Willow: Jewish, Witch, Jewitch?
Buffering the Vampire Slayer | A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast
The Dark Side of Witchcraft
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is returning for its seventh season on Sunday. The actress says she has mixed feelings about using magic to harm others. Willow's struggle with darkness and pain intersects with Jewish notion of Teshuva, a word that means redemption or forgiveness.
Kristin is talking with with Rabbi Leah Jordan and Pam Grossman — writer, curator, and teacher of magical practice and history — to dig deep into Willow's Jewishness, her witchy-ness, and how those two identities are in conversation with each other (or how we *wish* they would have been!) across seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This episode contains spoilers through the end of Season 7 of Buffy!
LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPON THE INTERNET
Rabbi Leah Jordan: @leah_solo; Kehillah North London
Pam Grossman: @phantasmaphile; pamgrossman.com
Kristin Russo: @kristinnoeline; kristinnoeline.com
MORE ON OUR GUESTS
Leah Jordan is Rabbi of Kehillah North London
Pam Grossman is the creator and host of internationally beloved podcast, The Witch Wave ("The Terry Gross of witches" - Vulture), the author of the critically acclaimed books, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Gallery Books) and What is a Witch (Tin Can Forest Press), and the co-editor of the WITCHCRAFT volume of Taschen's Library of Esoterica series.
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Links from Leah:
how Antisemitism and white supremacy are intertwined
Scholar Matthew Pateman on Willow's "disappearing Jewishness"
great summary of representations of anti-Jewish archetypes in media, with scholar Jonathan Branfman
Concepts in Jewish Tradition: Demons & Demonology, Is There a Jewish Afterlife?, Teshuva, or Repentance, Kabbalah and Mysticism 101, Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, Maimonides (Rambam) and His Texts, Lilith: Lady Flying in the Darkness
Genesis, chapter 4, verse 7: "Surely, if you try to do right, There is uplift. But if you do not do right Sin crouches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be overcome it.”
SVARA: a traditionally radical yeshiva, a queer yeshiva
AND kids now are doing Willow Rosenberg-themed b'nei mitzvah!
Links from Pam:
The Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia)
Kohonet Hebrew Priestess Institute
Ashkenazi Herbalism by Adam Siegel and Deatra Cohen
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Tree of Life/Sefirot (Kabbalah)
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Learn more about our team at bufferingthevampireslayer.com/our-team
Produced by: Kristin Russo, Pam Grossman, and Leah Jordan
With support from Alba Daza and Mackenzie MacDade
Edited by: John Mark Nelson & Kristin Russo
Logo: Kristine Thune
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We acknowledge that we and our team are occupying unceded and stolen lands and territories. Kristin occupies the Lenape territories of the Esopus Lenape Peoples. Jenny occupies the Wabanahkik territory of the Abenaki and Pennacook Peoples. Alba occupies Tiohtià:ke of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. Mack, LaToya, Morgan, and John Mark occupy the lands of the Kizh Peoples.
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