Category: Prayer leaders
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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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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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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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Aunt Libtsye with her prayer book
This incredible short account of Libtsye who led her community in prayer as they were taken to be murdered in Rohatyn, Ukraine, is taken from a memorial book to a neighbouring shtetl, Burshtyn. It is the third in a series of posts that, following this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, I am sharing to remember women…
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Roiza Baila Czarnochapka Jedwabnik, the synagogue zogerke of Drobin
In honour of Holocaust Memorial Day, I will be sharing this week a few stories of women spiritual leaders who were murdered in the Nazi genocide. Today I am delighted to share my second guest post, in which my friend and teacher Shoshana Jedwab remembers her umgekumene (murdered) grandmother, Roiza Baila Czarnochapka Jedwabnik, may her…
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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…
Pulling at Threads 