(November 15) Shiri Nishri spent her first 31 years in Tel Aviv, first as an arts student in the high-society world of her famous musician-herbalist mother, Drora Havkin; then as a wife and mother herself, living in a homemade hut on the shores of the Yarkon next to the riverside pub run by her husband, Ishai.
But when her mother died suddenly 18 months ago at the age of 60, Nishri rushed up to the Rosh Pina home and herb garden Havkin had so lovingly tended for the previous 10 years, to keep her mother's dream alive.
"She put her soul into this garden, and I couldn't let it die," Nishri says. "Even during the shiva, people were coming up to me to order their favorite creams and herbal mixes. They told me: 'Don't abandon Drora's garden.'"
Nishri remembers when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago. The two women made the rounds of local doctors, and then turned to advocates of homeopathic and other alternative medicine, as Havkin desperately searched for a way to make her body whole again.
Havkin moved away from the bustle of Tel Aviv to Rosh Pina, where she grew the flower and herb garden to which she devoted the last decade of her life. She chronicled her journey to the natural lifestyle she credits with prolonging her life in On Herbs and Spices, published by the Ministry of Defense just before her death from a heart attack in April '95.
Nishri went to Rosh Pina the day of her mother's death to pack away her belongings. Instead, she ended up moving into her mother's shoes and continuing the production of herbal--based cosmetics and remedies Havkin had just started.
Nishri had worked with her mother for the previous two years, in charge of product distribution, and had also learned about various plant properties through mixing essential oils and herbal creams in her mother's garden shop. While cleaning up the shop after Havkin's death, Nishri discovered creams and potions that were still in the experimental stage. She began testing them, and was soon joined by a local woman who had studied healing, massage and essential oils.
The two women spent the next nine months creating new products, trying to decipher Havkin's handwritten recipes and mixing up their own inventions.
"Both of us felt very connected to my mother during this period," Nishri says. "We kept asking ourselves: 'Is this how she would have done it? Would she like this cream, or this oil?' " Six months ago, Nishri began marketing her products. A geranium and lavender-based facial cleanser, body lotion and moisturizing cream are now sold under the Mother Nature label in various health-food shops, kibbutz stores and spa centers.
Nishri is planning more cosmetics and cleansers for that production line, and also continues to sell herbal teas, tinctures, spices, and other natural healing products directly from Drora's Herbal Farm, the small shop attached to her mother's home in Rosh Pina.
Nishri is a big fan of the herbal remedies her mother so loved. She bottles various tinctures, which she makes by placing sprigs of plants into alcohol solutions for 21 days. The alcohol is then poured off, and is taken by diluting several drops at a time in water. Valerian tinctures are used to relax, she says. Garlic tinctures help high blood pressure, echinacea is used for sore throat and flu symptoms, and the list goes on.
Except for the three Health Ministry-licensed products marketed commercially, Nishri and her two assistants mix, bottle and label all the products by hand while sitting on the floor of her Rosh Pina shop.
NISHRI'S LIFE has changed dramatically since she moved up to Rosh Pina. At first, she worried that she'd be lonely, isolated from the stimulation of Tel Aviv. Now, when she visits her husband every other weekend, she can't believe that she used to live in the midst of such noise and pollution.
In a way, however, Nishri's new life is the fulfillment of a path she started on 12 years ago, when she studied Bach Flower therapy, a homeopathic approach to self-healing through plants. Marriage and children (Natanel, 4 1/2, and Yonatan Dror, born last month) put career plans on hold, and she didn't work in the field except for helping her mother from time to time.
"Now, I've finally arrived at my vocation, to help people in a non-medical way," she says. "I don't pretend to be a doctor. I try to get to the emotional roots of disease, to find out why people have done what they've done to their bodies."
Nishri follows her mother's principle of self-healing, which states that it's not the plants you put into your body that heal you, so much as the love and goodwill you put into daily living. Havkin was fond of saying that eating a greasy, fast-food hamburger and enjoying it fully is better for your body and soul than forcing down an alfalfa salad you hate.
"If you're sick, the garden alone can't heal you," Nishri says. "You have to work together with the plants and take responsibility for your own health."
Drora's Herbal Farm is open to clients, who come to browse through Nishri's library of alternative healthcare, and to discuss specific problems with the staff. Visitors can also step through the shop's back door into Havkin's herb garden, where the ingredients used in the shop's products are grown.
Nishri expanded her mother's business
slowly, starting out with 2,000 of the first three licensed products. People
push her to grow more quickly, but she is wary of expanding too fast. She
recently put off a woman who wanted her to exhibit her wares in a
"I don't want to lose control of what's important," she cautions. "It's like the garden itself. I'm planting now, one by one, not setting up a huge machine. Israelis tend to think very big, and they fall hard. I don't want that to happen to me. "The most important thing is to keep your head on straight and listen to your own inner voice, not to everyone else's advice."
IN TAKING over her mother's home and
business, Nishri feels she has finally taken her place in a family tradition of
strong, quirky men and women. Nishri's maternal great-grandfather was one of the
country's first natural-foods advocates. He lived in
"My grandmother came from a religious family, and when they married, no one in the family came to the wedding," Nishri relates. His daughter, Havkin's mother, was a very strong, independent woman, as was Havkin herself.
"I buried my grandmother and my mother a year after each other, two women with so much to teach," Nishri says. "Now their lives are in boxes. What they left me was a spiritual heritage, a sense of their courage, which was grounded in real life, in their roots."
Nishri says burying her mother was the hardest thing she's ever done. "It was a tragedy to say good-bye to her, but in dying, she gave me a wonderful gift," she muses. "I was a very unliberated woman before, just following my husband around. Now I'm more assertive, running my own business, competing without fear. I feel my mother standing next to me, and I'm not afraid.
"It's so important to me to continue my mother's name," she continues. "When I see her name on our new labels, it makes me so happy to know that she lives on. She was so strong in life, and now, her spirit and her work continue."
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