Hey there, and welcome back to take one, the podcast.

That brings you just one curative page of Talmud each day.

And on today's page, Hulene 33, we get this bit of wisdom.

One who seeks to recuperate from an illness should cut an olive bulk of meat from the area of slaughter,

i.e. the neck of an animal, and salt it very well, and rinse it very well, and wait until the

animal's soul departs and eat it. In other words, the rabbis are advising that we cut a piece of

the animal's neck as it is not fully dead yet, just in the process of being slaughtered, salt it

very well, rinse it very well, and then eat it,

some kind of curative measure of getting better.

They're engaging, strangely enough, and what these days is known as biohacking, or coming

up with all sorts of approaches and remedies designed to make us physically, emotionally,

and spiritually healthier.

Reading this bit of advice, put me in mind of a piece I wrote not long ago for Tablet

Magazine about how our ancient ancestors, especially our grandmothers and great-grandmothers and

great-great-grandmothers, approached the work of healing, often while suggesting a whole

host of, shall we say, kind of peculiar remedies, which I think is very

relevant to today's page.

Ready?

Here goes.

My great, great, great grandmother was a biohacker.

So, really, were most Jews, especially Jewish women, before modernity came along and put an end

to a tradition that aimed to heal bodies and spirits alike. Like today's biohacking marketplace,

...