Ayelet Hashachar and Brunem Warshaw are collaborating to offer a series of online classes exploring Ashkenazi Jewish Herbalism to be offered this Fall 2024! These classes are informed by Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel’s book Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews published in 2024. While these authors have received many requests to offer this material in a live workshop format, they are busy working on their next book and do not have the desire to facilitate online classes. That’s where Ayelet and Brunem come in! Together we bring over a decade of facilitation experience as educators, alongside a wealth of personal and professional experience with Jewish herbalism. Ayelet and Brunem weave together the content of this important book with our shared grounding in anti-Zionist politics and queer trans identity. We aim to support our community in deepening our collective knowledge and practice with our herbal tradition. This series will be both cerebral and experiential with a mixture of lecture, group discussion, and embodied practice with ancestral medicines. Ashkenazi traditions, folk practices, stories, lore, and ways of life contain immense depths of wisdom that we already incorporate into our artistic, intellectual and spiritual lives. While there have been books, media, and other cultural productions documenting Ashkenazi ancestral ways, until Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel’s book Ashkenazi Herbalism, there was no single source that spoke to the ways that Ashkenazim throughout the Pale of Settlement carried the knowledge of the medicinal and healing qualities of plants. This herbal knowledge was and is an integral part of how our communities kept each other alive, well, and safe. While herbalism is a field that has been growing in popularity throughout the mainstream, we do not think that this omission is for no reason. To articulate clearly the ways that our ancestors carried knowledge of healing herbs implies that, despite the antisemitic restrictions of the time, there was a strong relationship between Ashkenazi communities and the bioregional ecosystems where they lived. To spread the wealth of this knowledge that our ancestors carried with them in the lands in which they lived serves to disrupt the false narrative that Ashkenazi Jews were not land-based people, and the dangerous myth that zionism was and is the only path towards earth-based connection for Ashkenazim and Jews of all ethnicities. Knowing how our ancestors oriented towards land and applied holistic healing practices can deeply inform how we continue the legacy of diasporic Jews living in relationship with land, especially with many of us living on stolen land. We need your help to bring this series to life! It’s important to us to be able to offer these classes using a sliding scale model to increase financial accessibility. We also want to affirm a living wage for us, the teachers, who will put many hours into preparing and facilitating this series. Please consider sharing this fundraiser with your people far and wide so that we can collectively resource the creation of this workshop series. No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or promotions are offered in exchange for any donations made to our LFEBridge. Thank you!!! Brunem & Ayelet
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