03 Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel: Unearthing Ashkenazi herbalism practices

[00:00:00] I'm Catherine Polcz and this is Plant Kingdom.

[00:00:12] I'm recording in beautiful Sydney on the lens, the Gadigal People of the E-R-A Nation and

[00:00:19] pay respect to their elders, past, present and future.

[00:00:21] Plant Kingdom is a conversation series about plants, nature and environment, featuring

[00:00:27] scientists, artists, researchers, writers and healers.

[00:00:31] We release two conversations each month and hear from people who have an intimacy with

[00:00:36] plants in nature.

[00:00:37] We discuss their work, stories and reflections from the field.

[00:00:41] Today's conversation is with Dietrich Cohen in Adam Siegel, authors of the book Ash

[00:00:47] Kinesi, herbalism.

[00:00:49] Together they created an incredible resource of ancestral herbalism practices pre-Holocost

[00:00:55] from the pale of settlement.

[00:00:57] I've been reading it over a month and I've personally found it so meaningful that such

[00:01:02] a rare work of Jewish plant practice.

[00:01:06] Many of the plants listed will be familiar and have traveled around the world with people

[00:01:10] who use them.

[00:01:11] Many I remember from my field work days in Ontario, they were the weeds that were growing

[00:01:15] in waste places and fields and has been so special to read a scabber them and to learn

[00:01:21] how they've been cared for and used in herbal medicine.

[00:01:25] El now introduced our incredible authors, partners in life and work, Dietrich and Adam.

[00:01:31] Dietrich Cohen is a former reference librarian in herbalists who trained with the Berkeley

[00:01:36] Medical Center.

[00:01:37] She also belongs to a clinical herbal collective and is a master gardener at the University

[00:01:42] of California.

[00:01:43] Adam Siegel is a research librarian at the University of California Davis and a historian

[00:01:48] of Central and Eastern Europe.

[00:01:50] He studies issues around cultural contacts and plant knowledge in the region.

[00:01:55] Adam is also a literary translator focusing on works in Russian, Czech, German, Croatian,

[00:02:00] Serbian, French, Italian, Swedish and Norwegian.

[00:02:04] In her research, Dietrich became frustrated with the lack of practical herbal information

[00:02:09] about Jews of Ashkenazi descent and related Eastern European traditions.

[00:02:15] Ashkenazi herbalism was written to reconcile this gap and is the first work in any language

[00:02:20] to document the herbal practices of Ashkenazi Jews.

[00:02:24] Adam conducted the non-English research for this work, reviewing literature and scholarship

[00:02:29] in Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Polish and Hebrew.

[00:02:34] Here's our conversation.

[00:02:44] Some really looking forward to this conversation about our connection to plants, our connection

[00:02:50] to nature and of course this is something which changes over our life, but I always like

[00:02:56] to really start at the beginning and the environments where people grew up in.

[00:03:03] You both grew up, I believe, in the Northeast North America.

[00:03:07] Can you describe a bit about the environments you grew up and where plants part of your childhood

[00:03:13] and something you noticed or are not really preoccupied with other things?

[00:03:18] Well, definitely preoccupied with all kinds of stuff, but yeah, me, my father, my father,

[00:03:23] my father and I used to go walking in the woods near our house and I grew up in Philadelphia.

[00:03:29] So, if you're familiar at all with that terrain, it's like I like to describe it like a

[00:03:35] lot of little villages that are kind of strung together in a big forest and Philadelphia

[00:03:43] even though it's a big city.

[00:03:44] It's got lots of little pockets of woods and parks and you can walk for miles and really

[00:03:53] not see a car and just kind of be in the woods.

[00:03:56] And so we my dad, we still like to walk our dog and the woods and he's loved to go take us

[00:04:02] for drives.

[00:04:03] So yeah, I spent a lot of time in nature and around plants and just some of my favorite memories

[00:04:11] or those.

[00:04:12] Did you want to say that?

[00:04:14] I will teach my group in the exact same part of the world.

[00:04:21] I certainly enjoyed being outside.

[00:04:24] I wasn't particularly plant-focused although I had a very keen sense for trees for some

[00:04:32] reason.

[00:04:33] I was also really good at triadification that was important to me and climbing them too.

[00:04:39] And there was the, I mean, the aromatic domain of plants was something that I must have taken

[00:04:50] in very deeply because even now there are, I go back east or I'll smell something and

[00:04:55] I'll, it'll remind me intensely of childhood that sort of pristine effect like you berries,

[00:05:02] poor stuff, the chestnut trees, certain types of pine sap.

[00:05:06] Yeah, so I mean it was all around us but I wouldn't say that either one of us personally

[00:05:10] not, I wasn't particularly immersed in plant war when I was young.

[00:05:17] Yeah, I love just the notion to talk about aromatic plants and plant smells when I come back

[00:05:25] to Australia, as soon as I arrive at the airport and come out like it's so fragrant and

[00:05:30] Australia with Jasmine and Francia Pannie, it plantings there.

[00:05:35] If the heat carries it in a different way but it always makes me feel like I'm back yet and

[00:05:40] thank you. I love hearing those stories because I'm from not too far that same kind of

[00:05:45] care-litty and mixed deciduous forest region and I love detour at how you described it as

[00:05:50] this of villages in the forest. It's that continued. There's a border there but it's all the same

[00:05:57] the same natural area. Yeah, I mean it's something that I always living here in Northern California.

[00:06:04] I mean it's beautiful but it's not the same as being back east and I often like

[00:06:09] just long to be back there, you know and like kind of like humid kind of sweltering kind of lush

[00:06:17] environment. Yeah it's beautiful here too but it's a different kind of environment for sure.

[00:06:24] Well yeah it's dry I mean that's very, it certainly is. It's just so

[00:06:29] dang. I mean there's this fresh water everywhere and it just seeps out of everything.

[00:06:35] And I especially love the spring in the summer. Like the early spring you know when everything

[00:06:40] like the almost like steaming, you know it's life and just just that I don't know it just had a

[00:06:48] just a invigorating smell and feeling about it to come out of them. snow and just just see all this

[00:06:58] life happening you know or just suddenly it's kind of I don't know every year was I get miracle.

[00:07:05] But yeah it's bliss I still think that's what I'm like happiness to me is still spring in on

[00:07:14] terriot and just the feeling of everything waking up and even just the colors like how vibrant

[00:07:20] greeners the greens are different and all the oh no the freshness of the baby leaps and the baby

[00:07:26] grass they change over this season. And I wanted to yeah cross cross the Atlantic now

[00:07:34] and talk about the paleic subtle settlement and this is a place in a region that you've done

[00:07:40] a lot of time thinking about and researching with Ashkenazi herbalism which we'll talk about

[00:07:46] and I guess the paleic settlement is a bit of a historic place what what is that and where where is it?

[00:07:55] Yeah I mean the paleic settlement is really just a sort of an administrative border that was applied

[00:08:03] to those parts of the old Russian Empire you know the 19th century and in the early 20th

[00:08:09] century Russian Empire were Jews you know were allowed Eastern European Jews were permitted to live

[00:08:15] because they'd all they'd been living there for hundreds of years beyond the line

[00:08:21] into other parts of Russia they were discouraged or prohibited from settling but

[00:08:26] within that that region and the region corresponded corresponds for the most part to

[00:08:35] what today is you know a huge chunks of you know the fallen countries Latvia, Lithuania,

[00:08:41] and Bielarussia, Poland, Ukraine and Moldova and some I hopefully nobody

[00:08:50] could take will tell me that I forgot you know forgot I don't think I forgot anything but they

[00:08:56] are that's sorry yeah no maybe a teeny little sliver of Romania but yeah so it's basically anywhere

[00:09:02] from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and that's sort of the home land the home territory of

[00:09:11] Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews from you know say the for the for a thousand years or so

[00:09:17] the hundred two thousand years and that is that where your Ashkenazi families are from

[00:09:22] yeah um my family on my mom's side is from Poland the biggest town around there is Zamosh

[00:09:33] and my dad's family is from Belarus and Ukraine around Kiev and what about you

[00:09:42] my my dad's family are are from Poland, Poland, Lithuania just north of Warsaw and on the post

[00:09:50] current post Lithuania border and and Phelnias have you ever been there or any plans to go

[00:09:57] you've been there in your mind you've been there in research haven't been we've had a couple of

[00:10:02] two trips that have been scuttled for you know variety of every season over the last

[00:10:08] year we were used to go unfortunately my mom passed away and we had the cancel our trip

[00:10:15] so we're hoping that in spring we'll be able to get out there anything you'll have your

[00:10:23] your field guide with you and and DTR you turn to herbalism after a career as a research

[00:10:29] library and was this something that you're wanting to do for a long a long time what inspired

[00:10:34] you to to take that dive um well I've been kind of around the idea of herbalism since I guess

[00:10:42] I was a teenager and my stepmother kind of introduced me to to herbalism when I was a teenager

[00:10:49] and then I kind of got more into it as a young adult um I bought my first book probably in the 80s

[00:10:57] it was like a German herbal and um so I made some things from the recipes in that book like I

[00:11:04] made a sleeping pillow I made some cheese and I just was really fascinated by it and then you know

[00:11:10] I mean I focused on being a librarian but always I always had a garden but I always loved having

[00:11:17] plant around and so finally you know when I had the chance yeah I was very excited to jump in

[00:11:24] and study it more formally I actually I really didn't realize like what I was getting myself into

[00:11:32] even though it was overwhelming I just totally like stuck to it it was like I was obsessed with it

[00:11:38] and I just I could not I could not learn enough and I don't know it's it's interesting I mean

[00:11:44] I hadn't really thought about it this way but you know for so much of my life I had all

[00:11:49] and had this kind of like longing that I could never really like put words to and I really couldn't

[00:11:54] identify it and it was kind of the spinoid thing at me and I always thought well if I could just

[00:12:00] too art you know that would you know satisfy this longing and so I did art for a long time in

[00:12:07] fact I got my undergraduate degree in art studio and yet I never was able to you know overcome

[00:12:12] that feeling until I went to herb school and started really in earnest studying plant medicine

[00:12:21] and I have not had that feeling since then I love that I think there really is a patience to

[00:12:28] this study of plants and I can really identify to them you know when you start learning about

[00:12:34] then everything opens up to you what you what you don't know and there's so much to learn on that journey

[00:12:41] and you can't really engage with what you're not knowledgeable in and then when it starts

[00:12:45] unfolding it's really life life long there yeah it's just it's like a never ending exactly yeah

[00:12:55] it's amazing and remains mysterious but that's part of the like wonder of it you know is

[00:13:02] mystery that you'll never know and yet you know you can still

[00:13:07] engage with it and like just I don't know kind of I don't know it's a relationship right yeah

[00:13:17] it's definitely a relationship yeah and when we spoke previously you told me about your earliest

[00:13:25] plant memory and that being in early exercise that you did in your journey into herbalism can you

[00:13:32] can you tell me about that oh that was kind of a more recent thing I mean when I think about like

[00:13:38] the earliest memories the plants so in some of the part kind of a little woo you know I'm

[00:13:44] now I'm talking about like um smells and aromas and I just remember the scent of like

[00:13:50] lilacs and I remember being a little kid in finding lilacs and taking the flowers and you know

[00:13:56] if you suck on that back end of a lilac flower it's it tastes like honey you know

[00:14:02] and I remember doing that a lot as a kid and I just love the scent of lilacs and honey suckles

[00:14:09] and I just you know those are kind of my earliest flower memories and I remember walking to school

[00:14:15] and feeling very protected by these giant plain trees in Philadelphia and just feeling like they

[00:14:22] were my grandparents you know and they were very protective of me as I walked to school

[00:14:28] and then so I I was thought those were my earliest memories but recently probably the last year I

[00:14:33] did this exercise that a local um american herbalist in camming would make bride put like an exercise

[00:14:42] out for people to do and she sort of it was like a guided meditation and so I thought oh this

[00:14:49] this could be interesting and I just really didn't I didn't know what I would get it I it was to see

[00:14:55] what your earliest plant memory was and so I kind of went through it and this like vision kind of came

[00:15:03] into my mind's eye of like this of a violet not not a violet but a pansy and it was just the most

[00:15:12] amazing thing because it was it was surprising but also so familiar like I kind of almost remember

[00:15:19] looking at a pansy really close up and seeing all these colors kind of merged together and it

[00:15:25] was like a burgundy with a black interior with a like a yellow center and just those just with

[00:15:32] the gradations of the colors and it's just like it just blew me away that you know this it must have

[00:15:39] been a really really early memory that I had of looking very closely at a pansy and I remember

[00:15:45] the smell of pansies they have a really distinctive scent and it's very subtle but it's beautiful

[00:15:53] yeah and was that surprising to you for that image to to conjure up of that yeah it was it was so

[00:16:01] it was completely surprising but at the same time it was like it was so familiar it was

[00:16:08] new and familiar at the same time like I had seen it in my mind's eye a long long time ago

[00:16:14] and there it was again just kind of revealing itself again so so nice

[00:16:24] and what is herbalism that practice? If I were going to define it on a personal level it's

[00:16:33] kind of like having that relationship with the plant world in a way to heal I guess heal is a word but

[00:16:45] to interact with your body in a way to bring it into balance if it's out of balance like if

[00:16:54] you have a pain or a wound or a nervous condition that's an off the cuff definitions yeah

[00:17:06] well it's yeah a relationship with plants and healing you know goes back as long as as long

[00:17:13] as we do and certainly has changed so much over time with where you are in the world and

[00:17:18] you know across cultures and thinking about healing did you have any plant healing traditions

[00:17:25] in your family? Well I when I think back on some things that my family did I can think back

[00:17:33] to my grandmother who always had raspberry jam on the table was rib rib and unsolton butter

[00:17:41] so it wasn't specifically a healing tradition in terms of fixing something but it was definitely

[00:17:48] like a food culture with that particular plant which you know having studied herbalism in the

[00:17:55] pale settlement you know I I can now connect those two things the healing properties of raspberry

[00:18:03] with my grandmother's very insistent choice of raspberry jam and she always got it with seeds

[00:18:10] my mom when we were sick always gave us tea with lemon and honey and um one of the another

[00:18:16] thing that she did that was I found later um was when we like bumped our heads she would take like

[00:18:23] the flat side of a butter knife and put it on the bump and I always thought well that's weird I

[00:18:29] guess everybody does but it is a specific healing modality for um I don't know if it was just

[00:18:38] Jews but people in Eastern Europe to either take like a flat metal object like a knife or a coin

[00:18:46] and press it into the bump so that's not really a early remedy it is kind of a folk remedy

[00:18:53] that my mom used to do and those two that I can think of off the top of my hand so speak

[00:19:01] and can you can you tell me about your your book Ashkenazi herbalism? It's definitely like

[00:19:13] a labor of love and a combination of art or interest and talent and it came about please

[00:19:21] you know I was in school um and we were encouraged students were encouraged to talk about their

[00:19:28] ancestral healing practices and everybody just about everyone in my class could couple something you

[00:19:34] know so people came up with ginger some people came up with lemon people had answers to this

[00:19:42] question and I really couldn't think of anything except for like the tea with lemon honey and so

[00:19:47] but I really thought well if I do a little bit of research I'm of course I'm gonna find something

[00:19:52] you know because Jews are so like in too medicine and they're so much written about their history

[00:19:57] prior to the world war but when you know and I figured oh I'll find tons of stuff I'm a librarian

[00:20:02] you know that's what I do well when I started to look I couldn't find anything and uh somebody else

[00:20:08] in my class who was similar background she goes well you know at least we had chicken soup and

[00:20:14] I just thought well yeah that's true I like chicken soup too and you know my parents or my mom

[00:20:20] gave us chicken soup when we were sick and and other times and it's a prenatal favorite but I couldn't

[00:20:26] believe that that was all there was and so the book is basically an evidence that I just could not

[00:20:35] stop researching until I found something that was a little bit more definitive because I knew my heart

[00:20:43] that you know they're had to be of plant legacy of healers in the pale of settlement it just it

[00:20:51] didn't seem right to me that that couldn't be the case and so you know took a lot of creative

[00:20:57] digging and searching in languages other than English and that's when Adam became a really

[00:21:05] crucial part of the research and he couldn't kind of feel you and his part yeah we um we you know

[00:21:14] we you know detra had sort of discovered you know something a resettist stone that you know documented

[00:21:23] you know albeit in a super duper obscure way plant medicinal healing practices by Jews in various

[00:21:32] parts of Ukraine before the Second World War and that was you know basically the lynch pen for

[00:21:40] writing ash tys erbilism and of course you know once you know once she found documentary evidence

[00:21:45] that there were you know towns that were the the plant healing practices associated with communities

[00:21:51] that you know it's a cursory look at um you know that gazetteer again um or the internet would reveal

[00:21:59] where oh these towns are 80% Jewish or these 75% Jewish the informants you know list is

[00:22:05] artistically likely or highly likely to have been to have been Jewish you know before before the

[00:22:09] the Second World War oh Adam's talking about a book that I had been relying on for plant

[00:22:18] medicinal information it's I used three books mainly to look at the people that I figured my

[00:22:24] families would have lived around and one was a Russian herbal one was a Polish herbal

[00:22:30] both in English and then the third one was this obscure paper that was published by the New York

[00:22:36] Botanical Society uh in the 1950s and it's called herps used in Ukrainian folk medicine and I just

[00:22:45] assumed that it was about ethnic Ukrainians but I knew there's something really weird about them

[00:22:50] because it was organized very not erratically but not in a way that I would have organized

[00:22:55] it was in Kravies yeah so it was very eccentric but I mean I've come to find out that you know

[00:23:00] it was probably organized in a way that was kind of familiar to the to the author who had come

[00:23:05] from Ukraine and so I decided at one point kind of far along my studies that I wanted to know more about

[00:23:13] the people who were reporting to this survey it was a survey of Ukrainian folk medicine that was

[00:23:19] done between the first World War and the Second World War but it was completely anonymized and I

[00:23:25] figured if I can't know about the people there are a couple anecdotes in the book but nothing like

[00:23:30] concrete so I figured well she did report where these informants lived but it was organized in such

[00:23:37] way that you couldn't really tell from the bulk of the text you had to go through this appendix

[00:23:44] which I hadn't really paid much attention to so I thought well if I can't figure out who the people are

[00:23:50] from the writing maybe I can learn a little bit about the towns where she was getting her

[00:23:54] informants so when I went back to the appendix to look for it I started to just look the towns up

[00:24:01] in on the internet and every time I looked at town up the first hit that I got was this website called

[00:24:08] Jewish Jen which is a Jewish genealogical site and I had done some genealogy with some

[00:24:13] cousins of mine so I thought it was really weird that you know these Ukrainian towns were coming

[00:24:18] up as these Jewish status basically and so that was kind of my first breakthrough and so I spent

[00:24:28] a really long time picking that book apart geographically by the plants and I did a lot of like

[00:24:36] demographic work I built a couple of spreadsheets based on the plants and where they were located

[00:24:42] and so that was what Adam and I came to call what he named the hidden herbal because really it

[00:24:50] is herbal within an herbal and so I guess that kind of sums up that book and that is kind of the

[00:24:56] heart of Ashkenazi herbalism and the thing is I ended up writing my final paper in my class on on my

[00:25:06] findings but I didn't know what to do after that because I thought God if I am interested in this

[00:25:13] this is important to me there must be other people who would be interested in this so I wrote

[00:25:19] an article and it was published in the American herbalist's Guild and then I realized you know

[00:25:27] I'm kind of shy and I didn't really it doesn't come naturally to put myself out there but I thought

[00:25:34] I have to do this I have to make myself write a book that other people will find

[00:25:40] exciting and useful for their own lives and so that's that's where Ashkenazi herbalism came out of just

[00:25:46] that that you know just the realization that I had to you know make this more accessible to people

[00:25:52] because it's it's basically impossible yeah it's an amazing piece of research too and how

[00:26:00] long was that research period for you was that over a few years or oh it was probably three years

[00:26:08] three years of role yeah to put it together and I mean I should also you know say Adam has

[00:26:16] not only does he has a background in linguistics and speaks just about all the languages that we

[00:26:23] had to cover and he has a lot of knowledge in the background in the history of that region so

[00:26:30] he who's like totally instrumental I could not have done this without his input I mean it's both

[00:26:36] of our books and what Adam like the plants when they're introduced in the book they're introduced

[00:26:41] with their names and a few different languages what how many languages did you work with in the book

[00:26:47] and what anything interesting about the the names oh boy yeah so we like we tried to make sure

[00:26:54] yeah that there was a law theory for the plant you know the folk names for plants in all

[00:27:00] languages of the region the glossary should include the the yetish name if we could find it

[00:27:07] the Hebrew name the Russian name the Ukrainian name the Polish name the Lithuanian name and the German

[00:27:15] name which is often a control for the yetish name and and then of course the the tax taxonomic

[00:27:22] and it's common name in English and it's funny because herbs using Ukrainian folk medicine is

[00:27:28] basically you know the project of somebody who was herself a lexacography she wasn't an herbalist the author

[00:27:34] of the book she was sort of an anthropotentic oloxicographer and her job was to go around

[00:27:39] these plant surveys and the Soviet Union and record the local folk names for the various plants you

[00:27:45] know mallow's then it asterisk and oaks and piavila pionic clover you know et cetera and

[00:27:55] oh there is you know it's I've we've come to really value that that kind of work you know

[00:28:04] is incredibly important because you get a real sense for how essential a given plant is

[00:28:11] to the life of the community by the number of names or the way or or the names that it goes

[00:28:17] by yeah and there's because there's a lot of information that is in a lot of those names

[00:28:23] too right like I'm thinking about language and Latin you know it's the plant by the river

[00:28:28] or the plant with a lot of hair or plant discovered by himself but where there are a lot of healing

[00:28:34] healing information in the names yeah totally you know there's a there's a book by

[00:28:40] another lexicographer more to shift or call plant names in the it is and

[00:28:46] in dethrouf went through all what 2000s like 1500 yeah 1500 plants about in that book and I

[00:28:54] I've been and just recorded I made three different spreads she it's like 500 plants in each and just

[00:29:05] trying to hear languages and just notes on the plants and there you know locations and

[00:29:13] it's just I don't know his book that that's an amazing book and you know I'm so thankful that it

[00:29:19] exists I would love to be able to see his archive one of these days but yeah yeah but for instance

[00:29:27] I mean he records plants that have there's a a term in in the English and Hebrew called a refoa

[00:29:33] a remedy literally means remedy so there's a lot of plants whose yetish moment includes the word refoa

[00:29:41] it's a refoa plant which means it's where we're here to tell you it's got medicinal

[00:29:47] properties that are really important to us and that may be a name that's not showing up in

[00:29:53] you know one of their neighbor the neighboring terms like the Polish name or the Ukrainian

[00:29:57] name of the germinate no the yetish names says so that you that you know that the Ashkenazi Jewish

[00:30:02] community with that plant was seen as a really really crucial component in the local

[00:30:10] plant material and medical so just things like that are our help guide help guide the research the

[00:30:16] ongoing research and how many how many plants did you end up including in the in the book

[00:30:24] and how did how do you decide which ones um in that book there are 26 plants the plants that

[00:30:31] made it into the book were had the highest usage in the towns in herbs used in Ukrainian

[00:30:40] folk medicine with the highest Jewish populations in 1926 so that was the basic criteria and

[00:30:49] there are a couple in there that don't fall under that category one of those would be not

[00:30:55] Meg because we were it's part of a formula and we were both intrigued by this formula

[00:31:03] I wanted to know what the history was how did not Meg get into these towns you know at the

[00:31:10] beginning of the 20th century so that was kind of an attempt to trace that path of you know

[00:31:16] that how the how the plant got there I mean I was just oh surprised and that's kind of like a

[00:31:22] story that's to be continued in our next book that we're working on now we're looking at at least

[00:31:30] 100 plants for our next book a hundred wow yeah I mean we've lost count as point but yeah I mean

[00:31:40] not all of them are gonna have the lengthy stories associated with them but um we're we're hoping

[00:31:46] to do at least 25 kind of longer profiles I love that it's a story of course about plants but

[00:31:53] about culture and practice and also migration too something that I really loved about the book you

[00:32:00] know a lot of these these plants are also naturalized in North America is looking at a lot of

[00:32:06] their origins a lot of the Murph from Newurasia and North Africa but they've traveled with people all

[00:32:13] and that was really I wish when I was you know stomping around on teria that I knew some of these

[00:32:20] stories about these plants and not just oh there's Chickery a weed or St. John's Ward or the

[00:32:26] stories out each of them could fill a book too I was really interested to see horse-style in there too

[00:32:31] it's never something that I would have thought of as being medicinal yeah I mean in modern

[00:32:38] or contemporary herbalism people look to it because of its high mineral content and just for

[00:32:45] uh your anary tract issues okay thing and do you do you work with many of the plants in your own

[00:32:53] practice that that are in Ashkenazi herbalism I tend to have the ones that I rely on more than others

[00:33:02] I would say the ones that I'm working with now a days they're not the ones in Ashkenazi

[00:33:09] herbalism because for that book I was concentrating more on the findings that we had come across

[00:33:18] and thersignificant in the towns and you know I've had some criticism about the book being

[00:33:24] not personal enough and I guess that is a short coming people do want to read about your own

[00:33:31] personal connections and you know I'm I'm doing a little bit more of that with this upcoming

[00:33:37] book but I mean I do work with violet and that is in Ashkenazi herbalism of raspberry for sure

[00:33:47] on strawberry definitely I do yellow but not for the the reasons that it's in the book definitely

[00:33:55] seen on sport mallows I love mallow so I do work with a lot of them you know and it's an

[00:34:04] incredible work doing exactly that uncovering an eloster or severed cultural knowledge

[00:34:12] and I was I was wondering what's been the the impact on the Jewish community have you had

[00:34:18] a lot of people reaching out to you or sharing other stories or research with you oh yeah

[00:34:25] definitely yeah we get a lot of just people who just love the book and they're just very excited

[00:34:31] about having these severed connections reconnected a lot of people are like teaching the book

[00:34:38] or practicing from you know some of the plants that are in the book and it's really exciting to see

[00:34:44] that on Instagram to get emails from people and it's just been really hardwarming some people

[00:34:50] like people say it's changed their lives which is really just like I don't know it really is

[00:34:55] touching yeah so we've got a lot a lot of positive feedback and it's been really exciting and

[00:35:01] I've joined there's the the Jewish farmers network here in the US they reached out to us I think

[00:35:07] right after the book was published and since then there's been like a subgroup called Jewish herbalists

[00:35:13] that's on a listserv and that meets regularly and I try to attend those meetings as much as possible

[00:35:20] last time we spoke you talked about the impact that it had on you I mean it's changed the course

[00:35:25] of your research you've put a lot of time into it has it kind of healed you in a way or what

[00:35:31] what has it meant for for you to work on this is there anything that you would have anticipated

[00:35:37] when you started it yeah definitely like I said I mean the one piece that I mentioned was just

[00:35:44] this like longing you know that I've kind of lived with my whole life and then being more involved

[00:35:50] with herbalism just that just sort of disappeared you know I really don't have that I can't even

[00:35:57] explain it but you know it's just like a missing piece in my life was just kind of like a puzzle

[00:36:02] piece just kind of founded you know I just feel so much more content and also you know I've

[00:36:08] was not raised religiously so I I really am very ignorant about Judaism but I've always felt

[00:36:16] culturally Jewish and at the same time I've always kind of felt like an outsider like I had you know

[00:36:22] no real connection and it always kind of made me feel weird and just sort of left out and yet at

[00:36:29] the same time I wasn't interested in the religions I don't know I guess I had all these contradictory

[00:36:34] feelings but having researched all this and found all this history and these people who these

[00:36:41] healers that have never really been acknowledged or honored it's just really given me just a way

[00:36:48] of feeling Jewish without having to be religious it's kind of an odd it's it's hard to describe but

[00:36:55] it's just really given me more of a grounding so to speak in in my identity and just feeling good

[00:37:03] about not having to be religious to feel like a cultural identity yeah no definitely in the practice

[00:37:12] and their tradition and connecting to to those cultural traditions and how people lived and what they

[00:37:19] did and how they heal exactly yeah just how they were connected with their community within their

[00:37:26] community and outside of their community too and it's just really just like kind of like an inner

[00:37:32] feeling of connectedness and and how about for you Adam did you know what you were getting yourself into

[00:37:40] it's been fun for I mean in a lot of ways I mean I mean I come at it I guess not quite at an angle but

[00:37:47] I mean I've been just as Deetra's been sort of immersed this love of plants and the natural

[00:37:53] role in plant healing and felt drawn to it and finally felt completed to a certain degree once

[00:37:58] herbal medicine you know became kind of sort of practical practicing life I have had this very

[00:38:04] long standing engagement with the languages you know language and culture of Eastern Europe my own roots

[00:38:10] are there as well and my own life experiences has sort of involved me from a very early age with with you

[00:38:18] know Eastern European languages and literatures you know for since I was you know like 18 years old

[00:38:23] and it's really fun for me to sort of cycle back to concept you know I mean a lot of

[00:38:31] it sort of scholarly stuff but this this sort of having like here's a a slavic phallologist that

[00:38:38] I last encountered when I was taking a class as an undergraduate decades ago and oh it turns out

[00:38:43] that he wrote about this stuff too look here's this you know his field notes from ethnographic research

[00:38:49] he conducted in Ukraine the 1890s you know there's like enough it doesn't mean these guys and I first

[00:38:53] encountered him as linguists you know in early 1990s you know when I was in college and now I find myself

[00:38:59] reading them again but with completely different perspective and that makes me feel not so wacky is

[00:39:07] a researcher because I'm you know I'm just dipping back into the same well that's of a holistic

[00:39:14] line of inquiry that's and it's fun it's so I again it's also a very and I love I love finding

[00:39:21] little proposals and little mysteries and trying to solve them at least in it you know not too long

[00:39:27] time it's like to us it was kind of amazing these things that we're both interested in kind of

[00:39:33] came together in this book and it's just like it's you know both of our talents and interests

[00:39:40] and they just kind of coalescing to this thing including the librarian piece I mean the linguistics

[00:39:46] librarian the plants and the names and just the whole thing in the geography and the history and

[00:39:53] our own background and it just came together in this beautiful way that I don't know it's hard to believe

[00:39:59] that it never happened before but I can kind of understand why nobody ever did this because it's just

[00:40:06] so complex and again my teacher said like life affirming to have like this shared project that

[00:40:13] we both find utterly gripping and engrossing and at the same time have these sort of complimentary

[00:40:18] things that we bring the bear on it it's great yeah it was waiting for you excited

[00:40:24] good exciting yeah every day is fun you know we just get started working on some problem

[00:40:31] whatever the problem of the day is today's problem was is it trifle him or try polium

[00:40:37] how planned is this hot Cohen is talking about it's linden it's a yeah linden is definitely a

[00:40:43] linden it's a plant that he caused we thought it was trifle him which of course is could be a

[00:40:48] clover but I think it might be this early modern Hebrew or an F so maybe it's try polium

[00:40:53] which actually is you know but there's the second name for a lot of plants there's an asteroid try

[00:40:58] polium and but he says then there's this weird gloss and Hebrew meaning meaning like you know

[00:41:03] something like linden a tilia a linden yeah and then it gives a bunch of names for linden that are

[00:41:09] like in our we've three yeah Turkish and the Asheratry right it's very interesting yeah

[00:41:17] and you can't go back and ask can you yeah so there's something I wanted to ask kind of backtracking

[00:41:25] a little bit about the the book but what is there kind of an overview of the ways that Ashkenazi

[00:41:32] communities used herbalism and used the plants? Well I guess that's complicated because there

[00:41:39] were different kinds of healers you could break it down by professional versus folk or by women healers

[00:41:46] versus men healers I would say different kinds of skills. That's own set of verses midwife. That's true

[00:41:53] medic versus physician and then there's like a magical healing versus practical yeah it's definitely

[00:42:02] I don't know that you can generalize probably I did read somewhere and I've never been able to find it

[00:42:08] again but generally speaking people looked at teas and decoctions and infusions for remedies

[00:42:16] and also poltuses, saves, things like that and a lot of incantations in the woo section

[00:42:24] and rituals and superstitions a lot of superstition a lot of superstition around fear around the

[00:42:32] evil eye substances like iron things like that so it kind of really ran the gamut from like very

[00:42:39] kind of superstitious and magical to very practical and scientific and a lot of these plants

[00:42:46] were used by the Jewish communities also the ethnic Ukrainians also at different times

[00:42:53] Greek the knowledge of these uses I guess came from so many different cultures and times and practice

[00:43:01] all of that is true and wherever Ashkenazi lived they were definitely communicating

[00:43:09] and working with people from all the cultures they lived around and people shared their knowledge

[00:43:15] and they shared their healing and they took care of each other to what is saying it's not said

[00:43:19] yeah it's there's I mean one of the things that we're working on now for the next book is to show

[00:43:24] just what I'm a launch you know these folk healing cultures of Eastern Europe or in this

[00:43:29] this region where where you really you know have communities that up until 19

[00:43:34] the late 1930s were sometimes you know had a perfect balance you know like these villages or towns that are

[00:43:40] one-third Jewish one-third Polish one-third Ukrainian and we can find you know this evidence of research

[00:43:47] that was conducted they you know they really had some you know divisions of labor and sometimes

[00:43:52] like there was a Jewish movement life that people went to and there was a christian midwife the people went to

[00:43:56] and there they didn't there was no it wasn't segregated by religion some parts of like Lithuania

[00:44:02] you go to see the depending on what the religion your healer was they may be better at treating

[00:44:07] respiratory ailments or digestive ailments and so you'd have to go you know you wouldn't distinguish

[00:44:12] if you have a respiratory ailment you go see the the Muslim healer and if you have a GI

[00:44:17] problem you go see the Jewish healer it shows every clear evidence of all kinds of things being

[00:44:21] brought by all kinds of people from all different directions be they Western Europe be they

[00:44:25] from the far east be they from India be they from the Middle East Siberia it's just it's really wild

[00:44:33] but the the tirametric and these these little tiny towns that have populations of like

[00:44:39] a thousand people or less and they had they had you know all sorts of they had plants from

[00:44:46] new world plants, East Asian plants, they did everything and knew how to do it on corporate them

[00:44:51] into very complex formulations and they would have moved the plants around to is their evidence

[00:44:57] of that certainly they would have some stuff I mean my tobacco for instance and then I was

[00:45:03] obviously imported there was extensive commercial tobacco plantation you know agriculture in

[00:45:10] especially like in southern Ukraine and you know Maldava so that's a new world of star saqwila

[00:45:15] kind of a quinine the chocolate just distilled spirits was stuff that would not grow in the

[00:45:24] region but had to be imported from like Indonesia like nutmeg and nas and cinnamon from India

[00:45:30] and ginger various kinds of Siberian ginger rodeo there's all sorts of stuff you're just going

[00:45:37] to be blown away when you get the same time there's this huge stock of native yeah I mean like native

[00:45:44] native for the region Molen and Linden it's kind of interesting I mean just other day I was just saying

[00:45:50] to Adam that it's almost like it's just like kind of like this bridge between the East and the West

[00:45:55] actually start to look at it you're like blown away by like what you said the sophistication

[00:46:02] of these plants that a lot of times came along the spice route you know or they were replanted

[00:46:08] you know in different areas because they were used for things like dyes you know and and medicine

[00:46:15] and so here they were making their way from the East to the West and in between here they are

[00:46:21] in the pale cell having a life of their own with the people there who were coming up with

[00:46:27] these formulations that some of them are coming directly from the East and just kind of being

[00:46:34] reformulated because they were imported right there and being bought by the peasant it's just

[00:46:41] amazing I mean I'm totally in articulate because I'm but I'm also overwhelmed by just the amount

[00:46:48] of just amazing stories that we're able to tell now that not been known because they're not

[00:46:54] in English and nobody ever thought they were important enough. Yeah such rich traditions.

[00:47:02] Yeah it's really it's really interesting the ways that we use the plants for our own healing

[00:47:08] do you think the plants are using us too? You've gotten them around who's taking great care of them

[00:47:13] there is different ones that yeah yeah I do I do I think it's a mutual

[00:47:19] mutual relationship because I think about all the plants that have gone from the new world to the

[00:47:25] old world in vice versa and they naturalize you know in these different places and they've been

[00:47:32] able to make their way in ways that they might not have been if it hadn't been for humans. You know

[00:47:39] we've been not just us but I mean just the entire wheel of being that keeps all of life in balance

[00:47:47] and I guess most the time on our better days humans are our positive part of that but sometimes

[00:47:53] I'm pessimistic and I don't feel that way but we are co-dependent. I think I think we need them

[00:48:00] more than they need us for sure you know but they're very very generous and so abundant and just

[00:48:07] they constantly remember to us how there's so much generosity in the world and there's just

[00:48:13] they just keep coming back and keep coming back and this is our lesson to be generous and to

[00:48:18] be giving of ourselves and you know we just we have so much to learn from the plant world just

[00:48:24] so much. I love that sentiment but plants are our generous in ways that we don't even know

[00:48:32] and I did want to talk to you about some of the plants that I think that you are working with

[00:48:36] now in your practice. I know L.A. campaign is a special plant. You can you tell me a little bit

[00:48:43] about L.A. campaign what it looks like where it's from how it's used.

[00:48:51] Yeah L.A. campaign off the top of my head I couldn't tell you exactly where it originated.

[00:48:58] I the first time I saw it was in the UK and I was just totally in transpired it's very tall

[00:49:05] it's very statuesque and graceful. It has huge leaves that are kind of like lance late shape

[00:49:12] that are dark green on one side and fun white on the other side and it grows to I've grown it here

[00:49:20] in our yard and it's been over six feet tall and it's got these like sequels underneath it

[00:49:25] are very kind of like muscular and then outside of those come these little tiny not tiny but delicate

[00:49:33] long petals strands of yellow like a kind of like a whisk-be sort of dandy lion and so that's

[00:49:42] kind of what the plant looks like if I had to describe it and it's just very elegant beautiful

[00:49:49] but the part that is medicinal at least now and what I've mostly read about and what I myself have

[00:49:56] taken is the root. The root is kind of perennial every year you'll see it it kind of the plant

[00:50:02] dies back and then the root puts itself back into the ground and hibernates but in the spring

[00:50:08] you'll see you'll see these little red sort of like nodules like triangles poking up and that's

[00:50:15] the beginnings of it coming back up but the root I've never dug up our own roots because I

[00:50:21] don't really dig up our plants I tend to buy them already cut and dried and the root I have

[00:50:28] tinctured and take it as a tincture and I've heard it described as peppery mud tasting I don't

[00:50:35] describe it that way but I think it has kind of a seizure like flavor in the past it's been made

[00:50:41] into candy for children if you like a sweet spicyish sort of taste it's a little spicy like ginger

[00:50:49] but like I said it kind of has a seedery more of a seedery flavor and it's always been talked about

[00:50:55] as something to help alleviate coughs that is definitely how I have experienced it in fact my

[00:51:03] own personal experience has been when I was in school I remember one day I started to get a cold

[00:51:09] and I got this cough that just was like a tickle that just irritates your throat and then you can't

[00:51:15] coughing and you can't sleep but I had that for like two days but in those two days I was like

[00:51:20] kind of in days and kind of walking around and chanting a word to myself that I wasn't really

[00:51:26] conscious of and when I became conscious of the word I realized that what I was chanting was the name

[00:51:31] L. campaign L. campaign and I thought oh maybe I'll try some of that because I had some samples from

[00:51:38] my class so I tried a couple of drops in that night I had the most deep sleep I didn't

[00:51:46] cough and when I woke up I had this weird memory of having been like held like a baby all night

[00:51:53] and my cough was basically gone and my cold was pretty much gone after that and so I've often recommended

[00:52:02] just a few drops in a little bit of water for anybody who has a dry irritating cough and I

[00:52:10] gave it to Adam a couple of years ago and I didn't tell him about the feeling that I had when I woke

[00:52:16] up he had the same feeling after he took it and I'm not sensitive so I just I love L. campaign so much

[00:52:27] beautiful yeah I wish I I knew that about it and I was looking it up it's from native to

[00:52:32] your age I in Spain so it's one of those plants that's naturalized in North America brought by

[00:52:38] people for these reasons exactly and I wanted to ask you another one to another one um yeah I

[00:52:44] can't tell me about mallet and you were talking a bit about how you how you use it and how we

[00:52:50] need it or yeah I definitely mullin probably falls into the category of the respiratory herbs

[00:53:00] especially like in modern western herbalism and it definitely has the ability to

[00:53:07] adry cough I've also found it to be really really relaxing and if I'm agitated at the doll I can just

[00:53:16] take a few drops of mullin and I just really kind of like smooth out it's it's a beautiful plan

[00:53:21] it lives for two years it starts out as like a little fuzzy rosette you know on the ground and

[00:53:28] in its second year it grows a stock and it will grow this stock I've seen it grow over six feet tall

[00:53:36] in our yard I actually grow kind of near our campaign it reduces yellow flowers that kind of pop

[00:53:44] out like popcorn you know not all the same time but like intermittently and the flowers can be

[00:53:50] dried into olive oil and made into like a mullin oil and we strain them out and you can use that

[00:53:57] for ear aches and then I have never done this hurt from different colleagues that the root

[00:54:05] and possibly this dock as well can be tinctured and you can take that tincture for um chronic

[00:54:12] back pain and it produces an incredible seeds unbelievable like millions of seeds will come out

[00:54:20] of mullin plant and especially here in possibly in Australia it's a good plant to have around

[00:54:27] for fire season yeah what is that oh for breathing you know people have a hard time breathing

[00:54:33] and mullin can really help support your lungs if you're having a lot of smoke in the air

[00:54:39] very very familiar to us here yeah I always have just loved it it was one of those plants you know

[00:54:45] it's hard to articulate but it has like a very friendly welcoming presence to it maybe it's

[00:54:52] a big fuzzy leaves not sure but I always loved it yeah I totally love it in yiddish it's called

[00:55:00] like I think it's a voirous minoirus which is a cemetery candle for cemetery candle laura

[00:55:08] and so I've kind of imagined it as you know something that like lamenters would take into the

[00:55:15] cemetery when they were going to talk to the ancestor because I mean in like British herbalism

[00:55:23] like modgreeve one of the names for it is I think it's candle laura because they would dip it

[00:55:30] in tello and then light it and use it like as a torch but I haven't seen anybody but giddish

[00:55:39] talk about it in terms of a cemetery candle and so I thought that that was really kind of a sweet

[00:55:45] thing to you know have that plant with you when you went to talk to the ancestors

[00:55:52] that's so interesting and I think that is that's exactly the work that you're doing too right

[00:55:58] in reimagining re finding these practices writing Ash canazie herbalism like you are

[00:56:05] connecting to ancestors in a very real way. Exactly I mean you always have to reimagine

[00:56:11] their lives because we haven't really been told anything about these day-to-day just activities

[00:56:19] that people did and you know what do we know about that except what we've seen you know in the movies

[00:56:25] and there are hardly any really that are look at the lives of daily people just it's just so

[00:56:31] rich and colorful textured and the plants almost can help us reimagine the daily lives of our ancestors

[00:56:39] and especially mullin when you think about it being a way to light your light your path you know

[00:56:45] into such a set place as you know cemetery just to bring that warmth and coosiness with you

[00:56:53] and you have spoken a little bit about it so far but wanted I have one last question for you just

[00:56:58] about your your garden and can you paint the picture of your your garden and the story of your

[00:57:04] garden oh boys and mess right now covered with leaves covered with leaves we have a an old

[00:57:12] walnut tree that just kind of lost all of its leaves so um i need to kind of break a path through

[00:57:18] there but we've got mullins growing in elo campaign and mother ward in leavenbomb

[00:57:26] and um mince all kind of mince and for vervane and sages and a fig tree and a lemon tree

[00:57:36] and an orange tree and all of tree and a fruit tree. This yard is about the size of a MacBook Pro.

[00:57:46] And I try different plants just to see if they'll if they'll have me and entertain being here a

[00:57:52] couple of other are the meesia yeah even tried nettle right here desert it's like i it was very

[00:57:59] happy i keep it very yeah it did really well at times of seeds in fact i had to take a couple

[00:58:04] nettle plants out it did so well it's very happy as long as it gets watered and has some shade oh

[00:58:11] and lots of fun yeah yeah lots of violet lots of violet yeah it's actually it's my birth flower

[00:58:20] it was here what we moved here and it's just kind of like stuck around and you know found new little

[00:58:27] niches for itself and it grows around the persimmon tree and it grows right next to these strawberries

[00:58:33] and the nettles and it just seems really content yeah gardens are so experimental and you said

[00:58:41] if they'll have you like they they will let you know it doesn't it takes time to learn what can grow

[00:58:47] if it's happy you're working for plants again keeping them happy and that you you gift seeds or

[00:58:54] you've been gifted some of the plants it's a bit um you you share plants but we have

[00:59:00] yeah i try and i try and um give people as many seeds as i can because it's so important to have

[00:59:06] these plants around i forgot to mention the marshmallow i just held it back oh and the elder the

[00:59:13] elder we have an elder it's so prolific it's just like i every year we we like marvel at just how

[00:59:22] abundant one little tiny postage stamp of soil will be if you're just you know just a little

[00:59:30] bit like kind to it it's amazing it really is

[00:59:45] that was my conversation earlier this year with teacher Cohen and Adam Seagull

[00:59:50] thank you for listening and huge thank you to them for sharing their work

[00:59:54] plankingdom is hosted and produced by me Katherine Polz our music is by Carl Tider

[00:59:59] listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and check out our website at plankingdom.ur