Here in the west, in the Untied States, oats are associated with breakfast foods: oatmeal, muesli, cheerios. In more ancient times and right up until the second world war, in the shtetls, oats were also medicine.
In Mordkhe Schaechter's Plant Names in Yiddish, oat's Yiddish name is האָבער or hober, which derives from Old High German "haber" (which, we would argue, is evidence of how "well-rooted" oat is in Ashkenazi Jewish foodways; the Yiddish word is closer to the Old High German form than Modern German _Hafer_).
As we note in our first book Ashkenazi Herbalism, Pauline Wengeroff remembered the herbal recipes of her grandmother-in-law, Beile, a folk midwife in Konotop (present day Konotip, Ukraine) at the turn of the twentieth century. Beile was known not only for delivering the shtetl's babies, but also a one of the village's healers. Her recipe for recuperating from a cold, called for “oatmeal, cream butter and forty grams of candied sugars,” and seems completely at odds with what might be prescribed today for similar complaints and most likely helped Beile's patients regain their strength (and it probably tasted pretty good, too). (For Beile's full story, see: Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century by Pauline Wengeroff and translated by Shulamit S. Magnus)
A few years later, between the World Wars, a Soviet ethnobotanic expedition travelled to Ukraine to study the folk healers of that region. The researchers found that oat was an herb traditional healers looked to for alleviating respiratory complaints. Not only that, the herb was given as a nourishing food to convalescents. One of the towns where this remedy was reported was Krasilev (present day Krasyliv, Ukraine). (For more information on the ethnobotanical survey, see Herbs Used in Ukrainian Folk Medicine by Natalia Ossadcha-Janata)
As we write in Ashkenazi Herbalism, Krasilev was the shtetl where the Jewish midwife, Shana Gitl lived and practiced before immigrating to Grand Forks, North Dakota in the early 20th century. (You can find Shana Gitl's complete story in the book And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest Since 1855 by Linda Mack Schloff.)
Incidentally, there's quite a distance between Beile's and Shana Gitl's shtetls - from Konotip to Krasyliv is approximately 334 miles - which suggests the oat remedy was pretty widespread in the former Pale of Settlement.
Although British herbalist Maude Grieve stated in the early decades of the twentieth century, "it is unknown when oats were first introduced into Britain" we find similarities between east and west. Grieve noted that a "gruel" prepared from oats - and enhanced with more flavorful herbs - was a nutritious remedy in convalescence and was especially helpful after childbirth because it was easily digested and helped alleviate inflammation and fever. (for Grieve's entire entry on Oats, see: A Modern Herbal (Volume 1, A-H): The Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Properties, Cultivation and Folk-Lore of Herbs, Grasses, Fungi, Shrubs & Trees with Their Modern Scientific Uses by Maude Grieve or online at: https://botanical.com/)
And, more recently, in a twenty-first century ethnobotanic study done in contemporary Lithuania, elder herbalist informants recall that they "learned from their neighbors" in the Kaisiadorys District and report that oats have continued to be worked with as a compress to treat lung inflammation. (for the entire study see: Ethnobotanical Study of Cultivated Plants in Kaišiadorys District, Lithuania: Possible Trends for New Herbal Based Medicines authors: Zivile Pranskuniene, Kristina Ratkeviciute, et. al.)
Photo credit:
Avena sativa L. [Gramineae] [Avena orientalis Schreber ] O.W. Thomé, Fl. Deutschl., vol. 1 : t. 66, fig. B (1885) courtesy of plantillustrations.org
