrieval of information from the unconscious and move it to the forefront of the conscious plane of the mind, which can then help us form creative solutions, present a different angle to a problem that we have been looking monotonously at, or offer the breakthrough that allows us to move forward.” This reads so similarly to Pinkesz’s description of kosher astrology that, had Wen been Jewish, she might well have titled her approach Kosher Tarot.

The obvious difference between Wen and Pinkesz is that Pinkecz stops at nothing to show how traditional Jewish sources from the Bible to contemporary rabbis have always supported kosher astrology while Tarot is a foreign concept (having been invented for the 15th century Italian card game Tarocchi). Nonetheless, Judaism is not without practices that seem dangerously close to true fortune telling. Take this one, which Jerome (Yehuda) Gellman references in the introduction to his book This Was From God: A Contemporary Theology of Torah and History:

“One day, at a time that I was unsure whether to publish this book, because of it going “off the way” of Orthodoxy, I went to a nearby synagogue to pray the afternoon minchah prayer. As I sat down to pray, I noticed high on a nearby shelf several volumes of the collected letters, the Igrot, of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the “Rebbe” of Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism. I am not a Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid, but I knew that there are followers of the Rebbe who believe that through the volumes of the Igrot the Rebbe can communicate advice to those who seek his counsel. They ask the Rebbe a question. Then completely at random they open the volume to any page that comes up and pick a side of the two pages they find open, left or right, again at random. When they scrutinize the page they have selected, they are supposed to be able to find there, on that page, in the words of the Rebbe, the answer to their question.

Looking at the volumes of the Igrot on the synagogue shelf, worried about what I should do about the book, quite impulsively, I asked the Rebbe (out loud): “Rebbe, should I publish this book? I then reached up, and without looking I took down a volume of the Igrot. I then opened the volume on the page on the right side, again without looking.

When I began to read that right-hand page, I was stunned. for the very first sentence, at the very top of the page I had picked at random, in the very volume I had picked at random, read as follows:

“I hope that you are publishing and that you will publish.”

I do not fool myself into thinking that the Rebbe would approve of this book, but maybe, just maybe, he thought it worth something nonetheless, or, perhaps more plausibly, thinking he could not stop me in any case, he thought he might do what he can to make my book better than it would have been by telling me to go ahead with it, with his approval.

My worry is that if kosher astrology becomes well known and popular then it will lead to other pseudo-fortune telling practices to become more popular as well which will ultimately lead to many problematic things. Then again, such worries have not stopped many innovations and returns to traditions of old and R. Pinkesz does make the line between kosher and non-kosher forms of astrology quite clear. This concern is probably just due to my Gemini tendency to overanalyze things.