Our Story

Beit e'Shai

Our Story

Beit e'Shai acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are based, Narrm (Melbourne); the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and neighbouring Boonwurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation. We are forever grateful to their warm welcome and allowing us a home on this beautiful Country. Our solidarity and respect to their Elders, past, present and their descendants. Sovereignty never ceded.

Beit e’Shai means “House of Tea” in Arabic.

Beit e’Shai is a social enterprise with an online apothecary featuring handcrafted tea blends, made from organic herbs and spices from our SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) homelands. We are also a pop-up teahouse and event space where friends and family gather to celebrate and share the beauty of our origins through herbalism workshops, tea ceremonies, tea parties, as well as music and poetry nights.

For Beit e’Shai, tea is the medium through which we can touch where we come from, and reflect on where we are now. It is around the ritual of tea drinking that we share our stories, connect to our culture, and create relationships with people, and places.  

We are all about collaboration, creativity and community. Our doors are wide open for everyone to come together and tell their story over a cup of shai - in the remembrance, joy and expression of home.

Because tea is how we carry home with us.

About the Founder

Beit e’Shai was launched by Rasha Tayeh in December 2017.

Rasha is a Palestinian nutritionist, herbalist, artist and independent researcher.

She founded Beit e’Shai as a way to continue connection to her home – to hold in her hands the stories and wisdom of its soil, seeds, roots and leaves, and as a way to bring the art of Palestinian herbalism and traditional Arabic medicine to her community in Naarm. All teas and tisanes are handmade by Rasha, using certified organic ingredients.

Rasha's passion lies in the intersection of art and health. Throughout her career, she has focused on food, herbs, and community. In her creative work, she combines various mediums such as live art, photography, film, sound, and installation practices. Her inspiration comes from themes of health, culture, identity, womanism, feminism, spirituality, storytelling, and our place in society and ecology.

Rasha's multidisciplinary approach is driven by her understanding of the holistic and interconnected nature of how we relate to, and create, a sense of home.