In honour of Rosh Khoydesh Elel, a short excerpt from the memorial book of Krinski (Krynki), in Poland, remembering the zogerke, klogerke, beterke and cemetery measurer, Sore-Rokhl “di grobe” (“the fat one”). I have also translated a very short reference from the same memoir to a woman in a nearby village who knew how to exorcise dybbuks (spirit posessions).

Sore-Rokhl “di grobe”

On Rosh Khoydesh Elel, the first day of the Jewish month of Elul, women used to go to the holy place (the cemetery) to measure it. Many women used to use “fat” Sore-Rokhl as their communal spokesperson, to act on their behalf as klogerke, a mourning woman, and a beterke, a negotiator with the dead.

…. On Kol Nidrei all the shuls were packed with people. When Reb Zalmen Sender decided, because of the fires that kept breaking out, that the women’s sections should be closed on Kol Nidrei, it was seen by the women of Krinski as the harshest, most fateful sentence a ruler had ever decreed.

The dybbuk healeress from Kruszyniany

People possessed by a dybbuk would sometimes be bought to Krinski to see the Tatars of nearby Kruszyniany, where there was also a healing woman who dealt with dybbuks.

Cite this: Bezalel Fatshebutsky, “The Krinki way of life”,  Pinkes Krinki (1970), Trans. Annabel Gottfried Cohen