Tuesday, February 5, 2008

NYC's J Levine Judaica now selling Harry Potter and Torah

To all you New Yorkers who want to see a copy of Harry Potter and Torah before buying it, head over to J Levine Books at 5 W 30th Street in Manhattan.

Besides having copies in their store, they're also selling it on-line.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to say that the Torah forbids any kind of magic such as is promoted in the book and can't understand how any Jew would let their kids read such secular garbage. You shall not suffer a witch to live, nor seek after sorcerers or diviners.

Bruce Krulwich said...

The Torah certainly prohibits magic, and the book Harry Potter and Torah discusses this prohibition in several contexts.

For example, Jewish Law even prohibits magic tricks, since they look like sorcery, but only if the people watching the magic truly believe that they're seeing sorcery, not if they know that it's just tricks. This is discussed in the book's chapter titled Magic Shows: Kosher Fun or Idolotry?

As a side note, Jewish Law does in fact permit magic if it's based on Kabbalah, meaning mystical secrets from Jewish tradition.

But this is all off the point. Harry Potter doesn't "promote" sorcery any more than Stuart Little promotes being a mouse. It's all fun and fiction. And more than any other book in the past 20 years, Harry Potter and gotten kids to read. Harry Potter and Torah doesn't promote sorcery either, it just shows how the fun themes and concepts from Harry Potter are in fact found in Torah.