feldmesterinMay 167 minLeybeshekhe the 'Cemetery Jewess' of KremenitsZogerke, Zogerin and Firzogerin, are all female forms of Zoger – announcer or preacher, and are usually used to denote a female prayer...
feldmesterinMay 44 minGitele 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...
feldmesterinMay 24 minGitele 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...
feldmesterinMay 11 minShiphrah-Leah, the zogerke of KletskIn the Yizker (memorial) book written by former residents of the shtetl Kletsk, now in Belarus, I found the following short description...
feldmesterinApr 294 minKlogerins un baveynerins – Lamenting women and weeping women - Abraham RechtmanWhat follows is an excerpt of an ethnographic memoir - Yidishe etnografye un folklor (Jewish ethnography and folklore) – written in 1958...
feldmesterinJan 283 minSome thoughts on Holocaust Memorial Day and why I YiddishYesterday I gave a guest class on the Holocaust for a synagogue I used to work at in London. I showed them lots of examples from my own...
feldmesterinSep 15, 20219 minMaking soul candles for 5782 The first time I measured a cemetery, I did it on impulse. I was visiting the shtetl in Lithuania that my family were from and, finding...
feldmesterinSep 12, 20212 minDouble, Double, Mi un Tsores ...According to the ethnographic study I posted recently, Yom Kippur candles made with threads that had been used to measure graves were...
feldmesterinAug 29, 20216 minDas Feld un das Keywermessen - cemetery and grave measuring - S. WeissenbergThis is a translation of a 1906 German study of Feld (cemetery) and Keywer (grave - from the Hebrew and Yiddish קבֿר) measuring by...
feldmesterinMay 14, 202110 minThe wailing women of the shtetl In his memoir Khoreve veltn, written in an effort to preserve in memory the customs of the Jewish shtetlekh of Lithuania destroyed during...
feldmesterinMar 7, 20214 minWitches gotta eat 'Feldmesterin’ sometimes appears alongside other ‘superstitious’ female trades, including witchcraft. Here are two examples from maskilic...
feldmesterinJan 14, 20212 minAn ayin-hore incantation, to exercise an evil eye from a child From the memorial book of the town of Pruzhany, Poland, recorded by A Fayvushinsky. Incantations like this one are often purposefully...
feldmesterinSep 15, 20202 minRachel's tomb as protection against an evil eyeIn kneytlakh-leygn and feldmestn, it seems that it was believed that by laying the candle wicks around the cemetery they would be imbued...
feldmesterinSep 12, 20201 minFeldmestn and Kneytlekh-leygn source sheet and ritual guide Feldmestn and kneytlekh-leygn were most commonly practised in the month of Elul to make Yom Kippur, particularly during the days of...
feldmesterinMay 31, 20205 minDas Feld un das Keywermessen - S. WeissenbergThis is a translation of a 1906 German study of Feld (cemetery) and Keywer (grave - from the Hebrew and Yiddish קבֿר) measuring by...
feldmesterinMay 31, 20205 minA tkhine for making Yom Kippur candles - extract from Mendele Moykher Sforim's 'Shloyme Reb Khayims'In this extract from his 1899-1912 unfinished autobiographical novel, Shloyme Reb Khayims, Mendele describes the protagonist's mother,...
feldmesterinMay 31, 20202 minExtract from Salomon Maimon's lebnsgeshichte18th century Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, Salomon Maimon, mentions the practise of feldmestn in his memoirs written in 1792-3. In an...
feldmesterinMay 31, 20201 minMestn Feld - a memory from Pruzhany (Pruzhene), PolandThis short description of the practise is found in the Yizker Bukh 'Pinkes fun der shtot Pruzhene' - a memorial book written by former...
feldmesterinMay 25, 20202 minChapter 4: Stesye and Gnesye - From Moyshe Kulbak's 1926 novel Montok - 'Monday'.The two little old ladies, who Mordechai Markus saw and started at through his window. Two little old ladies, two cemetery measurers –...
feldmesterinMay 25, 20201 minFeld-mestn by Morris RosenfeldYiddish Poet Morris Rosenfeld, best known for his poems describing the hardships of Jewish immigrants in the US, wrote the following poem...