photo credit: https://www.hidabroot.com/article/531
Moses Aaron Schatzkes was born in Karlin, Belarus in 1825. In 1881 he anonymously published Der Yudisher far-Pesaḥ ("Preparations for Passover") in which he attacked superstitions associated with the Passover festival. One of the targets of his ire was the "Bobe" or grandmother healer, older Jewish women who practiced folk medicine in the shtetls. Despite Schatzkes's tirade, we can glean a nuanced description of these healers' lives:
"...the women have turned their attention to the flour. They have brought in the specific woman—one of those ten unique entities created at twilight on the eve of the Sabbath—whose task it is to sift the flour for Passover. Such a woman must be a widow of many years' standing, possess some knowledge of sorcery, be well-versed in all Jewish customs, know how to ward off the "evil eye," perform rituals involving the pouring of eggs and wax, treat a distended stomach, cure a toothache, know the proper procedures for handling a *koltine* (matted hair/elf-lock - see previous post on "The Kaltine"), draw out "bad" milk from an engorged breast, and remove a scalp crust. One can certainly rely on such a *znakarka* (Slavic term for folk healer) to know exactly how to handle the little sack."
As we've mentioned many times in our books and here on the blog, it's very difficult to find information on the Jewish women folk healers of the former Pale of Settlement. Schatzkes's work addresses so much of why this is true.
As a follower of the Haskalah, Schatzkes was interested in erasing what was considered superstition among his co-religionists. Traditional healing - more often than not included magical elements, and was practiced mainly by older women - was a common target. These women healers never wrote their methods down; they transmitted their secret ancient knowledge to successive generations by word of mouth. Consequently, their practices have been mostly lost to us. If any stories survive in the literature, the context in which we find them can be quite negative, as in the passage above by Schatzkes. Ironically, Schatzkes's rant reveals that these grandmothers had to be extremely knowledgeable, especially in all Jewish customs. They were also able to diagnose and treat common ailments by applying their expertise with traditional - and often magical - curatives.
Each of these rare discoveries of our folk healing past is precious. And it feels important for us to share them here with you.
