The young man with the enormous pack towering above his head, mid-stride on the golden path, looking upward with hope. His loyal dog at his feet. Mountains in the distance. The open road west into unknown territory.

He’s full of possibilities. Maybe not carefree, but loaded with potential. The unknown requires innocence, trust, and willingness to be foolish. The amazing boldness of youthful inexperience.

He doesn’t know about the tenements, the factory floors, the years walking door-to-door. He just knows he’s heading toward something better, carrying everything he needs.

The Fool isn’t foolish. The Fool is willing to begin - again and again.

✦ The rest of this post is for paid subscribers — including what your card choices revealed, the research that’s reshaping my understanding of the Jewish diaspora, and how The Fool turned out to be the heart of everything for this deck. ✦

Read more

It’s the idea behind a visual incantation I created for Iyyar 5784, rooted in the Hebrew word for diaspora — t’futzot (תְּפוּצוֹת) — and what I found when I went deep into its root letters: scatter, disperse, overflow, jubilate, deliver, set free. Not exile. Not loss. Abundance.

That distinction — diaspora is not exile — has been living in me for a long time. And somewhere in the last year, it started asking to become a tarot deck.

I’ve been reading tarot for more than 20 years. I’ve worked with more decks than I can count, created rituals and spreads, and written about divination, tarot, Jewish divination, etc. etc. But I’ve never made a tarot deck, although some of you might even have a copy of my Netivot Wisdom Oracle on your altar.

Migration is the condition of not only humans, but also the plant, animal, earth, air, and water. The Jewish experience of non-colonizing diaspora — moving, building, being uprooted, building again — is not a tragedy interrupted by golden ages, but a complete spiritual path with its own wisdom, its own archetypes, its own magic.

Hence: Numerous as the Stars Tarot is a 78-card Rider-Waite-Smith variant rooted in that path.

Where we are: The central thesis is established. The Major Arcana structure is mapped. Several cards have visual concepts developed and initial sketches underway. This is a real project in active development — not a someday dream.

Updates on this deck will live here, for paid subscribers, along with a dedicated space to explore Jewish history, global migration stories, and the tarot as a tool for understanding where we come from and where we’re going.

The Story the Deck Tells

The deck traces the experience of going from immigrant to flourishing community — and sometimes back again. Not as tragedy, but as a necessary cycle. Every stop on that journey maps to a card, and every card is informed by real history, real figures, real community-building. Seeds spread out. They travel. Some learn to live in harmony in the lands they move to and become valued parts of it, like the broad leaf plantain.

For me, and this project, the Jewish diaspora experience is the lens. It is the mirror for anyone who has ever built home somewhere new, not out of colonization, and know that we don’t own the land we must earn the love of it.

✦ The rest of this post is for paid subscribers — including the foundational structure of the deck, the hidden architecture underneath the Major Arcana, and what makes this tarot different from every other deck out there.✦

If you don’t have the resources to be a paying subscriber, but are really interested — I’ll comp you 3 months at a time in return for your engagement on posts and in the private chat, especially thoughtful comments. No Questions Asked.

Read more