People and Poultry: a new translation of Sholem Aleichem's 'Kapores'.
In this story by the famous Sholem Aleichem, the chickens of an un named shtetl organise a revolt against the pre-Yom Kiper custom of...
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feldmesterin
- Oct 4
- 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...
194 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Sep 18
- 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...
240 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Sep 12
- 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...
84 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Sep 9
- 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...
80 views1 comment
feldmesterin
- May 16
- 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...
214 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- May 4
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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...
202 views1 comment
feldmesterin
- Jan 28
- 3 min
Some thoughts on Holocaust Memorial Day and why I Yiddish
Yesterday 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...
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feldmesterin
- Sep 15, 2021
- 9 min
Making 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...
259 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Sep 12, 2021
- 2 min
Double, 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...
192 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Aug 29, 2021
- 6 min
Das Feld un das Keywermessen - cemetery and grave measuring - S. Weissenberg
This is a translation of a 1906 German study of Feld (cemetery) and Keywer (grave - from the Hebrew and Yiddish קבֿר) measuring by...
505 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- May 14, 2021
- 10 min
The 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...
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feldmesterin
- Mar 7, 2021
- 4 min
Witches gotta eat
'Feldmesterin’ sometimes appears alongside other ‘superstitious’ female trades, including witchcraft. Here are two examples from maskilic...
452 views1 comment
feldmesterin
- Jan 14, 2021
- 2 min
An 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...
172 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- Sep 15, 2020
- 2 min
Rachel's tomb as protection against an evil eye
In kneytlakh-leygn and feldmestn, it seems that it was believed that by laying the candle wicks around the cemetery they would be imbued...
202 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- May 31, 2020
- 5 min
Das Feld un das Keywermessen - S. Weissenberg
This is a translation of a 1906 German study of Feld (cemetery) and Keywer (grave - from the Hebrew and Yiddish קבֿר) measuring by...
403 views0 comments
feldmesterin
- May 31, 2020
- 5 min
A 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,...
346 views0 comments