Tag: Yizkor
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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”…
-
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…
-
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…
-
“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…
-
“She looked one of the witches from Macbeth, but a folksy, Jewish version” – Soul Candle magic from Y. Y. Trunk’s Poland.
In the second volume of his famous memoir “Poland”, Yekhiel Yeshaye Trunk paints a colourful picture of his aunt, grandmother and other women making the Yom Kippur soul candle. While other memoirs, like that of Mendele Moykher Sforim, Bella Chagall and Pauline Wengeroff describe this ritual as an extremely pious and moving ceremony, Trunk has…
-
Gitele the pious gabete of Koriv
This is an excerpt from the memoirs of Rabbi Tuviah Gutman Rapoport, published in the memorial book of Koriv, Poland Here he remembers one particular character, Gitele di Gabete, who, acting as religious leader to the women of Koriv, used to, among other things, measure the town cemetery in times of crisis. ‘Gabete’ – the…
-
Incantations must not be taught to anyone
Translation of an excerpt from Abraham Rechtman, Yidishe Etnografye un Folklor, p. 289-298. Rav Yokhanan had the habit of coming to sit by the gates of the mikve, and used to say that ‘if Jewish daughters as they come out from immersing themselves look at me, they will have children as beautiful as I am.’…
Pulling at Threads 