Tis the season
We're one week away from Rosh Hashanah - historically the biggest working week of the year for feldmesterins. I wanted to re-share this...
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feldmesterin
- Aug 21
- 1 min
Khoydesh Elul is upon us ...
And this means it's time to measure another cemetery. This Sunday I, Kohenet Shamira, and musician Eleonore Weil will be returning to the...
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feldmesterin
- Mar 21
- 1 min
This Sunday at Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn
I'm excited to be getting out my ball of yarn again with my co-feldmesterin Sarah Chandler this Sunday, for this event with the...
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feldmesterin
- Feb 17
- 1 min
Event this Sunday - Home Rituals and Kitchen Remedies
I'm very excited to be presenting at this workshop on Sunday with Yelala , alongside these incredible Kohanot. Click here to sign up for...
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feldmesterin
- Jan 27
- 2 min
Bobtshke Kilikovski Cohen, the zogerke who measured cemeteries
In the memorial book to the Jewish community of Volovisk (Vawkavysk, Belarus), I found my second description of a real life feldmesterin....
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feldmesterin
- Jan 13
- 4 min
'Rifke the crazy one' and Bobe Tzinke
Two years ago, in the first semester of my PhD program, I took a course with Prof. David Fishman on the history of the shtetl. In one of...
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feldmesterin
- Jan 10
- 2 min
'The women came into the synagogue wailing like a storm' - a memory from Tomashov
This is an extract from Sh. Leibovitsh 'A krankn a refue' - healing for the sick - in the Tomashover Yizker Bukh (1965.) Leibovitz...
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feldmesterin
- Jan 1, 2023
- 11 min
"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...
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feldmesterin
- Dec 30, 2022
- 2 min
Beyle Shoyver's 'childbirth mitsve'
From Rabbi Tuvye Gutman- Rappaport, ‘The biography of a generation’, Yizker-bukh Koriv, (1955) p. 674. Beyle Shoyver, who did charitable...
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feldmesterin
- Dec 28, 2022
- 2 min
'Lost souls' from a 1928 ethnographic study
This is one section of a long article by H. Heyoys, published in YIVO's filologishe shriftn in 1928, entitled 'Beliefs and customs in...
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feldmesterin
- Dec 27, 2022
- 2 min
Woman soul
This week I've been teaching an online workshop at Yiddish New York about Ashkenazi Jewish women's customs and practices. For the past...
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feldmesterin
- Oct 4, 2022
- 5 min
How to make soul candles for Yom Kippur
In many shtetlekh (small towns) of Eastern Europe, it was common for the female heads of household to pay feldmesterins to measure the...
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feldmesterin
- Sep 18, 2022
- 4 min
How to measure a cemetery in Elul
According to the feldmesterins observed by S. Weissenberg, cemetery measuring was stepped up after the first selihah, being carried out...
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feldmesterin
- Sep 12, 2022
- 4 min
In the month of Elul
Yesterday, as the rain poured down over our group in Mount Carmel Cemetery, Rabbi Noam Lerman spoke about the importance of crying and...
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feldmesterin
- Sep 9, 2022
- 2 min
Measuring Mount Carmel Cemetery this Sunday
When I started out researching these practices, I never planned to actually do them. That happened sort of by accident. But in the...
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feldmesterin
- May 16, 2022
- 7 min
Leybeshekhe the 'Cemetery Jewess' of Kremenits
Zogerke, Zogerin and Firzogerin, are all female forms of Zoger – announcer or preacher, and are usually used to denote a female prayer...
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feldmesterin
- May 4, 2022
- 4 min
Gitele the gabete part 2: how Gitele became known as the Koriv 'angel'
Continued translation from Rabbi Tuviah Gutman Rapoport's 'Biography of a generation' in the Koriv Yizkor Book. See part 1 for a...
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feldmesterin
- May 2, 2022
- 4 min
Gitele the pious Gabete of Koriv, part 1.
I found the following description of a feldmesterin and gabete (female community functionary) in the Yizkor book of Koriv, a shtetl near...
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feldmesterin
- May 1, 2022
- 1 min
Shiphrah-Leah, the zogerke of Kletsk
In the Yizker (memorial) book written by former residents of the shtetl Kletsk, now in Belarus, I found the following short description...
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feldmesterin
- Apr 29, 2022
- 4 min
Klogerins un baveynerins – Lamenting women and weeping women - Abraham Rechtman
What follows is an excerpt of an ethnographic memoir - Yidishe etnografye un folklor (Jewish ethnography and folklore) – written in 1958...
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