Welcome to Balebuste Botanticals!
Here you will find a healing home, with resources to nourish you, and fortify you for your work in the world.
What is a "Balebuste"?
A balabuste (Yiddish: בעל־הביתטע) is a Yiddish word generally translated as a fully competent, accomplished homemaker. It comes from the Hebrew ba’alat habayit or female master of the home. There's a reverence to it, a cultural pronouncement of the critical role of the person makes things heimish (Yiddish for homey), delicious, and lovely. To be a balebuste is like having a PhD. in the domestic arts, to be a maven of domestic sorcery.
The transliteration can be written many ways including:
baleboste, balabusta, balabooste, bala booste, bala boosta, balabuste, balebosta, baleboste, balabusta, balebuste, baleboosteh, Bala baya, Balabaya, balabuster, and ballabuster.
“A house without a balebuste is like a wagon without wheels.”
(Yiddish proverb)
What is Ethnobotany?
Ethnobotany studies the complex relationship between (uses of) plants and cultures. The focus of ethnobotany is on how plants have been or are used, managed, and perceived in human societies and includes plants used for food, medicine, divination, cosmetics, dyeing, textiles, for building, tools, currency, clothing, rituals, social life and music.
What is Jewish Ethnobotany?
Ethnobotany studies the complex relationship between (uses of) plants and cultures. The focus of ethnobotany is on how plants have been or are used, managed, and perceived in human societies and includes plants used for food, medicine, divination, cosmetics, dyeing, textiles, for building, tools, currency, clothing, rituals, social life and music.
