My journey to Jewish observance, like so many others’, has been a winding path of distance and proximity. Alienated by my fathers’ Conservadox upbringing that taught I wasn’t a Jew because my mother was Irish Catholic, I felt uncomfortable owning the identity myself. Then again, as a queer, trans adult, I couldn’t imagine a Judaism that had space for me. But I’ve always been a spiritual person, a “seeker.” I wanted to belong to something, to have something of my own. 

I’m also a chronically ill person that has reached the point where I’m willing to try anything at least once in the hopes that it will lead to some small reprieve from the pain. So, “jewitchery” was the first Jewish space that felt like it might be my own. I was drawn to the idea of tracking time by the moon, of wandering through plant life and knowing each plant’s secret name, of healing myself with something western medicine had long forsaken. (A note here: I take my meds and thoroughly believe in science – these things do not need to be at odds with one another.)

So, even now that I’m comfortable and firm in my Jewish identity and observance, when the debut of Ashkenazi Herbalism was announced, I felt a thrill. The book promised medicinal plant knowledge from a lineage that I could arguably claim as my own, or at least closely adjacent to my own.

The book is broken up into three sections. Section one is an overview of both Ashkenazim and Ashkenazi healer history. It feels rich and healing all on its own. Especially for someone who has been on the outskirts of Jewish knowledge for so long, reading through the short histories of early Jewish pharmacies and physicians, the ba’alei shem (Kabbalists and healers who traveled to rid people of afflictions), midwives, and so much more, felt like kneeling at the feet of a bubbe I’ve never had and being told stories of our heritage. 

The second section is the Materia Medica, which includes 26 plants that were known to and used by Jewish healers that lived within the Pale of Settlement between the two World Wars. Each plant has a simple black and white illustration (done by Deatra Cohen), the name of the plant in English and most European languages Ashkenasim speak (including Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish), and the uses of the plant during different time periods. 

The final section is a brief afterword that gives credit to previous works of collected herbalism, notes the difficulty of collecting information that was often intentionally destroyed due to antisemitism, and outlines the method of data collection for this book. What follows the afterword are two appendices about history, and a bibliography to make nonfiction lovers’ to-read piles weep.

The authors, Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel are librarians and put immense care into both the research conducted and the accessible presentation of information. While they are careful to inform readers that the plant entries are meant to be historical reference and not a practical guide, the book did leave me feeling empowered to seek out how herbalism might be more present in my own Jewish practice. 

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