Alternative Jewish Remedies for Cold & Flu Season
It is once again cold, flu, and COVID season. As we flock to the shelves for all the over-the-counter potions and potables to get relief for our runny noses, hacking coughs, and body aches, it is important that we don’t forget the wide array of Jewish remedies for these ailments. From the Talmud to tales from the Shtetl, we have a rich pantheon of at-home folk cures that, at least in theory, worked before modern medicine. Let’s dive into some of my personal favorites. It is important to note that if you want actual relief, it is probably best not to follow any of the below, but hey, it’s your life; who am I to argue with your decisions?
Chicken Soup: Back when I was living in Utica, New York, a popular restaurant ran radio ads for their chicken soup, which they called “Greek Penicillin.” This is the most egregious assault on the Jewish people to come out of Athens since Hanukkah! While chicken soup is one of the most delicious at-home treatments for the common cold, it is also most definitely JEWISH penicillin. This is also a scientifically proven approach to the disease. Science teaches that the best way to treat bird flu is by consuming a bird. This is part of the “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” medical theorem. We can apply the same theorem as evidence for another forgotten, yet extremely effective, cure that was mentioned in the Talmud Parsippany. In it, Rabbi Shmuel Coen of Congregation Bet Bat Bitsheva noted that when faced with a bout of Mad Cow Disease, consuming a portion of sweet and sour brisket every day for a week will alleviate the symptoms, for “in its own deliciousness, it will temper the anger of the bovine spirit within you.”
Placenta: It is widely known that, under Talmudic teachings, if you wish to see demons, you must first put cat placenta in your eyes (seriously, Google it). This is, of course, not the only animal placenta that the rabbis used in their search for the divine.
Goat Placenta – Apply a dab or two of goat placenta behind the ears if you are ever lost and need to have the vision of a map. This practice has mostly been abandoned since MapQuest became a thing. However, just to be safe, I always keep a jar of goat placenta in my trunk, in case I drive through an unknown area with no Wi-Fi signal. Thank Hashem for Craigslist!
Dog Placenta – While cat placenta has you seeing demons, dog placenta, when placed on the forehead, will ease bouts of ennui. Those who use this treatment for depression and instances of “the Mondays” say that upon application, they have hallucinations of joyful moments, such as a spring breeze, belly rubs, and squirrels.
Whale Placenta – The Talmudists loved whale placenta. They saw it as a cure-all. They built special mikvahs, called Jonah Pools, in which they would submerge fully into tubs of whale placenta. Its healing powers can remove warts, cure blindness, alleviate leprosy, and reverse male pattern baldness.
Spitting, Tugging, and Wiggling – There are several bubbe meises that were designed to ward off diseases, from spitting three times to tugging one’s ear after sneezing. Some work, some do not. For instance, if everyone around you were constantly spitting, it might ward off the evil eye by replacing it with pink eye, along with a myriad of other sicknesses.
My personal favorites, and the ones I practice most frequently, are: wiggling my fingers when crossing a street on the westward side of town to ward off arthritis, tying my shoes right foot first when it’s a new moon to ensure that if I bite my lip, a canker sore does not set in, and wearing stripes to a funeral of someone I barely knew and hardly liked to keep death at bay.
The COVID Challenge – Because COVID is a relatively new disease, there are no old Jewish cures for it. While scientists around the world were racing to develop a vaccine, I took a different approach. You see, since November of 2021, I have kept a team of other people’s grandmothers, kabbalists, and Talmudists locked in my basement. I have given them a fresh supply of chicken bones, dirt from Jerusalem, scriptures, and horseradish of all varieties. They have been working day and night to develop a folksy yet Halachic cure for the disease of our times. I predict we are mere months away!
We recently had a breakthrough when they mixed chewing on a string with drinking a glass of milk that was stirred counterclockwise by a wire once used to hang a ner tamid. This approach diminished breathing issues associated with COVID but intensified the joint aches. This is a huge improvement over the previous approach of chanting “Don’t be such a Kvetch,” in repetition until the eyes of a teenager rotate a full 360 degrees within their sockets. That just resulted in a sore throat for the chanters and a headache for the teen, with no impact on their COVID symptoms. Still, I am confident a cure is fast approaching.
Jewish folk cures are plentiful, cost-effective (with the exception of the whale placenta), and Kosher (don’t ask me how with the cat placenta). So, before you go rushing off to that doctor that your mother wishes you would marry, take a gander at some of these techniques our people have been relying on for centuries.
