In this extract from Mendele Moykher Sforim's Fishke der krumer, Fishke describes his wife, a blind orphan who makes her living by...

"Elul days" from Khaim Shoys, Dos Yontef Bukh (1933). Life goes on in the shtetl as usual. Yet, at the same time it is clear to anyone...

Last year, in an event co-organised by Shamir Collective, Shomer Collective and the Workers' Circle, Sarah Chandler (Aka Kohenet...

Another short but sweet recollection of a real-life opshprekherke (healer through incantations) and feldmesterin (cemetery or grave...

Since it's the last day of Khanike, when, in some communities, the left over "dead thread" from Yom Kippur would be used to make khanike...

In the summer of 2018, my little sister Viv got married. Our mother died when she was 2 and I was 4, and I was incredibly honoured when ...

We're one week away from Rosh Hashanah - historically the biggest working week of the year for feldmesterins. I wanted to re-share this...

In the memorial book to the Jewish community of Volkovisk (Vawkavysk, Belarus), I found my second description of a real life...

In many shtetlekh (small towns) of Eastern Europe, it was common for the female heads of household to pay feldmesterins to measure the...

According to the feldmesterins observed by S. Weissenberg, cemetery measuring was stepped up after the first selihah, being carried out...

The following text is an excerpt from A.S. Zaks' 'Khoreve Veltn' ­– Ruined Worlds ­– describing Jewish customs in the month of Elul - the...

When I started out researching these practices, I never planned to actually do them. That happened sort of by accident. But in the...

This is an excerpt from the memoirs of Rabbi Tuviah Gutman Rapoport, published in the memorial book of Koriv, Poland Here he remembers...

According to the ethnographic study I posted recently, Yom Kippur candles made with threads that had been used to measure graves were...

In Yiddish literature, the practices described on this website are often viewed disparagingly, especially when women used to do them for...

In kneytlakh-leygn and feldmestn, it seems that it was believed that by laying the candle wicks around the cemetery they would be imbued...

This is a translation of a 1906 German study of Feld (cemetery) and Keywer (grave - from the Hebrew and Yiddish קבֿר) measuring by...

In this extract from his 1899-1912 unfinished autobiographical novel, Shloyme Reb Khayims, Mendele describes his mother, Sore - who we...

18th century Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, Salomon Maimon, mentions the practice of feldmestn in his memoirs written in 1792-3. In an...

This short description of the practise is found in the Yizker Bukh 'Pinkes fun der shtot Pruzhene' - a memorial book written by former...