Category: Categories
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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…
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Yom Kippur in Horokhov
This short extract from Malke Varad’s memoir of her childhood in Horokhov – published in this Horokhov Yizker Bukh – describes the deep emotion that used to accompany the lighting of soul candles on Yom Kippur. The public expression of emotion was an important part of Ashkenazi women’s religious practice in particular, and one that…
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Esther-Khaye the Zogerin of Zabludow
As soon as Rosh Khoydesh Elul comes around, Esther-Khaye the zogerin appears on the scene. For most of the year, we don’t see much of her. She is a quiet, modest Jew, with a shrivelled face. Her hair is always covered by a scarf, both in summer and in winter. Her face and her clothes…
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Dvoyre the Mohilev Community Caller
An extract from A Litvin’s “Yudishe Neshomes” (Jewish souls), a collection of remembered characters and images from the Jewish past in various parts of the world. Here he describes Dvoyre, the cemetery prayer leader in Mohilve, Belarus. In other places, this kind of woman who worked in the cemetery might have been called a “ma’avar-yaboknitse”…
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Yom Kippur soul candles in the Talne Hasidic court
This is a short extract from journalist and writer Dovid Leib Mekler’s “Fun rebns hoyf” (From the rebbe’s court), a collection of stories of the old country, most of which he collected from Hasidic Jews in New York in the 1920s and 30s. In this, Mekler describes the making of Yom Kippur Soul Candles in…
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The eyshes-khayel of Hendrikov – from Y. Y. Trunk’s “Poland”
Another excerpt from Y. Y. Trunk’s famous memoir – a short but sweet recollection of a real-life opshprekherke (healer through incantations) and feldmesterin (cemetery or grave measurer). Like many of the other women documented on this site, she is remembered as being remarkably pious and learned – a description that contrasts somewhat with Trunk’s witchy account…
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“She was like the conductor of an orchestra, directing the wailing of the women in the cemetery” – the Lyubitsher “women’s rebetsn”
In his memoirs, Meir Pisiuk describes his mother, a religious teacher for girls and cemetery prayer leader in Lyubitsh, Lithuania (today Lyubcha, Belarus). This translation combines excerpts from Volumes 1 and 2 of his memoirs, Bleter Zikhroynes. And now I was back in Lyubitsh, where I sat myself down in the besmedresh and threw myself…
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Stesye and Gnesye – Moyshe Kulbak’s feldmesterins
The following is a short excerpt from Moyshe Kulbak‘s short novel, Montog (monday), which depicts a Jewish shtetl in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution. In this chapter, two feldmesterins – cemetery measurers – Stesye and Gnesye – measure the cemetery. Stesye and Gnesye Here are the two little old ladies, who Mordkhe Markus…
