Planting Communities: Diasporic Rooting.
Lineages of Herbalism within the East European Jewish Tradition.
Facilitators: Shelley Etkin and Mikhali Lyvoi
17 June 2025
SPORE Initiative, Berlin
© Silvia Russo
In such a complex historical moment, in which we live regarding the pain of others (Susan Sontag, 2003), marked by increasing polarisation and policies of separation and control, last week we gathered for the workshop hosted by SPORE ‘Diasporic Rooting: Lineages of Herbalism within the East European Jewish Tradition’, held in its community garden, with the aim, or perhaps more the desire, to activate\reactivate a common ground in which forms of mutual care, trans-diasporic dialogue and resistance practices could take root, considering the ground as a focal point of connection between humans and cultures.
Drawing on the herbal tradition of Ashkenazi Judaism from Eastern Europe as a means of engaging in dialogue through plants, the workshop revolved around a main question: How can we acknowledge our rooting when troubled relationships with place reverberate across generations?
Moderated by Shelley Etkin, the encounter held directly on SPORE’s regenerative soil, weaving together intimate narratives and our shared knowledge to restore value to healing practices that have been marginalised, which today feels like a renewed desire to rediscover, almost as a necessity.
We explored the figure of the Ba’al Shem, the itinerant healer of the Ashkenazi tradition and guardian of syncretic knowledge in which Kabbalah, herbal medicine, and sacred words merged to generate protection and social cohesion.
As we gathered and connected with one another, we reflected on the question: What do we need protection from today? And what do we mean by “protection”?
In the present context, where the word security is often instrumentalised to justify violence and separation, we sought to reclaim a radically different meaning, based on collective care, mutual support, and connection with all living entities.
Three plants accompanied us in this process of re-rooting and discovery: Plantago major, Hypericum perforatum, and Achillea millefolium.
Approaching each of them, we learned that Plantago is a very common plant, often growing at the edges of roads, known for its ability to heal wounds and soothe inflammation on the skin. Hypericum perforatum, traditionally used to treat depression and trauma, supports emotional healing. During our sharing moment, following close observation of the plant, someone kindly shared with us how it reminded them of deeply difficult moments in their life and reactivated that specific memory, yet looking at the trauma through the lens of the plant, offered a kind of protection from the fear and pain associated with the memory and the trauma itself. Interestingly enough, Hypericum strengthens and maintains serotonin, and its proximity has an emotionally therapeutic effect.
The last, Achillea millefolium, acts as a guardian. It teaches us what to let in and what to keep out — a central theme in our discussion about the 'membrane', as a metaphorical boundary between what we allow in and what we release through our natural protective barriers, such as the mucous membranes in our nose that filter and retain particles.
In the closing circle, we shared sensory experiences, family stories and insights on the concept of rooting in movement. We acknowledged that for those living in diaspora, or with a history of displacement, the body becomes the first territory to protect; the plants, together with the surrounding ecosystem, become our living support, carriers of memory and healing.
Finally, the act of harvesting herbs with our own hands and collectively transforming them into medicinal oils for our bodies opened up another urgent reflection: what does it mean to have access to land as a gesture of care, in a time in which access to the living is regulated and commodified?
This gesture, seemingly simple, led us to recognise the land as a relational and healing presence.
As Rupa Marya and Raj Patel affirm in Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (2021), individual health cannot be separated from the health of our territories, nor from the historical inequalities that have created layered environmental and social wounds: “The inflamed body is the reflection of an inflamed world.”
To produce an oil with our own hands, in the context of a trans-diasporic community, means to restore agency to our bodies, affected by neocolonial policies exercised upon both people and land. It grounds wellbeing in the intercorporeal relationship between the accessible external world and our inner being.