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About Naomi Stein
The venture of sharing Jewish ethnobotany stories is a perfect synthesis of several of Naomi’s lifelong loves, you can feel the passion in her classes and taste it in her formulations.
Naomi is an engaging storyteller, she’s had practice, as she’s edutained over three quarters of a million people, performing live with lots of groups that have “San Francisco’’ in their title - like the Opera, Mozart Festival and LGBT Film Festival. She’s spent the most time performing for the hardest audiences: children and teens. In three decades of performing, Naomi has performed in many genres and locations - Shakespeare at Marin ‘happenings’, giant street theatre in the Tenderloin, opera at the Herbst Hall, improvised musical diptychs in coffee shops, dance theatre at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Yet there has been an especial emphasis on using theatre as inspiration for social change, particularly environmentally themed pieces.
Meanwhile, Naomi has been an avid outdoorswoman, who regularly certified in Wilderness First Aid and studied best practices through the National Outdoor Leadership School, where professional development looked like circumnavigating a glacier. She’s led well over 2,000 youth through the backcountry of California teaching them natural history, ethnobotany of California, Leave No Trace, ethics and outdoor living skills along the way.
Naomi is an engaging storyteller, she’s had practice, as she’s edutained over three quarters of a million people, performing live with lots of groups that have “San Francisco’’ in their title - like the Opera, Mozart Festival and LGBT Film Festival. She’s spent the most time performing for the hardest audiences: children and teens. In three decades of performing, Naomi has performed in many genres and locations - Shakespeare at Marin ‘happenings’, giant street theatre in the Tenderloin, opera at the Herbst Hall, improvised musical diptychs in coffee shops, dance theatre at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Yet there has been an especial emphasis on using theatre as inspiration for social change, particularly environmentally themed pieces.
Meanwhile, Naomi has been an avid outdoorswoman, who regularly certified in Wilderness First Aid and studied best practices through the National Outdoor Leadership School, where professional development looked like circumnavigating a glacier. She’s led well over 2,000 youth through the backcountry of California teaching them natural history, ethnobotany of California, Leave No Trace, ethics and outdoor living skills along the way.
Naomi is an educator with a student centered, joyful, multi-sensory, and interactive teaching philosophy. Ms. Stein has created curricula for the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the State of California, as well as for synagogues, and JCC's, alternative venues like a Jewish farm, and the pre-eminent herbal Symposium in Northern California (a mostly non-Jewish space).
Naomi has done extensive ecological restoration work at Sausal Creek and facilitated youth groups learning about, and doing, ecological restoration there as well. Strike school students and teen groups have come there to learn from her about macroinvertebrates and stream health as well as about native plants. Her daughter took this tikkun to the next generation by clearing and replanting another section of the creek for her Bat Mitzvah project.
During her couple of decades at the Lawrence Hall of Science, the public science center of UC Berkeley, Naomi is grateful to have directed and written plays, grants and curriculum, performed at schools and community events as well as training teachers, and presenting at national conferences on the use of theatre as a teaching tool. This was also the venue for her tenure as a Backcountry Programs Director, and as the leader of the teen program, TEAMS (Teens Achieving in Math and Science).
While learning and teaching about the ethnobotany of California, Naomi volunteered with the local Native community through a few years of creating and tending a healing garden at the American Indian Healing Center in East Oakland. She worked with the women to elicit memories of plants in their youth, and subsequently, each woman planted something significant to her, and her tribe or family. Together with the children we raised these plants, meeting weekly to get our hands in the earth, tend to the plants, and one another.
Naomi currently serves on the Sacred Land Committee of Kehilla Community Synagogue which infuses gardening with a sense of place and holy intention. This group is re-landscaping with plants that are either Native Californian, or those significant in Jewish ethnobotany. The Jewish plants are selected from communities that share the same latitude, ensuring compatible water and sun needs and non-invasive companion planting. Naomi’s role involves consulting about appropriate plant selections. She also shares her understanding of the plants' stories, Jewish or Native Californian, illuminating ritual, cooking, or medicinal aspects of the plants for the committee and larger congregation. We are striving to reduce our carbon footprint by growing the plants that we utilize for ritual and celebration. Naomi is the emcee of Kehilla’s annual Tu b’ Shvat ceremony where all ages and abilities participate in this vision, sowing plants such as California wild lilac, etrog and pomegranate.
Now, fueled by a curiosity about the ethnobotany of her own community, she brings together her storytelling skills and nature knowledge to lead an ever widening group of Jews back to our birthright as an earth based people. And by using the term 'Jews', no distinctions amongst our wide and varied community is implied. All people with and never questioned. Her classes celebrate all Jewish cultures, some focusing on the Pale and Ashkenazi plant histories, and many decentering Ashkenormativity by highlighting the beauty of our global diaspora. The story of Jewish plant use begins in the Biblical period. The stories of the Mizrahi, and all modern Israeli plant use, remain central to our story. These courses also focus on the wisdom of nature, Jewish women, and our sacred texts while fostering a sense of community.
Naomi has done extensive ecological restoration work at Sausal Creek and facilitated youth groups learning about, and doing, ecological restoration there as well. Strike school students and teen groups have come there to learn from her about macroinvertebrates and stream health as well as about native plants. Her daughter took this tikkun to the next generation by clearing and replanting another section of the creek for her Bat Mitzvah project.
During her couple of decades at the Lawrence Hall of Science, the public science center of UC Berkeley, Naomi is grateful to have directed and written plays, grants and curriculum, performed at schools and community events as well as training teachers, and presenting at national conferences on the use of theatre as a teaching tool. This was also the venue for her tenure as a Backcountry Programs Director, and as the leader of the teen program, TEAMS (Teens Achieving in Math and Science).
While learning and teaching about the ethnobotany of California, Naomi volunteered with the local Native community through a few years of creating and tending a healing garden at the American Indian Healing Center in East Oakland. She worked with the women to elicit memories of plants in their youth, and subsequently, each woman planted something significant to her, and her tribe or family. Together with the children we raised these plants, meeting weekly to get our hands in the earth, tend to the plants, and one another.
Naomi currently serves on the Sacred Land Committee of Kehilla Community Synagogue which infuses gardening with a sense of place and holy intention. This group is re-landscaping with plants that are either Native Californian, or those significant in Jewish ethnobotany. The Jewish plants are selected from communities that share the same latitude, ensuring compatible water and sun needs and non-invasive companion planting. Naomi’s role involves consulting about appropriate plant selections. She also shares her understanding of the plants' stories, Jewish or Native Californian, illuminating ritual, cooking, or medicinal aspects of the plants for the committee and larger congregation. We are striving to reduce our carbon footprint by growing the plants that we utilize for ritual and celebration. Naomi is the emcee of Kehilla’s annual Tu b’ Shvat ceremony where all ages and abilities participate in this vision, sowing plants such as California wild lilac, etrog and pomegranate.
Now, fueled by a curiosity about the ethnobotany of her own community, she brings together her storytelling skills and nature knowledge to lead an ever widening group of Jews back to our birthright as an earth based people. And by using the term 'Jews', no distinctions amongst our wide and varied community is implied. All people with and never questioned. Her classes celebrate all Jewish cultures, some focusing on the Pale and Ashkenazi plant histories, and many decentering Ashkenormativity by highlighting the beauty of our global diaspora. The story of Jewish plant use begins in the Biblical period. The stories of the Mizrahi, and all modern Israeli plant use, remain central to our story. These courses also focus on the wisdom of nature, Jewish women, and our sacred texts while fostering a sense of community.
Her classes are focused on serving the Jewish community, but is warmly open to all, she is happy to include students who don’t identify as Jewish but as allies who are interested in ethnobotany or herbalism. Allies are embraced into the learning community. Respectful, curious folks, herbalists or not, of all backgrounds are appreciated. To emphasize clearly, while Naomi’s classes are focused on serving the Jewish community, they are warmly open to all. Naomi's perspective is that the study of the ethnobotany of any people is a way of focusing through a specific lens to see universal truths.
She was recently asked to articulate what her relationship to Judaism is. Here are her thoughts (in brief) on that.
“I’ve been a member of my Renewal shul in the East Bay, where I serve on two committees, for more of my life than I have not. I first taught in Jewish ethnobotany at the (then) Berkeley-Richmond JCC in 1996 and I presented at Yom HaShoah 2025 at the San Francisco JCC. I am a patrilineal Jew, as I spieled about in my one woman show, directed by the late great Corey Fischer (co-founder of Traveling Jewish Theatre). I do daf yomi, I eat eco-Kosher, I’m conflicted a lot.”
Naomi is not a clinical herbalist and none of the information on this site is intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Recommendations for Jewish clinical herbalists are in the Resources section.
She was recently asked to articulate what her relationship to Judaism is. Here are her thoughts (in brief) on that.
“I’ve been a member of my Renewal shul in the East Bay, where I serve on two committees, for more of my life than I have not. I first taught in Jewish ethnobotany at the (then) Berkeley-Richmond JCC in 1996 and I presented at Yom HaShoah 2025 at the San Francisco JCC. I am a patrilineal Jew, as I spieled about in my one woman show, directed by the late great Corey Fischer (co-founder of Traveling Jewish Theatre). I do daf yomi, I eat eco-Kosher, I’m conflicted a lot.”
Naomi is not a clinical herbalist and none of the information on this site is intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Recommendations for Jewish clinical herbalists are in the Resources section.
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