'The entire shtetl accompanied her to her eternal rest' - reverence for the midwife
As I wrote on the introduction page about midwives - known in Yiddish as bobes or heybams - a crucial source on the role and importance...
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feldmesterin
Feb 52 min
The eyshes-khayil of Hendrikov, from Y. Y. Trunk's "Poland" (1944)
Another short but sweet recollection of a real-life opshprekherke (healer through incantations) and feldmesterin (cemetery or grave...
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feldmesterin
Dec 14, 20232 min
Sore-Rokhl "the fat" cemetery Jewess of Krinski
Since it's the last day of Khanike, when, in some communities, the left over "dead thread" from Yom Kippur would be used to make khanike...
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feldmesterin
Jan 27, 20232 min
Bobtshke Kilikovski Cohen, the zogerke who measured cemeteries
In the memorial book to the Jewish community of Volkovisk (Vawkavysk, Belarus), I found my second description of a real life...
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feldmesterin
Jan 13, 20234 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, 20232 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, 202311 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, 20222 min
Beyle Shoyver's 'childbirth mitsve'
From Rabbi Tuvia Gutman- Rappaport, ‘The biography of a generation’, Yizker-bukh Koriv, (1955) p. 674. Beyle Shoyver, who did charitable...
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feldmesterin
May 16, 20223 min
Leybeshekhe the 'Cemetery Jewess' of Kremenits
Among the professions listed in this memorial book from Kremenets, Ukraine, between "goose plucker" and "mechanic", is "cemetery zogerke"...
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feldmesterin
May 2, 20224 min
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...
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feldmesterin
May 1, 20221 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, 20224 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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feldmesterin
Sep 12, 20212 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...
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feldmesterin
May 31, 20205 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...
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