Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel penned a definitive guide to the medicinal plant knowledge of Ashkenazi herbal healers, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
New books: The nearly forgotten world of Jewish folk healing – J jweekly.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jweekly.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
May 6 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm Free
Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel talk about plant medicine, folk healers and their book, subtitled “Rediscovering Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews.” Presented by Jewish Community Library and KlezCalifornia. Free, with registration.Event Website
Deatra Cohen was studying to become an herbalist when her teacher assigned what seemed like a straightforward task: researching and reporting on the herbal cures and practices of her own culture.
But the project was anything but simple. A retired librarian, Cohen was adept at navigating databases and combing through archives. But she could find almost no record of the herbal traditions on which her ancestors, Ashkenazi Jews from the Pale of Settlement, would have relied.
Today, Jewish herbalism students won’t face that same problem. Three years after her initial search turned up empty, Cohen and her husband Adam Siegel, a librarian at UC Davis, have published “Ashkenazi Herbalism.” Part botanical guide and part folk history, the book details the most common natural cures employed in the Pale of Settlement and explores the interplay between religious leaders, shamans, barber surgeons and midwives who provided medical care to Jewish communities.