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The world is filled with bewitching people, and you might be one too. Welcome to the podcast,

where art is magic, magic is real, and reality is stranger than dreams. I'm Pam Grossman,

and this is the Witch Wave.

Hello, and welcome to the Witch Wave. So you might have heard me refer to myself in the past as a

Jew witch, kind of joking, but not joking. And what I've meant by that is, even though I'm pagan,

I never stopped being Jewish. My family heritage and lineage is an integral part of my identity

and my life. But it's also something I've had a pretty complex and very evolving relationship with.

I turned toward witchcraft at a young age for many reasons, but one of them was that it offered me

something that I just wasn't getting in temple or at Hebrew school. Magic, mystery, feminine power.

And it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of my family's synagogue. I still remember being

in elementary school, and our temple swapping out our old prayer books for new ones that used

gender-neutral language for the word God, and which added the names of Jewish foremothers like

Rebecca, Leia, and Sarah to our prayers. I attended my own mother's botnitzva because when she

was a girl, women weren't allowed to have botnitzvas, only boys could have bar mitzvahs. And so,

as an adult, both she and my grandmother on my father's side decided to do what many other Jewish

...