Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
A Frog Under the Tongue : Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe, Paperback / softback Book

A Frog Under the Tongue : Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe Paperback / softback

Part of the The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization series

Paperback / softback

Pre-Order

Description

Winner of the 2021 Gierowski-Shmeruk PrizeShortlisted for the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Award 2021Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of eastern Europe.

Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine.

Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and pedlars, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas.

Nevertheless, as new sources of knowledge penetrated the traditional world, modern medical ideas gained widespread support.

Jews became court physicians to the nobility, and when the universities were opened up to them many also qualified as doctors.

At every stage, medicine proved an important field for cross-cultural contacts. Jewish historians and scholars of folk medicine alike will discover here fascinating sources never previously explored—manuscripts, printed publications, and memoirs in Yiddish and Hebrew but also in Polish, English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Marek Tuszewicki's careful study of these documents has teased out therapeutic advice, recipes, magical incantations, kabbalistic methods, and practical techniques, together with the ethical considerations that such approaches entailed.

His research fills a gap in the study of folk medicine in eastern Europe, shedding light on little-known aspects of Ashkenazi culture, and on how the need to treat sickness brought Jews and their neighbours together.

Information

£25.99

Pre-Order
Pre-Order
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information

Also in the The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization series  |  View all

Hasidic Commentary on the Torah

£24.99

Pre-Order

Regional Identities and Cultures of...

£25.99

Add to Basket

Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity

£24.99

Add to Basket

The Rhetoric of Jewish Liturgy

£120.00

Pre-Order