Category: Mourning Women
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Sore-Rokhl the cemetery measurer of Krinki
In honour of Rosh Khoydesh Elel, a short excerpt from the memorial book of Krinski (Krynki), in Poland, remembering the zogerke, klogerke, beterke and cemetery measurer, Sore-Rokhl “di grobe” (“the fat one”). I have also translated a very short reference from the same memoir to a woman in a nearby village who knew how to…
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Mourning women and cemetery prayer leaders in interwar Vilna
This is just a short post to share this incredible photo, featured on p 23 of the New York Yiddish Forverts Jan 27, 1924. The Yiddish caption reads “These are the “zogerkes” and “klog muters” of the Vilna cemetery. When they are paid, they cry and recite tkhines (yiddish prayers) on behalf of the women…
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The Cemetery Zogerins of Kremenets
Two zogerins, Golde and Reyze, lead prayers in the cemetery. The photo appears to date from the interwar period. Kremenits, Vizshgorodev un Potshayev : yizker bukh, (Buenos Aires, 1965) 123. One particularly rich source on cemetery prayer leaders known as zogerins or zogerkes is this yizker bukh dedicated to the pre-war Jewish communities of Kremenets,…
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Brayndl the Zogerin from Mendele Moykhe Sforim’s “Di Klyatshe”
In this short excerpt from Mendele Moykher Sforim’s Di Klyatshe (The Mare), the protagonist, Yisroylik, who has been suffering from hallucinations, wakes up to find himself being fussed over by his mother and a number of local healers, among them Brayndl, the local zogerin. A title meaning “reciter” “speaker” or “preacheress”, zogerins were women who led…
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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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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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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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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…
Pulling at Threads 