Feldmesterins – cemetery and grave measurers

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In cases of severe illness or very difficult childbirth, Jewish women in Eastern Europe turned to a ritual known in Yiddish as feldmestn or keyver-mestn – cemetery or grave measuring. Often a last resort when other remedies had failed, the graves of close relatives of the suffering person were measured with thread, accompanied by Yiddish tkhines (suppliations) calling on the dead to use their position in heaven to plead with God on behalf of their relative. The thread was then used as the wick for special neshome likht or ‘soul candles’ that were donated to the synagogue or the beys-midresh (the house of study). It was hoped that this mitsve of donating candles to light up the study of torah would invoke God's mercy.  

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In times of severe crisis such as plague or if a child was gravely ill, the entire perimeter of the cemetery was measured. The tkhines (Yiddish prayers) and songs said during cemetery measurements, which resemble incantations, compared the thread to the soul of the person or people in danger. By pulling it around the cemetery, they hoped to extend the sufferers’ lives, at the same time creating a boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead. The tkhines said during soul candle making – a ritual known in Yiddish as kneytlekh leygn (placing wicks) – called on the dead to aid the living and help reinforce that boundary. The very thin, handmade thread, over which was said a special incantation, was known as known as the toyter fodem – the dead thread. It features in a few Yiddish idioms – testimony to the prevalence of the practice, which is frequently mentioned in Yiddish literature describing life in the shtetl.

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In many places, cemetery measuring was undertaken by professional women ritualists known as feldmesterins. Like the other women documented on this site, feldmesterins were usually pious female elders who also acted as gabetes and collecters of charity. While in some places feldmesterins were paid for their work, others – like Gitele the Gabete of Koriv and Bobtshe Kilikovski Cohen of Volovisk – performed the ritual behalf of their communities as a mitzvah. Mendele Moykher Sforim, the ‘grandfather’ of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature, described his mother Sore measuring the cemetery and making soul candles. All of these women were well-educated in religious subjects and also acted as prayer leaders in the syngagogue. Gitele di Gabete was even described as the Koriv “women’s rebe.”

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Soul Candles for Yom Kippur

A ritual for times of crisis, in many places cemetery measuring was practiced yearly in the month of Elul, the period leading up to the Jewish High Holidays and the Day of Judgement. While the ritual had become rare by the early 20th Century, a 1906 study by anthropologist S. Weissenberg reveals that in certain shtetls, feldmesterins could still be found waiting in the cemetery with thread during the week before Rosh Hashanah, when people – mostly other women – would hire them to conduct their measurements. Working in groups of two or three, feldmesterins would generally conduct two measurements of the cemetery perimeter, while their client followed behind them reciting tkhines.

During the eight days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the thread taken from these measurements was used to make two huge soul candles, one for the living - the gezunte (healthy) or lebedike (living) likht  – and one for the dead - the neshome likht. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the candle for the living was lit in the home, and the soul candle in the shul. Each containing a wick made from thread the length of the perimeter of the cemetery; these huge candles would burn for the entire 25-hour festival. Bella Chagall, in her childhood memoir, described how all the families in the town donated a soul candle to the synagogue, and remembered searching for her own family’s soul candle.

As described by Bella Chagall, Pauline Wengeroff, Mendele Moykher Sforim, Trunk and others, the candle making was usually led by a female head of household, in the presence of other female family members. Sometimes they were aided by a professional woman kneytlekh-leygerin (wick-layer) or likhtmakherin (candle-maker). When making the wick for the candle for the living, the women would name all their living relatives, wishing each of them a good divine judgement on Yom Kippur and good things for the new year. When making the candle for the dead – the soul candle or neshome likht ­– ancestors would be called on to advocate for the living with God, that they might receive a merciful judgement on Yom Kippur. Starting with Abraham and Sarah or sometimes Adam and Eve and following the ancestral line up to the more recent dead, these tkhines would name the specific ancestral qualities that they hoped would help the living. In what Chava Weissler has termed “reciprocity between the living and the dead,” soul candle tkhines praised the dead and involved them in the world of the living, whilst also asking for their help. [Weissler, 1997.]

According to Weissler, the earliest reference to the ritual of making Yom Kippur soul candles is found in a 1197 poem by Eliazar of Worms. Eight centuries later, it remained a popular practice, with prayers for making Yom Kippur soul candles appearing in some of the most popular collections of tkhines authored by the legendary Sore Bas Toyvim. In these highly-respected books of tkhines, the practice of making soul candles is presented as part of the women’s mitzvah of kindling sabbath and festival lights. Seen by Jewish modernizers like Y. Y. Trunk as a superstitious and witchy practice, these tkhines suggest that, for the women who practiced it, it was simply regarded as part of a Jewish women’s tradition that complimented that of men.  There is even evidence that the tradition of lighting memorial candles on Yom Kippur – still known in Hebrew as ‘soul candles’ (נר נשמה)– developed out of this women’s practice.

 

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