Segulah as Index for Jewish Particularism

Translating the Arabic khāssah, the Hebrew segulah had multiple valences: It could signify a characteristic property in Aristotelian taxonomy. More commonly, it signified an “occult” property of some natural object, verifiable by empirical experience but inexplicable according to the laws of Aristotelian science. While scholarly investigations of segulah have contributed to understandings of medieval Hebrew astral magic and medicine, I suggest they simultaneously obscure an important dimension indexed by segulah, suggested by the term’s appearance in the Biblical text itself: as a modifier for the Israelite people—viz., as indicative of Jewish chosenness. Accordingly, this paper traces shifting deployments of segulah from the 13th–15th centuries. Asking not what kind of property is a segulah, but rather, what kinds of things have segulot, I argue that the concept of segulah functions as an index for changing ideas about Jewish particularism in medieval Hebrew literature.