Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

Book Talk Admission: Free Registration is required. Register

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas. Nevertheless, as new sources of knowledge penetrated the traditional world, modern medical ideas gained widespread support. Jews became court physicians to the nobility, and when the universities were opened up to them, many also qualified as doctors. At every stage, medicine proved an important field for cross-cultural contacts.

In A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe, Marek Tuszewicki studies manuscripts, printed publications, and memoirs to tease out therapeutic advice, recipes, magical incantations, kabbalistic methods, and practical techniques, together with the ethical considerations that such approaches entailed. His research fills a gap in the study of folk medicine in Eastern Europe, shedding light on little-known aspects of Ashkenazi culture, and on how the need to treat sickness brought Jews and their neighbors together.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Tuszewicki about this book, led by cultural critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen.

Buy the book.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

Marek Tuszewicki is a Deputy Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Much of his research and teaching focuses on the language and culture of Ashkenaz, particularly in their relation towards modernity. In 2014, he received a Ph.D. in History from the Jagiellonian University and a year later published the book: A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe (in Polish, later in English). He has also authored numerous articles devoted to Ashkenazi popular and medical culture, translations of Yiddish literature into Polish (including Mendele, Peretz, and Sutzkever) as well as his own book of Yiddish poetry Fun beyde zaytn shpigl.

Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, teacher, playwright and 2022 winner of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper "Dreaming in Yiddish" prize. Since 2017, her "Rokhl’s Golden City” column has appeared monthly in Tablet magazine, covering the length and breadth of Yiddish culture. In October 2023, she taught her first class for the Yiddish Book Center, “Between Heaven and Earth: Yiddish Women's Folklore, Rituals, & Magic.” Since then, her lectures and classes on “everyday Ashkenazi magic” have become a favorite with students around the world. In September 2024, she will teach a new course for the Yiddish Book Center called “Sacred Time and Liminal Space: Ashkenazi Folk Magic at the Threshold.”