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Traditional Jewish medicine

Kenneth Collins

The Jewish people have always seen medicine and faith as inextricably

linked.^1 There has been continuing Jewish fascination with medicine from

earliest times, usually associated with reverence for the healer with an

understanding that treatment and cure carry with them something of the

divine. Traditional medicine, sometimes also referred to as popular or

folk medicine, occupies the ground between the use of natural medicinal

substances and the traditional religious quest for the victory of the forces of

good in an uncertain world. Although the pharmacology of Biblical and

Talmudic medicine, as well as that of mediaeval Jewish practitioners, may

seem strange to the modern health consumer, Jewish folk practices have

remained remarkablypersistent, surviving to the present day.

Jewish popular medicine has often been seen as the superstitious legacy

of the encounter between Jews and their neighbours, especially in the medi-

aeval Christian and Arab worlds, over millennia of dispersion. Thus, at

times this tradition has been seen as primitive, the product of an era best

forgotten, whereas others, less disparagingly, see elements of a rich histor-

ical tradition in these practices. In recent years, especially following the

movement of the previously marginalised Jews from eastern communities

into the political mainstream in Israel, there have been serious attempts to

understand this folk medicine culture in its proper context.^2

Jewish popular medicine is firmly based within the Jewish religious tradi-

tion. It utilises the canon of Hebrew scriptures in the Tanach as understood

in the voluminous commentaries and discourses of the rabbis recorded in

the Mishnaand Gemara. Together, these works, known collectively as the

Talmud, have formed the basis for further rabbinic elaboration over the

millennium and a half since the final redaction of the Gemara. Jewish tradi-

tional medicine also uses the rich symbolism inherent in Jewish ritual and

the Hebrew language. Thus, the fragrant herbs used at the havdalahcere-

mony at the end of the Sabbath could be used as an inhalation for colds, and