Smoke, Mirrors, and Houdini: The Jewish Escape Artist Who Fought Fake 'Magic'

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was regarded as the greatest writer in the British Empire during Queen Victoria’s golden age. He was best known for the Sherlock Holmes stories—the genius detective who coolly and rationally analyzes every event and produces crushing proof to identify the criminals. Conan Doyle wrote sixty stories about Sherlock Holmes, and with each one his renown grew. He became a revered author, and his opinions were sought on political and legal matters as well.

But real life is stronger than fiction. At the height of his success, at age 51, his wife died. A few years later World War I broke out, in which two of his brothers-in-law and two nephews were killed. Conan Doyle was shattered and depressed. In his despair and longing he turned to mediums and necromancers, trying to communicate with his dead wife. Paradoxically, and in opposition to the spirit of his own work, Conan Doyle fell under the spell of the supernatural. He believed he had in fact spoken with his wife through a modern-day medium... He went on to form connections with such figures—who, in our eyes, are swindlers and charlatans (of course, according to the Torah, this is forbidden even if it has any substance, since one must not inquire of the dead)—and became an enthusiastic believer in the supernatural, ‘spiritualism,’ as the field is called.

Then, like a meteor across Europe’s sky, a magician and wonder-worker burst onto the scene. You know him as Harry Houdini, and not everyone is sure whether he’s a movie character or a real person, but he was born in Hungary as Ari Weiss. His father was a rabbi at a ‘progressive’ synagogue. When they immigrated to the U.S., Ari changed his name to Harry, called himself Houdini after the famed French magician Jean Auden, and astonished the world.

Houdini freed himself from every kind of binding. Not staged bindings he arranged himself, but monstrous restraints devised by the world’s best locksmiths. They shackled him, hung him upside down, wrapped him in chains and locks, plunged him into water tanks, into tiny boxes—and Houdini escaped them all. In 1902, Houdini was locked inside with a sealed bolt. The bolt was positioned where Houdini’s hands could not reach it—technically impossible; no skill can shorten the distance—and yet, after two hours of struggle, he got free and emerged. In 1904, the most famous locksmith of the time, Nathaniel Hart, challenged Houdini. He made special handcuffs just for him—cuffs that even an elephant or a wild bull could not escape. ‘You’ll never succeed,’ Hart declared. Betting booths flourished. ‘This time he’ll fail,’ the experts said. And yet, Houdini emerged, by an incomprehensible route, even from those impossible cuffs.

Conan Doyle thought he had found comfort in the Jewish magician. Surely he had supernatural powers. He proves what Conan Doyle had long claimed: nature is no barrier for one who knows black magic and sorcery. But Houdini dismissed him with disdain: there is no sorcery; it’s all sleight of hand. Conan Doyle did not believe it. He wanted to prove his position, but Houdini insisted: all mediums and sorcerers—every one of them—are frauds.

And so the roles were reversed. The man considered the father of the cool, rational-analytic genre spent the rest of his life chasing sorcerers and mediums, and even when the ‘magician’ himself tried to make it clear that it was all fraud, he refused to believe. Meanwhile, the man who was the father of the magic genre declared openly: it’s all fraud and misdirection. Enjoy the skill, but don’t attribute supernatural powers where none exist. There’s no doubt this was a message Ari Weiss brought from home. However far he was from traditional, authentic Judaism, Ari–Harry still shared with the world a firm opposition to charlatanry, sorcery, and magic.