Author: feldmesterin
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“Today it is customary to go to the cemetery with an elderly Jewess”
The following is an excerpt from an article by Chaim Chajes, on ‘Beliefs and customs in connection with death’, published in YIVO’s Filologishe shriftn in 1928. The study was based on a survey conducted among the members of the Vilna Teachers’ Seminary in 1925, asking them about beliefs and customs in the towns they grew up in.…
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The Red Kerchief by Bal-Makhshoves
I’ve recently posted two examples of nineteenth century maskilic literature in which reform-minded authors included some of the women’s customs and roles documented on this site in their critiques of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish orthodoxy. In this essay on traditional charity collection, the literary critique Bal-Makshoves (Isidor Eliashev) describes how these religious women – zogerkes, opshprekherkes, tukerins and…
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Henye the Hoykhshprekherke, from Ayzik Meyer Dik’s “Reb Shmaye Eliter, der Gut-Yontef Biter”
Like “etlekhe yor tsurik“, Ayzik Meyer Dik’s “Shmaye Eliter the “good-yontef” wisher” is an example of the pedagogic Yiddish literature of the 1860s that sought, through comic stereotypes of traditional Jewish life, to encourage reform and modernization. Like Itse the khaper, Reb Shmaye – portrayed as a “typical” Jewish man – lacks any worldy skills, and…
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Beyle Shoyver’s childbirth mitsve
From Rabbi Tuvye Gutman Rapoport, ‘The biography of a generation’, Yizker-bukh Koriv, (1955) p. 674. In this section, Rapoport describes his own grandmother, Beyle Shoyver, who, as a religiously educated woman and great giver and organizer of charity, sometimes competed with Gitele the Koriv gabete for the reputation of most pious woman in town. Here he describes how, when…
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The women came into the synagogue wailing like a storm – a memory of the zogerkes in Tomashov
This is an extract from Sh. Leibovitsh ‘A krankn a refue’ – healing for the sick – in the Tomashov Lubelski Yizker Bukh (1965.) Leibovitz describes the process of ‘aynraysn’ – a word which in Yiddish literally means ‘to tear down’ but which was used to describe fervent prayer and lamentation, usually either by a graveside or…
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Bobtshe Kilikovski-Cohen, the zogerke who measured cemeteries
From the Volkovisk (Vawkavysk, Belarus) memorial book. Bobtshe was a daughter in law of Sholem Potshter. Her husband was called Leybe and he was a wood trader. Her father was David the Rosh-Yeshiva. Her brother was Fishl, a Hebrew teacher. She could study Talmud, and she herself had composed a book of women’s prayers which were…
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Itsyekhe the child-snatcher’s wife : a list of 19th Century women’s professions from Kol Mevaser
This is an excerpt from a short story, “etlekhe yor tsurik” – “Several years ago”, published by an anonymous author in the Yiddish newspaper Kol Mevaser in 1868. The story takes place in a “typical” shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, during one of the dreaded periods of military conscription, when Jewish communities were forced to provide…
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Mestn Feld – a memory from Pruzhene (Pruzhany), Belarus
A memory of cemetery measuring from the town of Pruzhene, recorded after the Holocaust by A Fayvushinsky Cemetery measuring’ is used in cases of severe illness. It is done in this way: several women walk around the cemetery and measure like so: one holds a ball of cotton in her apron, and a second coils…
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Klogerins and Baveynerins – professional mourning women from Abraham Rechtman’s ethnographic memoir
The following excerpt is taken from Abraham Rechtman’s Yidishe etnografye un folklor (1958) – a memoir documenting his experiences as a researcher with the 1913-1914 ethnographic expedition led by S. An-sky. The expedition visited and documented the lives and customs of around 60 Jewish communities in the Volhynia and Podolia regions of the Russian Pale…
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Undzer Astronoyt – Our Astronaut by Jake Schneider
Lekoved Halloween, I’m thrilled to publish my first guest post – this feldmestn-inspired Yiddish poem by Jake Schneider, the English translation of which is published here for the first time. The poem follows an introduction written by Jake, describing the feldmestn-ritual-meets-Halloween-cabaret-act that inspired it. With huge thanks to Jake for sharing this with me and…
Pulling at Threads 