#feldshers

Note that the common denominator in this tongue-in-cheek account inadvertently underscores how seriously the obligation of communal care was honored by Jewish communities. Every shtetl was assumed to have its health and hygiene needs taken care of by the feldsher, the midwife, and even the bathhouse attendant.

In an unusual acknowledgment of women healers’ varied experiences, The Shtetl Book—published forty years after the Second World War and contemporary with the achievements of the Women’s Movement—begrudgingly gives readers a keyhole peep into yet another type of women healer in the Pale. A short section entitled “Women at Work” mentions a few healing practitioners who stand out against a random list of feminine occupations: the “herb vendor,” a syrup maker, a “medic who healed with leeches and other folk remedies” (whom we can now safely identify as a feldsher, and possibly also a midwife), and an “opshprekherin,” a woman who gave advice and remedies to people convinced they had been cursed by the evil eye, an affliction cited in the Talmud that had to be cured before it caused further illness. Such a spare litany of occupations would seem to suggest that “Women at Work” did nothing worth elaborating; but with a little extra digging, we discover something much more intriguing.

In addition to their previously noted revelations, the An-Sky expeditions confirmed that the opshprekherin had survived into the twentieth century. The practice of the opshprekherin was rooted in the ancient belief in the evil eye. Mostly women, these healers were present in almost every town in the Pale and were sought for their expertise in times of crisis, during pregnancy, for toothache, a bad foot, an abscess, a “rose” (… skin infection…), the bite of a mad dog, epilepsy, or any other maladies believed to be caused by this curse. The opshprekherin never referred to written sources for her cures; hers was an oral tradition deeply shrouded in secrecy:

Pregnant women—especially when carrying their first child—often asked these older women for protection [for their baby from the evil eye]. People believed not only that the opshprekherin had the power to predict an unborn baby’s gender but that they could in fact influence whether it would be a boy or a girl. Those old ladies had a supply of “proven” charms and spells for each occasion. They performed magic with knives, socks and combs; they poured wax and poached eggs and knew hundreds of ways to cure a patient.

Jewish Ancestral Healing

Episode 9: The Eastern European Jewish Women’s Tradition of Cemetery Measuring w/ Annie Kohen

This podcast is really fascinating for anyone looking to get into the folk practices of Judaism, and this episode in particular is so full of women’s practices i had never heard of! I need to read a whole book on feldmestn. You can read more at Annie’s website.

One of these differences lay in the simple act of shaving. Throughout the Pale, even as late as the twentieth century, shaving was prohibited for Jews. And Ashkenazi feldsher (or cyrulik [from the Polish cyrulicy. Cyruliks are civilian barber-surgeons]), with a practice that mainly served his co-religionists, would not be expected to provide this service. Thus, unlike the Christian barber-surgeon, who might specialize in the former rather than the latter part of the hyphenated profession, his Jewish counterpart would have concentrated almost exclusively on the healing aspects of the profession rather than the tasks of grooming.

Another difference lay in the Jewish feldsher’s community standing. Because sanctioned medical care in Ashkenazi communities in the Pale by the nineteenth century was generally provided by feldshers rather than trained physicians (the restrictions that barred most Jews from attending Russian universities, along with the draft, played a large role in this), their social standing was rather high for a paraprofessional trade. Feldshers were considered “folk physicians” by their communities, and Ashkenazi Jews affectionately referred to their community feldshers as rofe, or royfe, Hebrew for “doctor.” As they were so often “of the people,” their down-to-earth reputation created a strong and trusting bond between feldshers and their communities. Assuming they were able to choose between a trained physician and a feldsher when seeking care, Jewish patients were far more likely to confide in the latter, particularly when discussing their reliance on traditional healing. Because of their close and intimate ties to their communities (both as enforced through the restrictions of the Pale and the rooted hereditary lineage that shaped their practices), feldshers regularly interacted with other additional folk healers, knew their remedies, and often made extensive use of that knowledge. As a result, the feldsher’s medical repertoire was enriched by the variety of herbal and other traditional remedies they encountered.

A third difference that distinguished the Ashkenazi feldshers from their non-Jewish counterparts was their use of the remedy books, the segulot ve-refu’ot described earlier. These handbooks with their secret plant-based remedies were as important to the Jewish feldsher or cyrulik as they were for the ba’alei shem.