Every day I brought her to her place in the old cemetery, where it was her custom to sit on a bit of straw and beg for donations singing a nign from lamentations...
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In this extract from Mendele Moykher Sforim's Fishke der krumer, Fishke describes his wife, a blind orphan who makes her living by...
feldmesterin
Jul 143 min read
There are few particularly religious women in town ... who also measure the cemetery.
"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...
45 views1 comment
feldmesterin
Jun 92 min read
Children lament their mother in Brestetshke
'Examples of laments by children', collected by Moyshe Melman in Brestetshke (Beresteczko, Berestetchka, Brestetshke, ברסטצ'ק,...
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feldmesterin
Jun 63 min read
A woman's lament for her husband
This klogenish (lament) is one of several collected by the YIVO ethnographic commission in the 1920s and 30s. The full collection can be...
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feldmesterin
Dec 14, 20232 min read
Sore-Rokhl "the fat" cemetery Jewess of Krinski
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...
287 views0 comments
feldmesterin
Nov 28, 20233 min read
"Today it is customary to go to the cemetery with an elderly Jewess"
I'm getting ready today to teach my final class on this online course with JTS, in which we will be taking a closer look at the...
103 views0 comments
feldmesterin
Jan 10, 20232 min read
'The women came into the synagogue wailing like a storm' - a memory from Tomashov
This is an extract from Sh. Leibovitsh 'A krankn a refue' - healing for the sick - in the Tomashover Yizker Bukh (1965.) Leibovitz...
223 views2 comments
feldmesterin
Sep 12, 20224 min read
And the Jewish women ... they knew how to go to war with Satan
The following text is an excerpt from A.S. Zaks' 'Khoreve Veltn' – Ruined Worlds – describing Jewish customs in the month of Elul - the...
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feldmesterin
May 16, 20223 min read
Leybeshekhe the 'Cemetery Jewess' of Kremenits
Among the professions listed in this memorial book from Kremenets, Ukraine, between "goose plucker" and "mechanic", is "cemetery zogerke"...
428 views0 comments
feldmesterin
May 1, 20221 min read
Shiphrah-Leah, the zogerke of Kletsk
In the Yizker (memorial) book written by former residents of the shtetl Kletsk, now in Belarus, I found the following short description...
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feldmesterin
Apr 29, 20224 min read
Klogerins un baveynerins – Lamenting women and weeping women - Abraham Rechtman
What follows is an excerpt of an ethnographic memoir - Yidishe etnografye un folklor (Jewish ethnography and folklore) – written in 1958...
463 views2 comments
feldmesterin
May 14, 202110 min read
The wailing women of the shtetl
In his memoir Khoreve veltn, written in an effort to preserve in memory the customs of the Jewish shtetlekh of Lithuania destroyed during...
851 views0 comments
feldmesterin
Mar 7, 20213 min read
Witches gotta eat
In Yiddish literature, the practices described on this website are often viewed disparagingly, especially when women used to do them for...
631 views1 comment
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