Woven Roots: Recovering the Healing Plant Traditions of Jews and Their Neighbors in Eastern Europe

by Deatra Cohen, Adam Siegel

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.

Genres: History

368 pages, Paperback

Published June 3, 2025

Reviews

[Katie Mata · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read though at times it definitely felt overwhelming with just how much information there was. It is probably better read a little as a time or as a reference. 

The authors explained their process, including their research and sources. They included not just the English name of the plants but their names in other languages (including Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, Sorbian, and many more!). Where relevant there was discussions around the meaning of the names of the plants in other languages used as a way to determine it's use which I found really interesting. There was also a history of the plant based on the research- who said it, where it was used, how it was used, the differences and similarities in its use across locations, etc. 

I did find at times here was repetitions throughout the chapters, such as the references to the 5 plants and the prefix out of thousands. 

I really liked the list at the end that included other plants commonly found in Jewish homes. 

I did hope that this book would include actual recipes that could be used but there was none per say.

Thank you to Netgalley and North Atlantic Books for a free copy of this book for my honest review.

[Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good book, but packed with info. I felt overwhelmed trying to retain all of it. I think it’s one I need to just reference back to time and again rather than something to read about once. Lots of good info though, and I just LOVE learning about herbalism and the ways we’ve used plants and herbs over the years, especially in the Jewish Diaspora. But I love how this book showed how Eastern European cultures (not just Ashkenazi Jews) used these plants over the years—and as a Sephardi Jew, I loved to see some Sephardic traditions pop up!

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative, interesting. A wealth of knowledge is packed into these pages. There is so much here to understand and process. Definitely a book to read more than once and to glean and mine.