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Ilia (Elye) Zelmanovich Kramer

Khmel'nyts'kyy 26 May 2008 Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler, Moisei Lemster 28 min · 1 part on 1 tape
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  1. MDV 476 0:00–28:31 · 28 min · not online — MCO
Passages

0:00

This tape is a continuation of a formal interview with Ilia (Elye) Zelmanovich Kramer (b. 1927 in Berezdov). He recalls that his father was a religious man, who completed kheyder (a traditional religious education for young boys). Although uneducated from a secular perspective, Kramer’s father was talented in mathematics and languages. Kramer briefly describes the atmosphere of his childhood home, mentioning holiday celebrations, and how his parents would pray in the mornings. Kramer’s mother was also educated at a Russian-language gymnasium.

From the machine transcript

Kramer describes his parents' home: his father was a religious man who had gone to kheyder and was otherwise self-taught, good at mathematics and able to write Russian and speak Polish. Yiddish was spoken at home. He recalls Passover matzo baking and Passover dishes made with matzo meal, and how his father rose early to pray with tefillin. His mother also prayed and had studied for four years at the Russian gymnasium in Berezdov (name as heard), which raised the problem of Saturday attendance. Kerler then turns to Russian, and Lemster announces he will ask some Russian words.

Adds Passover food and matzo baking, the question of the mother's Saturday attendance, and Kramer's father's Russian and Polish.

3:47

The rest of the tape consists of Kramer answering questions from the research team’s sociolinguistic and dialectological survey.

From the machine transcript

Kramer answers a dialectological questionnaire in which Kerler and Lemster give Russian words and sentences and ask for the Yiddish as spoken in his town. Items include body parts (belly, ear, head), animals (mouse, pigeon), colours, adjectives and verbs (sour, build, buy, run away), house, cereal, bread, death, church, street, thousand, vodka, 'one and a half', 'everyone', and sentences with 'I was at my father's' and 'only Jews live on this street'. Kerler also asks him to choose between variants (such as 'such', pleasant, the dreydl at Hanukkah, 'then', grammatical gender of 'way', 'mistake', 'ceiling', 'fence', 'small town', 'many'), and ends by thanking him.

Questions put in this conversation

Items of the dialect questionnaire asked here; each link plays the moment.