Category: Midwives
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Midwives and soul-candle makers : the pious women of Burshtyn
An extract from Yoysef Shvarts, ‘Tipn un geshtaltn’ (Characters and personalities) from this memorial book to the town of Burshtyn, Ukraine. Feyge the midwife The doctors, Mandsheyn and Makh, who began working in Burshtyn from the beginning of the twentieth century, must have really racked their brains to find a way to make a living.…
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Madwomen and midwives from Novogrudok
Two years ago, I took a course with Prof. David Fishman on the history of the shtetl. In one of our classes, Prof. Fishman showed us this video of the Belarussian shtetl Novogrudok/Navaredok, filmed in 1931 by former Novogrudok resident, the famous philologist, lexicographer and philanthropist Alexander Harkavy. About 3 mins 39 seconds in, the…
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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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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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‘The entire shtetl accompanied her to her eternal rest’ – reverence for the midwife
Quoted on the introduction page to midwives in Eastern Europe is the following question from the Jewish Ethnographic Program – a vast questionnaire created by S. Ans-ki’s ethnographic team in 1913, and a hugely important source on midwives. “Is there a custom that when the midwife dies, all of the children whom she brought…
Pulling at Threads 