| Popis: |
This concluding chapter pulls together all the points from the previous chapters. Jewish folk medicine represented a body of beliefs and practices many of which were known to the ethnography of both eastern Europe and its western, Slavic-Germanic borderlands. It was not distinguished by any one particular approach to health issues, nor did it draw exceptionally frequently on magic. It perpetuated a model of the treatment process in which the patient's own opinion played a central role, both with regard to the nature of the illness and in terms of the choice of remedy. The Jews of eastern Europe, like their Christian compatriots, perceived health to be a matter of vitality. Members of the traditional Jewish community were united in their views on sin and the belief in the ubiquity of demons, sorcery, and the evil eye, a legacy of previous generations. The intrigues of sorcerers and the evil eye were also considered a significant threat, and much energy was expended on putting in place measures providing protection from misfortunes of this nature, and no less on their diagnosis and rectifying their consequences. A broad treatment of the subject of Jewish folk medicine is of greater value than merely educational. The role of the Jews in the overall mosaic of east European treatment modes and methods is unlikely to have been limited to the reproduction of models sourced from kabbalah or gematria, or of Hebrew magic formulas. |
