Cluj-Napoca(Kloyzenburg in the project's index)2013-05-1711 min · 3 stretches · 6 questions about wordsYiddish 97%
Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.
Summary
Camera file from a 2013 session recorded in Kloyzenburg (Cluj), in which an elderly woman answers Kerler's questions in Yiddish. She talks about how Lithuanian Jews speak Yiddish, the languages of her parents, and her birthplace Zalș (?). The larger part concerns Sabbath and holiday food there: fish, cholent, braided Sabbath bread, cookies, plum brandy and gefilte fish. The file begins and ends mid-conversation.
Stretches
00:00–03:15
The woman and Kerler discuss Litvak (Lithuanian) Yiddish, which they find odd and which people in her region imitated as a caricature. She says no Litvaks lived in her town in her childhood, only Romanian-born (?) and Hungarian Jews, though some lived in Bucharest. She says her father was educated in a Hungarian school and knew Hungarian better, while she attended a Romanian school and knew Romanian better. She gives her birthplace Zalș (?) and says she is 93, and Kerler wishes her long life.
Asked about Hanukkah food, the woman mentions pancakes (?) and says each holiday had its own dishes. She describes the fish eaten in her town, which lay on a river, and says her father leased a river or pond. She recalls the Friday-night meal, with soup, fish, roast meat and cookies, and the Sabbath cholent, and says her area was rich and the family had a livelihood. Kerler notes that Lithuanian Jews also make cholent, and he and the woman exchange words for it. They also mention plum brandy (palinka) drunk after synagogue.
Kerler asks about Sabbath bread. The woman says it was a braided white loaf, baked by her mother and by her grandmother in the village. They discuss the terms for it, including kolach (?), barches and challah, and she says every household had three to five dishes. She then names the fish eaten, carp, pike and stewed fish, as well as gefilte fish, which was peppery and a little sweet. The file closes with an exchange about a word for finishing or ending (?).