Category: Uncategorized
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Grave measuring and soul candle making kits now available from Pushcart Judaica
Elul is fast approaching, and he amazing Sarah Chandler (Kohenet Shamirah) of Shamir Collective—my feldmestn collaborator for the past four years— has made grave measuring and soul candle making kits using my ritual guides, which are now available to order from Pushcart Judaica Each kit contains: Candle wick (enough to measure two averaged-sized graves) Pliable…
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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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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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Bobtshe Kilikovski-Cohen, the zogerke who measured cemeteries
From the Volkovisk (Vawkavysk, Belarus) memorial book. Bobtshe was a daughter in law of Sholem Potshter. Her husband was called Leybe and he was a wood trader. Her father was David the Rosh-Yeshiva. Her brother was Fishl, a Hebrew teacher. She could study Talmud, and she herself had composed a book of women’s prayers which were…
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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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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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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…
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Candle and cemetery magic to ward off death and rescue the dying – excerpts from a 1928 ethnographic study
The following excerpts are taken from an article by H. Khayes,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. It also made use of a lot of…
Pulling at Threads 