Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Tradition of Eastern European Jews by Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books,2021. This book is a revelatory dive into the ways of Jewish folk healers in the Eastern European Pale.* It looks at their pharmacopeia, listing the multiple ethnic names for the herbs, along with stories and practices associated with them. Most interesting of all are the curative rites of the opshprekherin (she who "speaks away" disease, trauma and "the evil eye." The authors show how these Jewish women healers shared many of these practices with their gentile counterparts, known as “whisperers” (in Poland and Belarus), “murmurers” (Ukraine), and “knowers” (Russia). Note: these names are not restricted to these regions, but overlap.

[*The Pale of Settlement was a region of Eastern Europe, outside Russia, where the Russian Empire allowed Jews to live (1791-1917). Even in the Pale, they were subjected to pogroms and attacks from Cossack troops of the empire.]

Digging out this hidden women's knowledge was no small undertaking, since very little of it had been committed to writing. It required an interdisciplinary search through multiple kinds of sources, from 17th century books to ethnographic studies to oral accounts from living people—all of which they synthesize into a rich picture of little known healing practices and folk beliefs. Including, of course, the materia medica of the herbs themselves.

While treating people, the obshprekherin also gave advice. "Mostly women, these healers were present in almost every town in the Pale* and were sought for their expertise in times of crisis, during pregnancy, for toothache, a bad foot, an abcess, [erysipelas], the bite of a mad dog, epilepsy, or any other maladies believed to have been caused by [the evil eye.] [p 40]

Pregnant women sought them out to protect from the evil eye and to predict the baby's sex, or even to influence it. One of the quoted sources says: "They performed magic with knives, socks, and combs; they poured wax and poached eggs and knew hundreds of ways to cure a patient." [p 40]

Socks? Women would wrap a sock around the child's neck at bedtime to cure colds. Pouring wax? These "medicine women" would cure by reciting charms while melting wax into a bowl of water on top of the patient's head; then they would take out the hardened wax, inspect it while turning it around to discern shapes and divine from them. (I gather that the egg-poaching served a similar purpose.) While "pouring wax," they'd talk about and how why the person had become frightened or gekhapt ("caught," or paralyzed, somehow frozen).

More than a remedy for the evil eye, this rite shared a theory of disease with healers in other countries, notably Mexican curanderas who treat susto ("fright"). The obshrekerinen understood that certain disorders were caused by "fear," including anxiety, dread, stuttering, tremors, epilepsy, insomnia, tension.

"More popular than the [male] ba'al shem ["master of the Name," rabbis who chanted biblical verses to cure or divine], the female obshprekerin also played a critical role over a longer time period," at least since the 1700s. [p 41] The authors note that rabbinical authorities did not interfere with the obsphrekherinen, on the Talmudic rationale of pikuakh nefesh (literally "to save a soul"), which meant that otherwise forbidden acts were permitted in order to save a life. [p 45]

Cohen and Siegel note the survival of these curative methods among Ukrainian gentiles who emigrated to Canada. They called the healers baba ("old woman"), baila ("murmerer"), chaklunka ("conjurer"), chudesnytsya ("wonder-worker"), potvornytsya ("seer"), sheptukha ("whisperer"), zolotarykha ("golden conjurer")." [p 42] In Alberta, the rite of "pouring wax" was also called "pouring fear" and was always accompanied by an incantation.

They sometimes melted lead or solder to divine in the same way. Or they would take a raw egg in each hand and wave it around the patient, especially the afflicted area, to sense and remove illness. Or they would cast charred wood on water, and if it sank, it was an omen that evil eye at work.

The incantations or charms have much in common with those used in other Eastern European cultures. They are based on visualizations, even stories in some cases, of the banishing of illness. Some resemble Russian charms that call on the tsars of the skies, the fields and the seas to banish disease. Others feature biblical characters such as Job, who while suffering a toothache encounters an angel who tells him, "As the desert has no seashore, so the teeth of the son/daughter of so-and-so will ache no more and will be mighty as the Hebrew letter Shin. In the name of the bone, Amen Selah." [p 46]

A Polish obshprekerin in Bilgoraj burned flax while reciting this charm to banish "the rose," a skin disease of erysipelas: "Black royz, into the field, into the field." Then she applied honey to the infected skin. [47]

The book quotes this marvelous charm from a Canadian Ukrainian wax-pourer in the 1990s:

I am not blowing away dust, but fear. I am not blowing away dust, but fear and sickness. I am not blowing away dust but fear, sickness, hatred, nerves and the evil eye to disappear and vanish from (name). Head from (name), heart from (name), viscera from (name), upper back from (name), lower back, from all joints.
[To the spirit:] Do not drink red blood, dehydrate a white body or strip a yellow bone by the heart. Do not appear, do not make yourself a nest. Disappear and begone in the name of good fortune, of health.

Many charms like this one could be multiplied from folk incantations of diverse countries. Look how similar to the above is this visualization of the binding of disease in a modern Romanian healer's incantation:

I do not bind the knot, but the pain in the heart, I do not bind the knot, but the pain in the intestines, I do not bind the knot, but the pain in the liver...the ribs...the shoulders...the breast... the throat...the neck, ears and teeth...the pain in all the joints and all the other parts of the body. [C. L. Day, Quipus and Magic Knots: The Role of the Magic Knot in Primitive and Ancient Cultures, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1967, p 48]