I’ve now posted a few prayers from the mayne-loshn [ma’aneh-lashon], a cemetery prayer book that, based on a 17th century collection of cemetery prayers by Rabbi Yaakov ben Avraham Shlomo Sinna of Prague, remained very popular in modern Eastern Europe, where it was mostly associated with women and particularly with professional cemetery women. Like other examples of cemetery prayers from Jewish Eastern Europe, the prayers of the mayne loshn not only pray for the dead, they also speak directly to the dead, weaving in lamentations and incantations to mobilize the ancestors to help the living.

In Rokhl Feygenberg’s “The Winding Road”, she describes the mayne-loshn—of which she and the women in her family each had their own copy to bring to the cemetery—as a sign of an educated woman. Meir Pisiuk described how his mother, Khane, a rebetsn (religious teacher) who ran a kheyder for girls, would spend every day of Elul in the cemetery Lyubitsh, “to help the women recite Hebrew and Yiddish prayers from the famous mayne-loshn prayerbook.” Dvoyre, the ruferke of Mohilev was remembered as carrying “in one hand the mayne-loshn or the ma’avar-yabok prayer book and in the other a dirty red kerchief and a box of tobacco.” Dvoyre was also remembered as speaking to the dead with her own particular “mayne-loshn”—an expression which, because of its association with women praying in the cemetery, was used to donate eloquence and sharpness of tongue. Khane Pisiuk, similarly, didn’t just help women to read the Hebrew and Yiddish prayers, but to “energise” their prayers and lamentations, “like the conductor of an orchestra, directing the wailing of the women in the cemetery”.

If you can read Yiddish and are interested in learning more about the mayne-loshn, I am teaching this course on it online starting tomorrow with the Workers Circle. I also plan to keep sharing translations of its prayers here, and am working on some tradaptations with Rabbi Noam Lerman. In this post, I’m sharing a translation of the contents page listing the prayers found in the 1930 edition I’ve been working with. Just this list of prayers illustrates what a lively place the cemetery was.

The “ma’aneh lashon” with “ivre-taytsh” (Yiddish translation).

The “ma’aneh lashon” with “ivre-taytsh” (Yiddish translation) (Vienna, 1930).

1. How to say a blessing when you want to go to the cemetery and you have not been there for 30 days
2. Supplications and requests that should be said one by one in particular places as one walks around the cemetery [during cemetery measuring]
3.  What one should say at the graves of our teachers and rabbis
4. Special supplications and requests for those who encircle [measure] the cemetery every day or who encircle it on Mondays and Thursdays and other fast days. Under this sign are also the prayers for Rosh Hashanah
5. What a troubled person should say by his relative’s grave
6. A repentant person or someone with great worries should say this at the graves of the righteous
7. What you should say at your father’s grave
8. What one should say at a father’s grave when you want to lament in a time of need and want and other things
9. What you should say at your mother’s grave
10. For someone in need who wants to lament over their mother’s grave
11. What to say on your father or mother’s yortsayt [the anniversary of their death] by their grave
12. What to say at your father’s father’s grave
13. What to ask for at your mother’s father’s grave
14. What to say at your grandmother’s grave
15. What to say at your brother’s grave
16. What to say at your sister’s grave
17. What parents should say at the graves of grown-up children
18. What parents should say at the graves of young children
19. What to say at your wife’s grave
20. What a wife should say at her husband’s grave
21. What to say at your uncle’s grave
22. What to say at your aunt’s grave
23. What to say in the cemetery before embarking on a long journey
24. What to say when you have travelled a long way to visit your ancestor’s graves
25. What to say at the graves of people who have visited you at night in a dream
26. What someone should say in the cemetery when they are suffering from an illness
27. How to pray in the cemetery on behalf of a sick person
28. When a group of people want to pray in the cemetery on behalf of someone who has just recovered from illness
29. For someone who is hosting a celebration and wants to pray in the cemetery that he should enjoy his happy occasion
30. How to say prayers in the cemetery that God should grant you children
31. How a pregnant woman should pray in the cemetery
32. How to pray in the cemetery on behalf of a pregnant woman
33. How to pray in the cemetery on behalf of a person in labour who is unwell
34. How to pray in the cemetery to heal the illness of a person in childbirth
35. How someone who is raising children should pray in the cemetery
36. Other terrible things God Forbid
37. How to pray in the cemetery about war and famine and other evil things God Forbid
38. How to pray in the cemetery for joy and livelihood
39. What you should say at the graves of martyrs
40. How to honour the soul of a father or mother in the first year after their death
41. What to say when you leave the cemetery
42. How to ask the dead for forgiveness
43. Prayers and requests to be recited in the cemetery on the eves of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
44. Prayers and requests to be recited in the cemetery on the eve of Yom Kippur
45. The prayer to be recited in the cemetery on Rosh Khoydesh – the eve of the new moon and the new month