Every new herb student goes through a phase of ‘herb lust’, where we try to consume as much knowledge and plant material as possible. We make too much medicine. We move too fast. It’s all very exciting. And then, we often settle into a different rhythm, a slower dance that better suits and respects the plants.

I’ve fallen in love with a Hebrew word over the last several years that’s helped me think about and articulate these rhythms of slower learning and relating: Kavanah (כַּוָּנָה). Like all Hebrew words, this one has many layers of meaning. The most common translation is ‘intention’. When we do something with kavanah, we do it with full intention. 

As with plants, the roots of words carry potency. The root of kavanah is kaf-vav-nun (כ-ו-ן), which means ‘to straighten’, ‘to direct’, or ‘to aim’. When we find this verbal root in old texts and commentaries, the object is often the human heart. And so we can understand kavanah as the aim of our heart. I see this bi-directionally, both as how we direct our heart with deep intention, as well as how focused we are in listening to our heart’s own direction.    

This heart-intention of kavanah is deeply important to Jewish prayer. The 11th century philosopher-Rabbi Bahya Ibn Pakudah stated: “Prayer without kavanah is like a body without a soul.” Maimonides agrees: “Any prayer recited without kavanah is not a prayer at all”. 

In the end, kavanah is a spiritual practice. 

What does it look like to apply this practice to herbalism? Maybe it looks like slow courtship, full of dedication and reverence— drinking reishi every morning for months to tune in to the feeling of the mushroom in your nervous system as you go about your day; playing harmonica to a grandfather yellow dock four times a week for an entire year; making the ascent to a special pilgrimage spot high in the mountains, to visit and pray with the plants there, a handful of times every year for a decade. 

What happens when we return to a particular stand of plants over and over again? What happens when we stop throwing heaps of knowledge at our herbalist-imposter-syndrome and simply get to know one small place or plant as deeply as possible, with as much kavanah as we can muster? In my experience, a surprising thing happens: that one plant or place or practice becomes enough. Our hunger to know all the knowledge evaporates because we’ve just been fed in the wild way we’ve been craving.

The speed of kavanah is the fastest I can go while still maintaining intention. That speed is different day to day and when I find that I’ve lost my kavanah, the easiest way to recover it is to slow down to the point I can pick it back up again. Herbalism at the speed of kavanah keeps me in right relationship to plants. Friendships take nurturing, time, consistency, and love. Our courtship with plants and place can be no different. 

These lessons I’ve been learning through herbalism have profoundly influenced the way I relate to my Jewishness as well. Anyone who has taken a break from Jewish practice, or didn’t grow up with a lot of Jewish knowledge, can relate to feeling overwhelmed by it all. Thousands of years of spiritual dialogue is a lot to catch-up on. But I’ve been thinking about going at the speed of kavanah when I feel the pull of one song to apprentice to, or one prayer to weave around my heart, or a ritual practice to etch onto my bones. And done with kavanah, that is enough.

As we enter spring, it’s easy to feel the rush of energy and get lost in all of our hectic summer plans. But I offer a challenge for us— find one place or one plant to court this summer. One sit spot to return to over and over again. One intention for deepening our herbal practice. And let that be enough. Dayenu. 

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Tevet: Month of Righteous Anger

According to the Sefer Yetzirah, the mystical Book of Formation, Hebrew letters created the universe through their individual spiritual frequencies. Every month in the Hebrew calendar corresponds with a letter, which in turn influences the zodiac sign, and has a dominant emotion/sense and a corresponding part of the body.

Anger is the emotion of Tevet and the liver is the body part. I was struck that the liver is closely tied to anger here, because in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) we see the same association. One of the liver’s jobs in TCM is maintaining the proper flow of qi, or energy. Liver Qi Stagnation, which can result from stress and suppressed emotions like anger, can lead to irritability, frustration, and a sense of stuckness. The first stop on my miserable-go-round. 

This month I learned about Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s Silent Scream, and it’s become a dear tool in helping me feel my anger and let it flow. Rebbe Nachman says:

When do I have my personal hitbodedut [spontaneous prayer]? When everyone is around me, that’s when I seclude myself with G-d. I know how to cry out in a silent scream. What I say is heard from one end of the world to the other, yet those standing around me hear nothing at all! Anyone can do this. Imagine the sound of such a scream in your mind. Just as the throat brings sound from your lungs to your lips, there are nerves that draw sound into your head. When you do this, you are shouting inside your brain. Direct that shout to the One above and it will open Heaven’s gate.

Tevet: Month of True Seeing

In TCM, the sense organ related to the liver is the eyes. And we see this in Jewish traditions of Tevet as well. The name for the letter ע, Ayin, is also the Hebrew word for eye. And if we look back to paleo Hebrew, the letter perfectly resembles this eye.

And so, there is a tradition that Tevet is the month of true seeing. True seeing is a wonderful companion to anger because our ability to see can help us discern righteous anger from blind rage, and seeing in a different way can transmute anger into compassion.

At the beginning of this month I came across a story of the Baal Shem Tov, Israel ben Eliezer, the great mystic of 1700s Ukraine. This is A Blessing of Eyes to See from the essential book by Yitzhak Buxbaum:

Once, [Israel ben Eliezer, as a boy] ran away to the woods because he could not bear the cheder, the religious school, anymore. The melamed, his teacher, was always screaming, the teacher’s wife acted like a crazy woman, the schoolchildren were fighting, and the house was filthy. When he came to the forest, he stood there for a while, crying and praying for some sort of salvation, because what kind of life did he have? He was a little boy all by himself in the world, and surrounded by troubles.

Suddenly an old man appeared and called him by name. “Israel,” he said, “I want to give you a blessing that you should have eyes to see.” “What do you mean by that?” Israel asked. “Who are you?” The man just said, “May you have eyes to see.” And he left.

Israel never learned who the man was, but later, as he wandered back to cheder, things looked different: The teacher was still screaming, but Israel realized that sometimes, when a person experiences poverty and other difficulties, he is no longer in control of his temper. And when Israel saw that the teacher’s wife, it was true, was still agitated and upset, nevertheless, he understood what she had been through and felt compassion; and he saw the unruly students and the unkempt house too in a different way.

Israel understood that he had received a precious blessing from this elder, who, he now realized, was a holy man, a tzaddik. That blessing helped him to understand that if there are people who are acting in ways they should not act, he should seek to comprehend why that person is behaving that way, what that person is going through. After this mysterious encounter Israel had “eyes to see.”

At that time, in that land, there were more than a few hidden tzaddikim who wandered about the countryside with their knapsack on their back. On a number of occasions, little Israel came across these holy men in the forest and talked to them about the Torah and asked them questions about God and His world and about divine service.

Many of us today think it unlikely that we’ll stumble upon an old tzadik in the woods, but on second glance, perhaps the woods are full of old tzadikkim, green tzadikkim— the plants. And as I read this story I found myself asking, what plants might give us the blessing to be able to see more clearly, more compassionately?

A Simple Aromatic Tea

Aromatic herbs have a unique ability to trick our busy heads into thinking we’re relaxed. By reducing neuromuscular tension and relaxing tight bellies, these gentle herbs send signals up through the vagus nerve that things are going to be ok. They help bring us out of a sympathetic fight-or-flight state and into a parasympathetic state of rest-and-digest– a state much more conducive to prayers of compassion and collaboration and grief. And importantly to this moment, aromatics help us move through challenging emotions, conversations, and reactions with some small amount of grace.

I’ve found myself making chamomile and honey tea these last few months, and recently I’ve been adding peppermint as well. Peppermint, the archetypal aromatic, is used in TCM to move stagnant liver qi and refresh the mind, so it makes a perfect companion to the sweet and relaxing chamomile. Both of these common herbs have been used extensively in Jewish communities from Morocco to Poland. My friend Naomi Spector writes, “In Jewish tradition, chamomile is one of the first herbs you turn to in times of need. The flowers almost seem to smile as they steep in a cup of hot tea, their fuzzy yellow hearts swelling as they flavor the water with their golden, apple-like fragrance.” 

Chamomile has been used by Jewish folk healers for a wide range of ailments, including digestive complaints, colds, eye and skin support, and fertility. Chamomile is mentioned in the Talmud a few times as well, for example we read in Berakhot:

Six things cure the ill person of their disease and their cure is an effective cure, and these are: Cabbage, beets, chamomile water, honey, stomach, heret, and liver.

For a deeper dive on chamomile, see Naomi’s The Jewish Book of Flowers.

Brewing

This herbal tea of chamomile, peppermint, and honey is simple, accessible, and tastes delightful. You can buy chamomile and peppermint as loose tea and brew a few teaspoons of each per cup of hot water for up to five minutes, adding honey to taste after straining the herbs. You can also buy teabags of each herb from the grocery store, I recommend the brand Traditional Medicinals. 

The power of tea is not only in the herbs, but also in the ritual. Taking ten minutes to drink tea in meditation, in nature, in prayer, or with a lovely nigun can briefly disentangle us from the news and our own agitation. May this soothing and strengthening of our spirit allow us to engage the world tomorrow with a more compassionate and grounded nervous system. 

May we all have eyes to see. May we see a path towards peace. 

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After 3 years of writing, this book is ready to be published! Naomi is choosing to self-publish, which gives her more control over her work, but the cost of printing is quite high. Please consider pre-ordering her book to support its release. She also just launched a beautiful Jewish Flower Card Deck. A further way to support her work is through her GoFundMe.

She has graciously shared an excerpt from her book with us, please enjoy part of her chapter on Poppy:

Poppy

Hebrew: פרג

Judezmo: dormidera 

Yiddish: מאָן

Latin: Papaveraceae

Poppies grow wild over Spain, where part of my family lives, and across much of North Africa, Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean. Each time I see their vibrant blossoms dancing in the wind I am reminded of my childhood, and my soul feels comforted.

Shoah survivor Uriah Katzenelenbogen connects the poppy with memories of life in the shtetls of Lithuania in a Yizkor book:

“As if a wild fire, the poppy flowers of the familiar fields chase you. And you remember the cut, thorny fields and the puddles in the shtetl.”

The poppy represents Jewish survival. Jews around the world cook and bake with poppy seeds. On Purim in particular, many Jews enjoy poppy seed desserts, from Ashkenazi poppy seed hamantaschen to Persian nan-e berenji. 

Jews eat poppyseeds on Purim to  honor Queen Esther, a young Jew who was forced to join the harem of the mighty Persian king Ahasuerus. While the king liked Esther and admired her beauty, he had no idea she was Jewish. In order to keep kosher but avoid revealing herself as a Jew, Esther survived on a diet of legumes and seeds, including poppy seeds, while she lived in the palace.

Esther learned from her cousin Mordecai that the king’s top advisor, Haman, had received Ahasuerus’ permission to kill all the Jews in the land. Esther decided to take a great personal risk and reveal herself to the king, and beg him to spare her people. 

She knew that she was forbidden to approach the king without permission, upon pain of death. She was also painfully aware that the last Queen, Vashti, had been dethroned because she had once disobeyed an order from the king. Yet Esther summoned all of her courage and declared: “I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” 

King Ahasuerus was so enamored of Esther and moved by her words that he reversed the decree, and the Jews were saved. To this day, Jews celebrate her bravery by eating poppy seeds on Purim. The humble little poppy seed sustained and nourished Esther so that she could survive to fight for the survival of her people.

May we be as numerous as poppy seeds, and as great

Many years later, legendary mystic and healer Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, also known as the Baal Shem Tov, spoke of the poppy in the days leading to his death.

Baalei Shem were healers that worked with Kabala, psalms and herbs. Baal means owner and shem is name. They worked with the names of G-d to bring healing. 

During the years of his life in 18th-century Ukraine, many Jews believed the Baal Shem Tov had been sent to them to guide and support the community during a time of heightened oppression and violence. He knew this, and must have been keenly aware that his people were terrified to lose him. 

The Baal Shem Tov gathered his loved ones around his deathbed, and spoke these words of hope to them: “The righteous souls that come after me will be as the leaves on the trees. The Tsadikim will be as numerous as poppy seeds, and as great.”

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Who was the Baal Shem Tov?

This poem, translated by Murray Citron, is an early sonnet by Yiddish poet Itzik Manger (1898–1968). The subject of the poem, legendary mystic and healer Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, was affectionately known as the Baal Shem Tov, meaning “One with the Good Name.” The Baal Shem was beloved as a Tzadik, a righteous soul. He was a powerful healer who was deeply knowledgeable of plants and animals, famous for his tremendous wonder of and reverence for the natural world.   

Baal Shem


The Baal Shem marvels at the village edge.

The evening tugs his cloak. And fireflies

And planets, stars and comets light his eyes–

A golden sight across the somber sedge. 


A golden vision on the field of night.  

Three times holy. He goes down on his knees  

And drinks its spirit in like melodies  

Blown down the steppe from the far mountains’ height.  

And drunken with the colors and the glory,  

He waits until a prayer lights his face,  

Alone with the night, three times beautiful,  


And rushes back to town to tell the story.  

He calls in darkened streets his words of praise:  

The world is holy and three times three times cool.

The poppy in Jewish herbalism

The poppy seed is a beautiful symbol of the fertility and longevity of the Jewish people.

Indeed, in Jewish tradition, the poppy seed is believed to enhance fertility and is associated with babies and infants. In addition to sunflower and flax seeds, poppy seeds were taken in Ashkenazi communities to treat infertility. 

Ashkenazi Jews would give poppy seed tea to babies to soothe them if they were unable to sleep or were crying.  Yemenite Jews used the fruit of the poppy to make a soothing and sleep-inducing tea. According to Maimonides, poppy is a soporific, meaning an herb that helps you fall asleep. This connects to the name for poppy seed in Judezmo, the language of the Jews of Spain, which is dormidera, meaning ‘sleeper,’ or ‘one that helps you sleep.’ 

Shabbetai Donolo, a famous Greek and Italian Jewish doctor and astrologist (born in Italy in 913 AD), named poppy one of the important resins for the pharmacist in preparing medications, mainly to treat malaria and poisoning. Opium, the extract of the poppy, was known to be dangerous in large amounts but was used by Jewish communities across Southwest Asia and North Africa in varied medicinal ways, for example to ease tooth extraction. 

The seed pod, which is the part of the plant used for opium, is the strongest for making a pain-relieving poppy tincture. Some of the traditional Jewish remedies discussed in this chapter feature the poppy seeds, and others the seed pod. If you buy dried poppy seeds at the store, they may be nourishing and delicious, but they will not have the same pain-relieving potency as using the fresh plant. 

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Maimonides wrote a lovely profile of the poppy seed and its properties: 

“Poppy seeds are cold, edible, harmless, induce sleep, and help to reduce a fever.” 

To continue reading…

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It is my hope in writing this book to inspire fellow Jews to relearn and reclaim the plant traditions of our ancestors as we attempt to heal our relationship with the Earth. In this time of devastating climate change, we must look inward to recognize and uproot the sick belief so many of us hold that the Earth can be endlessly exploited for our benefit. Many faith traditions teach that people are responsible for caring for the health of the land, ensuring the flowers and the pollinators can do their vital work and continue to feed us. We have a responsibility to tend to the land as shomrei adamah, or guardians of the land. Learning about our ancestors' plant traditions and how they healed with plants, the songs they sang about plants, and the stories they told about them, can ground us and deepen our connection to the Earth. — Naomi Spector

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I am walking in the forest. As I am walking in the forest I see my favorite spring flower: pulsatilla. The flower that symbolizes the end of winter. The flower that opens my heart when I see it, cracks it open, thaws it, like meeting an old dear friend after many years apart. The flower that reminds me of all the wonders alive in the forest.

I kneel down to be with the flower, and then I am sitting on the forest floor. I take a long moment to appreciate the beauty of this flower, and feel the joy it brings me. Breathing in the fresh air and feeling the warmth of the sun on my face.

As I gaze at the flower, I feel shifts in my mind and body, as I release tension and open myself to gratitude, reverence, relationship in the forest. From this place I ask permission to harvest a few flowers from this stand for medicine.

I slowly, reverently begin to harvest. And I know this will be good medicine, but I’m also remembering, that:

sometimes,
gathering the medicine
is the medicine

sometimes, 
gathering the medicine
is the medicine

Around this time in Colorado I start to remember these things, I wake up to the beauty of being in relationship with our green friends again. Spring is a yearly invitation to the profound delights found in wildcrafting, or just sitting with plants.

As I’ve been slowly tuning myself to the Hebrew calendar, I’m grateful for the wisdom I stumble upon almost everywhere. We’re in the month of Iyar right now, known as the healing moon, or the month of natural healing, and we learn from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov that this month is also associated with healing herbs and is a particularly good time to harvest medicinal plants. This is the time of year when the earth gives its power most to trees and plants. The Rebbe shares that this is why the Hebrew letters of Iyar אִייָר are the same as the first letters of the words “Ani Hashem Rofecha”-- I am G!D your healer (Exodus 15:26).

In agricultural time, Iyar is located entirely between the barley and wheat harvests in ancient Israel, so it is a season of literally being in the midst of harvest. The 7 weeks between these harvests is referred to as the Omer, which means sheaf and comes from the tradition of bringing the first sheaves of the harvest to the Temple in an offering of gratitude. Counting of the Omer is a way to bring intention and awareness to the significance of harvest. The mystical level of the counting of the Omer is often thought of as a time of spiritual harvest.

This month of Iyar, learning more about the counting of the Omer, and my yearly springtime remembering has me examining my own practices around harvesting and herbalism. Similar to the important grain harvests, harvesting medicinal plants is a sacred and relational act. While there are many ways I sit with and pray with plants, I’ve been wondering lately what it would look like to incorporate my Jewishness into my harvesting practices. I want to speak Hebrew words in wilderness. 

And so I posed the question to my rabbi brother Jay: “Is there a Hebrew blessing/prayer I could say before harvesting herbs? If not, how would you go about crafting something like this?”

Herbal Text Study with Jay 

Once Ben shared his desire to use a Jewish harvesting blessing, I set about poking through the ancestral texts. One blessing kept coming up related to herbs: Baruch atah havayah, eloheinu melech ha’olam, borei isvei b’samim. “Blessed are You, God/Being, sovereign power of the world, who creates the fragrant grasses/herbs.” Instead of simply being the answer to our quest for a blessing, though, it raised a number of new questions for me.

Question #1: Why “fragrant” (or “aromatic”) herbs? What about non-fragrant herbs? 

Answer: This blessing is for smelling herbs! Every source that I’ve found so far assumes when we talk about herbs, we are talking about smelling them.

Question #2: If this blessing is intended for smelling herbs, what do we do about other ways herbs are used? The outline below walks through my attempt to bring some order to Jewish blessings for herbal use, highlighting both where traditional language exists and where it does not. 

1. What is the Hebrew word for herb?

   1. Esev - grass (and basically all plants. In plural, asavim, in construct with another noun, isvei). The broad distinction is between tree-like plants and non-tree-like plants. This is the latter.

   2. Tavlin - spice. There is a talmudic passage that says Torah is a tavlin (remedy?) for the yetzer hara (our harmful or ego-satisfying instincts). 

   3. Besamim - spices/aromatics. Used in the havdalah blessing at the end of Shabbat. 

   4. Samim - spices / medicinals (sometimes translated as elixir, potion, drugs… Torah is sometimes referred to as a sam chaim, spice/elixir of life. Also, Torah is sometimes referred to as a sam mavet, an elixir of death - if used incorrectly.)

   5. Terufah - medicine (presumably herbal medicine back in the day. In Midrash Devarim Rabbah 1:1, this word is punned with torah and peh “mouth” to teach that Torah heals the tongue.) 

   6. Isvei tavlin or Tzimchei tavlin (mostly for kitchen herbs. Tzemach is a growing thing.)

2. What is the category of an herb?

   1. Food - a subset of vegetables (pri ha’adamah). 

      1. Jay asks: “Ben, what is the technical definition of an herb? In practice, does it include spices, mushrooms, and other non-vegetal things?”

      2. Ben replies: “Yes, in practice the category of medicinal herbs include barks, mushrooms, spices, even rock exudate (shilajit).”

      3. Jay says: “This is a category problem for Jewish perception - our typical use of the word herb crosses the bounds of the various categories of things blessed. Or every non-vegetable herb would just be lumped under the category of medicine.”

   2. Medicine - something you might ingest or use other ways, but wouldn’t ordinarily eat for the sake of basic nutrition or gustatory satisfaction (i.e. it tastes good). 

3. What blessings do we have that encompass the various ways we interact with herbs?

   1. Planting seeds - none

   2. Tending to the herbs - none

   3. Harvesting the herbs - none

   4. Smelling the herbs (Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Berachot 9:1; Talmud Bavli Berachot 43a-b)

      1. borei atzei v’samim for trees and tree-derived products

      2. borei isvei v’samim for plants and plant-derived products

      3. borei minei v’samim for general, mixed, or unclear

   5. Seeing flowering trees - (ibid.) shelo chisar ba’olamo kloom v’vara vo bri’ot tovot v’ilanot tovot l’hei’anot bahen b’nei adam. Who didn’t cause anything to be lacking in the world and in it created good creations and good trees to be beneficial/pleasurable for humans. 

   6. Eating herbs as food

      1. Borei pri haadamah 

      2. Shehakol (the general blessing for food)

   7. Ingesting herbs as medicinals

      1. Flavored - Shehakol

      2. Unflavored - none but you can say a blessing like Yehi ratzon l’refuah- May this be for healing. (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 61:4)

   8. Using herbs topically - none. Although there are blessings on oil (see Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Berachot chapter 9). 

   9. Singing to the herbs / with the herbs - With our rich tradition of niggunim (wordless meditative melodies) and these beautiful words from Rebbe Nachman, I suggest spontaneous, ecosystem-informed singing as both an offering and a prayer:   

For know!
Each and every shepherd has his own special melody,
according to the grasses and specific location where he is grazing…
His melody is dictated by the grasses and place he pastures.
Each and every grass blade has a song which it sings.
And from the grass’s song,
the shepherd’s melody is created.

(Likutei Moharan 63:1:2)

Weaving Our Prayer Basket

The creative use of what is here and the thoughtful addition of what’s not here in the various elements laid out by Jay are a good starting place as we develop a personal language for sacred herbalism from a Jewish perspective. 

I am drawn to the prayer most often mentioned in the texts, borei isvei besamim. I actually love that it’s primary intention is all about smell, as scent is such a potent sense for me when in the woods or harvesting, and scent helps me drop out of my head and into my body and heart.  

As a way of expanding the blessing isvei besamim beyond smell, as well, we could use David Abram’s exploration of synaesthesia in The Spell of the Sensuous. We are open systems, our diverging senses converge on the herb (in this case) and complete us (re-integrate us). We encounter the herb as an animate other. 

Or said another way, by the late herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner in his book The Lost Language of Plants: “That we take plant words in through our nose or our skin or our eyes or our tongue instead of our ears does not make their language less subtle, or sophisticated, or less filled with meaning.”

I’ll start with this prayer, but modify it slightly to include the Hebrew word for the divine-embodied-feminine, Shekhinah, who in the mystical Jewish tradition is, at times, considered the Earth Mother. I’ll also include one of my favorite words for Spirit, Ruach, because this Hebrew word means spirit, but also wind and breath, reminding me that my breath and my prayer said aloud are profoundly connected to the breathing of the forest and the wind that is unseen but felt and smelled. I also like Yehi ratzon l’refuah– May this be for healing– as a way to keep my intention on the medicine and who I plan to share it with. My prayer might look like:  

בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ יָה שְׁכִינָה רוּחַ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא עִשְׂבֵי בְשָׂמִים יְהִי רָצוֹן לִרְפוּאָה 

Brucha at Yah Shechinah, Ruach ha’olam, borai isvay vesamim. Yehi ratzon l’refuah.

Thank you, Earth Mother, Great Spirit of the world, who creates aromatic plants. May this be for healing. 

In saying this prayer next time I harvest, perhaps I will continue to connect with my Jewish ancestors and continue healing the part of me that doesn’t always see a place for my Jewishness alongside my earth-based spirituality. Just as our ancestors harvested herbs and grains, so too can we harvest– with respect, intention, and reciprocity.

Because

sometimes,
gathering the medicine
is the medicine

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Reflections

How would you construct a Hebrew prayer for harvesting herbs? Do you have one already? 

What changes for you, if anything, when you pray in Hebrew?

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Know that when a person prays in the field, then all of the grasses/plants together come into the prayer, and they help him, and give him strength within his prayer. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, (Likkutei Moharan 2:11)

When tribes throughout the Amazon are asked some variation of, “How do you know these plants are good for these health issues”, they often respond that Ayahuasca told them. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic brew made from cooking the vine of Banisteriopsis caapi with DMT-containing leaves from either chakruna (Psychotria viridis) or chaliponga (Diplopterys cabrerana). As an herbalist fascinated with plants and plant communication, I had already been drinking Ayahuasca for several years with elders visiting the US, and now I was finally in Ecuador and in the jungle.

In many ways, I found a spiritual home in the cultures that pray with Ayahausca. A friend once shared with me an old Celtic idea that we have both bloodlines and milk lines. Bloodlines are our direct ancestry, while milk lines are traditions that aren’t tied by blood, but that feed, nourish, and raise us nonetheless. I was firmly engaged with this South American milk line, while largely neglecting my bloodlines.

For almost a decade, the extent of my Jewish involvement was a few years of participation in a Jewish goat co-op. I’d fallen fully in love with herbalism, plant medicine, and earth-based spirituality, and let my Judaism wither away in the garden of my heart.

During the last of our four all-night Ayahuasca ceremonies, Ayahuasca clearly communicated a message and a feeling, along the lines of “Keep walking this path, this is a good path, but you need to find your roots. You need to engage with your Judaism.” It was unexpected, and I even had some resistance to the idea. But I also sensed that perhaps there is only so far we can go inside of ourselves before we have to turn around and face our ancestors. This was the beginning of my turning, my teshuvah.

סִּרְפָּד— Nettle in Hebrew

Nettles, which started my first trip in Ecuador, already felt like a dear friend and was one of the first wild plants I ever harvested. Nettles also became a part of my reclamation of Jewishness. As I learned later in the wonderful book Ashkenazi Herbalism, the deliberate and medicinal flogging with nettles, called urtification, is also an Ashkenazi practice that was widespread throughout the Pale of Settlement where the majority of Eastern European Jews lived, and it was used to stimulate bloodflow and to treat body aches, colds, arthritis, and more. This plant I already loved deeply, suddenly felt like kin.

Jewish knowledge of nettles goes far back, beyond Eastern Europe. Nettles also can be found growing in the lusher parts of Israel. We find a naming convention across cultures and languages for nettles. The latin name Urtica derives from the Latin urere meaning "to burn, singe”. The German is brennnessel, meaning burning nettle. And similarly, the Hebrew name for the plant— סִּרְפָּד/sirpad— comes from the root ש-ר-ף, meaning “to burn” (I’m guessing the shin ש and the samech ס are interchangeable here because they both sound the same).

סִּרְפָּד is only found once in the Torah, Isaiah 55:13:

Instead of the brier, a cypress shall rise;

Instead of the nettle, a myrtle shall rise.

These shall stand as a testimony to the Lord,

As an everlasting sign that shall not perish.

I don’t need Rashi to tell me this verse does not cast nettles in a good light! Most commentators compare the brier and nettle to the wicked and the cypress and myrtle to the righteous. Or as Ibn Ezra simply states, “The fir is undoubtedly better than the thorn.”

I also came across a fun Yiddish story that echos the prophecies of Isaiah. Called Of Nettles and Roses, the story follows a beautiful princess and her evil step-sister. Of course the magical pond they encounter gives the princess many gifts, including roses that spring from the ground she steps on. But for the not-so-lucky step-sister, nettles grow from her path.

These two rather maligning written accounts are balanced by the very real food and medicinal uses this herb was known for back then and still today. While some folks see only a stinging nuisance, those of us that know see a powerful medicine and nourishing wild edible. As for me, I would gladly take a nettle plant for every step I place!

Nettles as Food and Medicine

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) and it’s cousin burning nettle (Urtica urens) grow wild over large parts of the US, particularly abundant in places with plenty of rain like the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast. With shade and water they also grow easily in gardens almost everywhere.

For the last several years I’ve tended a patch of nettles in a corner of my garden in Colorado, where they are the first perennial to pop up as the snow melts in the spring. Nettles are a highly nutritive and delicious spring green that I sauté or add to soups or pesto. Green soup or green borscht is a popular Ashkenazi and Eastern European soup made from nettles and other wild greens.

I also enjoy fresh nettles juiced or blended— this may be the most potent method of taking nettles because none of the incredible chemistry in the needles is degraded by heat. Nettles are also used fresh or dried as a tea or tincture, often for allergy and asthma relief.

I prefer to use them fresh because there’s more potency than when they’re dried, but make sure to harvest your nettles before they go to seed, or regularly trim them to prevent flowering. Kidney-irritating cystoliths begin to accumate in the leaves once they’ve reached this stage.

Even after this stage, you can continue using this plant for medicine by harvesting the seeds, which are considered trophorestoritive— nourishing and balancing— to the kidneys and adrenals. And the roots reportedly increase hair growth, though I have no personal experience here.

There are so many ways to medicinally employ nettles that herbalist David Hoffman famously said— “When in doubt, use nettle.” But my favorite way to use this versatile plant continues to be for urtification— as a stinging balm for my stiff neck and back or for a coworker’s arthritic hands.

Vegetal Bridges

Beyond being a connection to my ancestors and the Old World, nettles are also a personal symbol for me of the work we’re all doing to explore, rediscover, and connect with the beautiful ways Judaism is/was/can be a deeply earth-based spirituality. On hikes with my Kichwa friends at their lodge deep in the jungle, I witnesses for the first time a culture still integrated with the land and the land’s other-than-human inhabitants. It’s not just their knowledge about, but their relationship with the plants and animals, the bodies of water and the stones, that brought me to tears. It’s no longer a surprise to me that their medicine connected me back to my roots. Ayahuasca is a Kichwa word that means Vine of the Soul, or Vine of the Ancestors.

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Reflections

How does our connection to our culture, our roots, our bloodline change how we interact with other cultures? Particularly cultures we are drawn to spiritually?

Does our relationship with a plant change when we learn that our ancestors also had a relationship with this plant? If so, how and why?

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Resources

Askenazi herbalism

Yiddish Folktales

A recipe for Ukrainian nettle soup

A truly great podcast about nettles with one of my herbal heroes, David Winston

I moved to unceded Duwamish and Coast Salish territory (Seattle) almost exactly a year ago. February snow set a canvas for March daffodils and cherry blossoms, and by the end of April the trees were emanating all their varied leaves, and by May the horse chestnuts bloomed, and all the while the steady conifers pretended like they were just background rather than the stars of this Evergreen State. 

Here’s a thing I never thought I’d accomplish - being able to distinguish any conifers apart. But when you learn to read their leaves and limbs and cones, the forest unblurs into exquisite individuals. I’ve barely begun to learn their alphabet, but already I can start to make out the staunch Douglas firs with their mouse-tail cones from the lifting limb dance of western redcedars. Learning a new language is daunting, but exhilarating. New words open up.

In Jewish tradition, when you want to talk about the ultimate place of wisdom, you refer to torah. In the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is referred to as “a tree of life”, and so the ancient sages began referring to torah as a tree! Reading a book, reading nature, all of it is steeped in knowledge we need, for our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. 

2. The Scholar to Whom His Book is True (after a poem by Wallace Stevens)

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

Books have been my walled garden, a place of beauty, joy, pleasure; dreams, knowledge, heart-expanse; secret rendezvous with the past and the future; where I go when I stumble in the world and need to regain my grounding in self. At a young age, I bounced from encyclopedias to the Hardy Boys to the infinite expanse of Star Trek novels. Torah filled my ears, too, as my parents read a little bit of sacred story to my brother and me each night. 

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

How did I come to be a rabbi? I’ve given many answers, but one true answer is that Jewish text has always drawn me with a strange magnetism. It is as if when I look at a shelf of books, ones that engage Jewish text have a beautiful aura that mark them as home. Many of them are homes I haven’t visited yet, or homes whose nooks and crannies I have yet to explore. And yet, home. 

Trying to articulate this once, I compared Jewish text to family, and all other texts that I enjoy or find valuable to friends. In fact, I sometimes prefer the company of the German Romantic poet Rainer Maria Rilke to that of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nasi, the codifier of the early rabbinic lawbook, the Mishnah. But I always come back to Jewish text as the grounding of my identity, my ancestry, and my native land of imagination and mystery. 

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

When I read, I have to grapple with the usual distractible mind, but one question often surfaces as a worry specific to reading itself. Even while I am enjoying a book, I worry about all the other books that I haven’t read. In the Jewish liturgical poem Akdamut Milin, recited on Shavuot - a holiday which has come to be practiced as an ode to reading! - the poet exclaims: “Were all the skies parchment, and all the reeds pens, and all the oceans ink, and all who dwell on earth scribes, God’s grandeur could not be told.” The entirety of human literary creation cannot begin to hold the immensity of all we could learn. But even what has been written dwarfs my capacity to comprehend. How do I choose wisely what to encounter, let alone understand, let alone internalize, among the “many books without end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12)?

The Japanese concept of tsundoku (Japanese: 積ん読) helps. This delightful term describes gathering  books around you without needing to have read them all. I take it as a practice of knowing I will never complete the task, yet savoring the sea of written word surrounding my life. 

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

3. Learning from the Jewish Library

There are two concepts that I particularly love within the Jewish reading experience. The first is torah lishmah, studying torah (= the entirety of Jewish text) for its own sake, as a worthy endeavor in its own right. Wallace Stevens evokes for me this sense of Jewish study as a merging of reader into text, a calm world where truth is the experience of reading itself and everything else recedes into “no other meaning”. 

The second concept is halakhah l’ma’aseh, studying torah in search of guidance for walking one life’s path. The ideas, stories, rules, debates, speculations, and evocations I encounter have the potential to impact how I think and behave. In other words, the meaning of the text is wrapped up in how it changes me, which then changes my actions.

Transmuting books into behavior isn’t automatic. In my experience, one of the grounding principles of encountering Jewish text is a dual acknowledgment: (1) the text is distant from me; (2) the text speaks to me. It isn’t code that programs me, it is a conversation partner whose perspective surprises my assumptions, or reinforces my instincts, or provides raw material that I process into something new. Turning text into practice is an art form*, and reflects the agency of a reader who takes the conversation seriously. 

*Turning text into practice communally introduces other dimensions of interpretation that are as much about social conformity and political power as artistry. 

4. Purpose

In these essays, I am particularly interested in exploring three strands of Jewish text as they relate to the plant world. Nature is another realm in which I experience the dual delights of encounter for its own sake and the wonder of receiving the gifts of plants through human cultivating and craft. Witness and work.

Most broadly, I seek Jewish ancestral plant wisdom (as myth, medicine, memory, and metaphor). This strand is closest to lishmah learning. I want to lean over the leaf and be in relationship to ancestors and to learn from their relationships to the natural world around them. 

On a more practical and creative level, I seek textual resources for building a mental model and practice of bio-regional Judaism. What does it mean to be Jewish at this moment in this place? How can we consciously, reverently, and ethically root ourselves wherever we live? So much of Jewish tradition delineates home as the land of Israel. For thousands of years, wherever Jews lived in Diaspora was labeled galut - Exile. In America, many Jews rejected the label of Exile. I want to explore further how we might hold onto a healthy spiritual nonattachment (“Exile”) but also embrace the entire world as our home as humans, practiced through wise attachment to our specific locality. 

Finally, I seek to develop something I’m calling herbal mussar. Mussar is Jewish virtues ethics, through which we probe our souls, develop our characters, and take on the yoke of care for others. Both mussar and herbs have ways of refining our perception and bringing our being and doing into balance. 

These are some of the journeys I am embarking on, along with my brother and herbalist Benjamin. I hope these essays spark interest, conversation, and creativity everywhere Judaism and plants intersect. 

The grief, for me, comes in two forms of ancestral displacement from land. That of the Jewish people, largely exiled from a homeland that our culture is deeply intertwined with, and that of the indigenous peoples disconnected from the lands I now call home. I live within the territory of the the Hinóno'éí (Arapaho) people. And while some Arapaho are still here today, many are on reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma, far from their sacred plants and mountains. A third grief: the fact that I can freely harvest herbs in these woods while many Arapaho have to drive hours and hours, rent hotels, and request forest permits before harvesting. This is a heavy privilege to hold.

This year Sukkot offered me a seasonal and cultural focal point for working through some of this grief. This festival of Sukkot, where we are asked to sleep and eat in a temporary structure for a week, a sukkah that is open to the elements and connected to the land and the stars, is a joyful invitation to feel at home on this earth. And in that joy, there is ample room for grief.

This Sukkot, my intention was to connect with willow. Of the four species of the Lulav and Etrog that are waved in the six directions every year at this time, the willow is the one that is native and easily abundant around my home in Colorado. Exploring one of the important plants of this tradition through the lens of both the Jewish people and the indigenous people of these lands has become the start of a cultural and ecological bridge to healing.

ערבה— Willow in Hebrew

How is willow, ערבה, woven into the Jewish people? It has everything to do with water. For both ancient Israel and for willows, water is life. Sukkot marks the end of the dry season and is a celebration for the coming rains. Just as Israelites were dependent on these winter rains to nurture their crops, the willows growing in seasonal creeks throughout the land needed this rain to survive. Willow is a symbol of our dependence on rain and plays an integral role in the water ceremonies of our ancestors.

As Ellen Cohn writes in her essay Rain and the Calendar,

“During the time of the Temple, the priests held an elaborate water ceremony in which they danced, juggled, and played music as they drew water below the Temple Mount from the pools of Shiloah and brought it in gold-clad buckets up to the Temple. Our ancestors celebrated water to invite in the rain.

During the week of Sukkot, people circle the sanctuary in synagogue, waving their lulav and etrog, and chanting poems of praise. On the seventh day, they circle the sanctuary seven times and then shake the willows in a dramatic finale called Hoshana Rabah. The custom is a cathartic transition as we leave the withered summer behind us and enter the new year afresh, with a prayer for water to nourish our crops and souls.”

Yóokox— Willow in Arapaho

There are more than 35 species of willow in Colorado, including both trees and shrubs. In the American Southwest willow is a keystone species in riparian habitats— the wetlands and river banks of the big rivers like the Colorado and the Rio Grande, as well as the hundreds of smaller creeks and streams. The health of this riparian habitat is indicative of the health of our water ways in general. The great Colorado River, which originates just a few hours from my house and travels all the way to the Sea of Cortez, has been gradually reduced by human impact—dams, agriculture, industry— to the point where it dries up before it reaches the sea. This exploitive human behavior has also resulted in a radical decline in willow populations.

Willow is present in native cultural and ceremonial life in this region, particularly in the Sun Dance. They are often used for shade during the ceremony, and are an integral part of the construction of the lodge and alter. Willow saplings are also often used to build the sweat lodge for Inipi (sweat) ceremonies.

An Arapaho story that weaves many of these elements is When Nih’oo3oo Witnessed the Sun Dance. Here is a translation from the anthology Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers:

Nih’oo3oo was on the prairie

He Reached the front of a Sun Dance lodge [inside an animal skull].

He went over to it.

The drum was making a soft sound as it was played.

He heard yelling/cheering.

“Gee! let me watch on,” he said.

Everyone was shouting/cheering.

He put his head inside at the front entrance.

Once he put his head in, these little mice who were horsing around in there, they all ran outside.

Nih’oo3oo discovered that he had gotten his head caught [inside the skull where the mice had been dancing]

He was just groping about for things, wherever his hands happened land [as he stumbled across the prairie].

“What kind of bush are you?” he said to whatever he felt.

And “dogbush,” he was told.

He set off again.

“My friend, what kind of bush are you?”

And “bow-wood,” [he was told].

“All right!”

“My friend, what kind of bush are you?”

And “Pawnee clan bush.”

“Well, now the river is close,” he said.

“My friend, what kind of bush are you?”

“Praying bush.”

“All right!”

Once again he set off, carefully and thoroughly groping about for things.

“My friend, what kind of bush are you?”

And “cottonwood,” he was told.

“The river is really close now,” he said to himself.

He kept doggedly moving onward.

“My friend, what kind of bush are you?”

And “willow,” he was told.

“Okay, now it’s right here,” he said.

There was sand all over.

Boy, was [the river] deep!

Before you know it [after falling in], he was floating downstream.

Downstream some women were bathing.

“[Hit me] right smack in the middle of the face,” he said.

Sure enough, that was where they hit [his forehead].

They split it open.

“For me I’ll take it for the handle of my scraper,” the women said.

[Once] they have seized his horns, deer horns, [they said:]

“How wonderfully Nih’oo3oo provides things for us!”

I’ve sat with this story for a long time. It’s one part cultural and ceremonial origin story. It’s another part ecological lesson encapsulated in the adventures of a Trickster—the plants Nih’oo3oo passes are in order of their moisture requirements, with willows having the highest requirements and found directly next to the water. It is additionally likely no accident that there are seven plants in total, a sacred number for the Arapaho.

Willow as Medicine

Willow bark has been used since antiquity to treat pain. The first recorded mention of willow for pain comes from a 3500 year old Egyptian scroll now known as the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. The ancient Greeks and Romans also employed willow bark, as recorded by Hippocrates and Pliny the Elder. Many First Nations in America used willow extensively as well. Salicin, the main constituent for this pain-relieve effect was first ‘discovered’ in the early 1800s and used to create aspirin.

Besides acting as a pain reliever, willow bark is useful as an anti-inflammatory for body aches, gut pain, fevers, and headaches. Because of its astringent, drying nature, it’s also helpful for issues like diarrhea. A complex remedy found in the Talmud (Gittin 68b) is one written record of how willow weaves into Jewish folk medicine:

“As a remedy for a headache caused by excessive blood in the head, let him bring cypress, willow, fresh myrtle, olive, poplar, sea willow, and cynodon grass and boil them together. And he should pour three hundred cups of this liquid on one side of his head and three hundred cups on this, the other side of his head.”

The most common preparations for willow bark today are as a powder, a tea, or a tincture. It is widely available commercially and is also easy to harvest. The bark can be peeled off branches, dried, and then chopped for tincturing or tea.

The Rabbis’ Tales

There are a few Rabbinic teachings involving willow that do not take cues from the plant’s ecological role or its medicine, but instead from its physical attributes. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12) uses a symbolic interpretation of the four species to describe four kinds of Jews:

The etrog, with tasty fruit and a good fragrance, represents Jews who both study Torah and do good deeds;

The lulav (date palm) has tasty fruit, but no fragrance, and represents those who study Torah, but don’t do good deeds;

The hadas (myrtle) has no fruit, but possesses a beautiful fragrance. It represents those who do good deeds but do not study Torah;

The aravah (willow) has neither fruit nor fragrance. It represents those who do not study Torah nor do good deeds.

Another interpretation derived from the physical attributes of the four species is found in Sefer Bahir, an ancient kabbalistic work from almost 2,000 years ago. Each plant maps to the human body:

The etrog represents the heart, the seat of our emotions.

The hadas (myrtle) has leaves shaped like an eye.

The lulav (date palm) represents the spine, from where our actions emanate.

The aravah (willow) represents the lips, our speech.

Meaning Making

As I harvest willow for a community sukkah this year I reflect on the power of plants and stories. Plants and their stories often connect us back to ancestral lands while simultaneously easing us into deeper relationship with the lands we currently inhabit, adding layers of meaning to both. As I’ve apprenticed with willow this season, one last meaning has slowly emerged:

Willows have a remarkable ability to root and grow fast. They possess high concentrations of a plant hormone called indolebutyric acid that stimulates root growth. If you place cut willow branches in water not only will they soon start to sprout roots, but the water itself becomes a potent brew to help other plant cuttings root. In this same way, willow is helping me root into this land, helping me heal old wounds of diasporic disconnection, and helping me build a real sense of belonging. And this rooting with willow is also a gentle reminder to keep tending the grief this land holds and let it move me to more action and solidarity with the indigenous peoples of this place.

A Willow Love Poem

The fantastic Dori Midnight offers a moving love poem to Willow, illustrated by Sol Weiss, that captures so much of what I’ve learned from willow this season:

my mother always told me you like to have your feet in water

your roots, like mine, always toeing the depths

weeping friend, you drink from the delta of our tears

and then turn and teach us how to bend and not break

how to dance with grief and not calcify in anguish

you make bitter water and from this water new roots emerge

you make bitter medicine and from this process our pain is eased

our ancestors say your leaves are lips in prayer

our ancestors taught us to beat the ground with your branches to draw water

our ancestors tell us to bind you

with myrtle palm and citron

shake this bundle in a circle

from east to south to west to north

above and below

you quiver in our fingers as we cry out

please

please

bless us with good winds and good dew

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Reflections

What land do you belong to? What lands have claimed you?

How can we, as diasporic peoples, heal our connection to land and place?

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Resources

The essay “Rain and the Calendar” by Ellen Cohn, found in Ecology & the Jewish Spirit

The Ecology of Herbal Medicine: A Guide to Plants and Living Landscapes of the American Southwest

Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers

The aspirin story – from willow to wonder drug

On rooting plant cuttings with Willow Water