Woven Roots - by Deatra Cohen & Adam Siegel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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 applications

A 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 healers
• Deep, ancestrally rooted traditions of care for land and nature among Ashkenazi Jews
• The rich cultural exchanges among Jews, Muslims, and Christians that allowed life in the Pale to flourish
• Newly discovered recipes
• Enduring legacies of mutual aid and community interdependence
• How long-lost links between Eastern and Western folk knowledge can shed new light on your heritage and ancestral connections
• Traditional magical practices of the Ashkenazim

This 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.

Review Quotes

"Impressive in scope, fascinating in detail, this compendium of stories and heretofore lost knowledge is a genuine contribution to our herbal libraries."
--ROBIN ROSE BENNETT, herbalist and author of The Gift of Healing Herbs

"A must-read for anyone interested in traditional herbal remedies."
--PAUL ROBERT MAGOCSI, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto and author of Historical Atlas of Central Europe

"This book is a remedy, one I will keep on the altar of my kitchen table and return to again and again."
--DORI MIDNIGHT, community care practitioner, herbalist, and ritual leader

"Marvelous ... a rich picture of little-known healing practices and folk beliefs."
--MAX DASHU, founder and director of the Suppressed Histories Archives and author of Witches and Pagans

"This botanical atlas of Eastern Europe is also an encyclopedia of folk medicine and a testament to the many connections between the cultures that inhabited the region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.... A fascinating journey."
--MAREK TUSZEWICKI, deputy director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków and author of A Frog Under the Tongue

"[This book illuminates] some ways in which our diverse practices have always served and continue to serve our personal health and well-being and contribute to the much-needed healing of our world."
--JESSE WOLF HARDIN, founder of Animá and editor and publisher of Plant Healer Quarterly

"Woven Roots invites us to cultivate solidarity and recover lost healing wisdom by following the plants."
--YARDEN KATZ, assistant professor of American culture at the University of Michigan and author of Artificial Whiteness

"An essential reference for magical practitioners and those interested in the folk history of Eastern Europe and the important role of Jewish people in this history.... You will find, as I do, that this is a reference that you will return to again and again."
--MADAME PAMITA, Ukrainian-American witch, teacher, and author of Baba Yaga's Book of Witchcraft

"Woven Roots opens the door to an unexpected interface of Jewish folklife, healing practices, and the generous natural world that surrounded the Jews of this place and time."
--EDDY PORTNOY, academic advisor and director of exhibitions at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and author of Bad Rabbi

"Woven Roots sets a high bar and an example for other scholars to follow and will influence generations of herbalists, writers, and researchers to come."
--NAOMI SPECTOR, ethnoherbalist and author of The Jewish Book of Flowers

"A vital contribution to the understanding of our diasporic and syncretic herbal tradition."
--BRUNEM WARSHAW, clinical herbalist and cocreator of the Ashkenazi Herbalism workshop series

"A must-read.... In a time of profound collective need for ecosystems of healing, regenerating Jewish plant medicine could not be more crucial."
--DEVORAH BROUS, herbalist, ritualist, and creator of FromSoil2Soul

"A healing balm of a book for divided times.... An essential read as we weave together cultures of healing today."
--BEN LEVINE NAHAR, chief herbalist and cofounder at Rasa and jewishherbalism.com

"Woven Roots is not to be missed, an absolute treasure."
--TAYA SHERE, host of the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast and coauthor of The Hebrew Priestess

About the Author

DEATRA COHEN, co-author of Ashkenazi Herbalism, is a former reference librarian, trained as a clinical herbalist at the Berkeley Herbal Center, co-founded a Western Clinical Herbal collective, and is currently part of a community herbal project. In her research, Cohen is dedicated to recovering the lost or forgotten shared plant healing cultures of Jews and their neighbors in the historic Pale of Settlement.

ADAM SIEGEL, co-author of Ashkenazi Herbalism, is a former research librarian, trained linguist, and award-winning translator. In his research, Siegel explores the symbiosis of plants and peoples in both the Old World and the New.