Bøker av Deatra Cohen

A comprehensive guide to the medicinal plants and folk healers of Eastern Europe’s Pale of Settlement—mapping ancestral folkways, herbal traditions, and shared legacies of Ashkenazi Jews and their neighbors Includes a materia medica of healing plants and their traditional applicationsA companion guide to Ashkenazi Herbalism, Woven Roots explores the rich history of plant-based medicine and folk healing traditions of Eastern Europe from 1600 through the present.Authors Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel map the interwoven histories of the peoples of the Pale of Settlement, revealing untold stories of cooperation, shared knowledge, and mutual aid. The book shares how the people in this region—so often associated with conflict—often thrived in deep and reciprocal relationships with the land and each other. Tending and relying on the natural world, caring for their communities, and transmitting medicinal legacies from generation to generation, the healers of the Pale served as profound points of connection, interdependence, and life-sustaining knowledge.The authors offer illuminating—and surprising—original research on:The pivotal but historically overlooked contributions of women folk healersDeep, ancestrally rooted traditions of care for land and nature among Ashkenazi JewsThe rich cultural exchanges among Jews, Muslims, and Christians that allowed life in the Pale to flourishNewly discovered recipesEnduring legacies of mutual aid and community interdependenceHow long-lost links between Eastern and Western folk knowledge can shed new light on your heritage and ancestral connectionsTraditional magical practices of the AshkenazimThis book includes an illustrated materia medica with plant names in Yiddish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and more. Informed by years of field and academic research, Woven Roots recovers the legacies of Jewish healers beyond myth, offering insights into the healing wisdom and interethnic cultural exchanges among marginalized groups in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The definitive guide to the medicinal plant knowledge of Ashkenazi herbal healers--from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.Until now, the herbal traditions of the Ashkenazi people have remained unexplored and shrouded in mystery. Ashkenazi Herbalism rediscovers the forgotten legacy of the Jewish medicinal plant healers who thrived in Eastern Europe''s Pale of Settlement, from their beginnings in the Middle Ages through the modern era.Including the first materia medica of 26 plants and herbs essential to Ashkenazi folk medicine, Ashkenazi Herbalism sheds light on the preparations, medicinal profiles, and applications of a rich but previously unknown herbal tradition--one hidden by language barriers, obscured by cultural misunderstandings, and nearly lost to history. Written for new and established practitioners, it offers illustrations, provides information on comparative medicinal practices, and illuminates the important historical and cultural contexts that gave rise to Eastern European Jewish herbalism.Part I introduces a brief history of the Ashkenazim and provides an overview of traditional medicine among Eastern European Jews. Part II offers a comparative overview of healing customs among Jews of the Pale of Settlement, their many native plants, and the remedies applied by local healers to treat a range of illnesses. This materia medica names each plant in Yiddish, English, Latin, and other relevant languages, and the book also details a brief history of medicine; the roles of the ba''alei shem, feldshers, opshprekherins, midwives, and brewers; and the remedy books used by Jewish healers.