Manya (Margule) Moiseevna Mester

Camera and cemetery stretch. Kerler and Katz talk about making a picture and the reading of a text, and a poem about homeland is recited. Russian directions are given about who stays with the camera and about a grave, and a further interview is mentioned.

Contains a recited poem and Russian directions, but the cemetery tour itself is not clear in the transcript.

Interview begins with Katz. Mester gives personal details: she was born in the village of Stolniceni, sixteen kilometres from Edineț, with the Jewish name Margule, née Shnayder, born in 1922 around Hanukkah. Her father Moyshe was a tailor and her mother Shabe came from the Fingerman family. She remembers one grandfather and was one of four sisters, one of whom was shot during the war. She names her sisters.

Adds the birth date, her mother's maiden name and the sisters' names.

Mester says she studied in cheder and school as a child and worked as a tailor after the war and her marriage. She is called Manya. She recalls early childhood: making dolls with her older sister, starting cheder at six, and then the Romanian school. She describes the mixed cheder held in a rented room in summer, where boys and girls studied Hebrew texts and prayer with a teacher of about forty, translating into Yiddish, and where Hebrew was the language of speech.

Mester says she remembers almost nothing of the prayers, though she recalls a blessing and that people said "Shabes". She remembers the Four Questions and the Passover seder led by her father and recites a Yiddish version. She also recalls how her mother said a prayer and how her father made kiddush on Friday night. She then mentions a Yiddish song about children in America, which she half-remembers.

Adds the Four Questions and a prayer recalled in Yiddish.

Mester explains the song about children in America and says the family was religious: her father went to synagogue and prayed at home, and her mother was very devout. She started the Romanian school at six and a half. Asked about childhood, she says there were few children in the village and that organisations existed in towns like Edineț. Katz asks about contact with non-Jewish children and then about the High Holidays.

The catalogue's song title is not clear in the transcript.

Mester describes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur before the war: dressing up for synagogue, the fast, which she began at thirteen, the shofar and Kol Nidre, and cantors brought in from the city. She recalls Sukkot in the sukkah, the guests brought from the synagogue and her mother's baked fare, and Simchat Torah with kissing the Torah. She also describes lighting Hanukkah candles in order by family member and the Hanukkah dishes, distinguishing them from Purim food.

Adds the High Holidays, cantors and the Hanukkah candle lighting.

Mester describes Sabbath food: first vinegar meat, then soup with almond-shaped noodles, with compote to drink. She says holidays were beautiful, and then begins to mention Passover. The conversation is interrupted by a pause for her, with some asides in Russian.

Includes a pause and aside after the Sabbath dishes.

Mester describes preparations for Passover at home: washing the dishes, the large chest in the attic where Passover dishes were kept, her mother's daily baking, potato dishes and matzo-meal baking. She remembers the seder, which her father led until midnight reclining on cushions, and how she, as the youngest girl with no brother, asked the Four Questions. She also describes the charoset and recites the Four Questions in Yiddish, and then answers that no non-Jews spoke Yiddish in the village.

Adds the Yiddish recitation of the Four Questions and the answer about non-Jews speaking Yiddish.

Mester says the village Jews were Hasidim who believed in all rebbes and describes the custom of going to a rebbe with written petitions handed through his attendant. The Rîbnița rebbe visited the village once a year, and she tells how her mother asked about her pregnant sister, married in the 1930s. She compares the Ștefănești and Rîbnița rebbes, explains the difference between a rav and a rebbe, and says she never saw the Rîbnița rebbe and knew only a picture. She says the rebbe wrote a prescription for an illness. A man helps with the name of the rebbe's town.

Adds the rav–rebbe distinction and the rebbe's prescription.

Katz asks the meanings of dybbuk and golem and Mester answers. He then asks for Yiddish equivalents of Russian words and phrases: greetings by time of day, please, excuse me, thank you, luck, house, window, colours, adverbs of time and comparison, and a sentence to translate. Kerler adds a few items. The questionnaire mixes Yiddish and Russian.

Cultural terminology (dybbuk, golem) is followed by questionnaire items on greetings, house words, colours and adverbs.