- Q. Long Life to Kvod Horav. The Ezer Mitzion and other organizations helping Israel invited master mentalist Lior Suchard to Toronto and he will be visiting here next week. I heard that his show is truly wonderful. My question is, is one by Halacha, permitted to attend the show and even bring his children with?
A. Firstly, we must understand what are we dealing with.
Mentalism (as described in Wikipedia and by others), is a performing art, in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities.
Mentalists perform also a theatrical act that includes special effects that may appear to employ psychic or supernatural forces but that is actually achieved by "ordinary conjuring means", natural human abilities (i.e. reading body language, refined intuition, subliminal communication, emotional intelligence), and an in-depth understanding of key principles from human psychology or other behavioral sciences. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats, deduction, and rapid mathematics.
Mentalism is also commonly classified as a subcategory of magic and, when performed by a stage magician, may also be referred to as mental magic. However, many professional mentalists today may generally distinguish themselves from magicians, insisting that their art form leverages a distinct skillset.
Instead of doing "magic tricks", mentalists argue that they produce psychological experiences for the mind and imagination, and expand reality with explorations of psychology, suggestion, and influence. Mentalists are also often considered psychic entertainers, although that category also contains non-mentalist performers such as psychic readers and bizarrists.
They are also known as a mind-reader or psychological illusionist. A mentalist uses a combination of psychology, magic tricks, neuro-linguistic programming, sleight of hand, showmanship, and pseudo-psychology to create an environment where it feels like they are able to attract your attention and access your thoughts, and influence your behavior.
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