Charlotte Simmonds
Fischel Schneersohn was born around 1885/88 in Kamianets Podolski under the Russian Empire. He studied medicine in Berlin from 1908. By 1920 he was in Kiev, working as a children’s doctor and co-editing the short-lived Hebrew literary journal Kadima. He then returned to Berlin to direct a Jewish children’s centre. He is variously recorded as having specialised in psychiatry and psychology; the non-fiction books and articles he published in both Yiddish and German certainly belong more to the field of psychology than psychiatry. But he was also interested in non-scientific literature, with many of his Yiddish novels published in the 1920s and 30s, also in German and Hebrew translation.
In the 1930s he emigrated to Mandate Palestine where he continued to practise either child psychiatry or psychology, running a clinic and afterschool programme in Tel Aviv for neurotic children. In 1952, he wrote a lengthy German report on a syndrome which could not be considered today to have any nosological validity. It was a type of Lesesucht, or reading addiction, observed among the children in his Tel Aviv clinic over 1937 to 1951.
As a child and younger teenager I had never taken much interest in my body. I remember my first period because I told my mother about it. Her response was very matter-of-fact. Sanitary pads, she said, were a waste of time. Only fussy, immature girls who couldn’t cope with tampons used them. There was no reason for me to try them because I could go straight to the adult solution: tampons. However, tampons were a gross waste of money and there was no need to buy them. Instead, she took me to the bathroom, ripped off 8 sheets of toilet paper, and placed one sheet on top of the other to make a pad. Next she rolled the wad of paper into a tube, and then folded it in half. This is all you need, she said passing me the roll-your-own tampon. And that was pretty much it. Over the years I perfected her version by making the fold first, then rolling — it was much neater.
Five thousand years ago Oman was the centre of the world’s frankincense trade. Frankincense was traditionally burned at funerals and to repel malaria-bearing mosquitoes in the coastal regions. Other uses included the treatment of wounds, nausea, blood pressure, fever and inflammation. It was in great demand by the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Israelites for their religious ceremonies. A whole year’s supply was burned at the funeral of Nero’s wife. As one of the gifts to the Christ child, frankincense was considered more valuable than gold. To transport frankincense across the desert, camels were domesticated in southern Arabia. At least one of the Magi is said to have started his journey to Bethlehem from southern Oman.