MDV 146 · Sergo Bengelsdorf; Marina Mikhailovna Shraybman; Moisha Motylevich Lipovetskiy and 1 more

Kerler and Bengelsdorf look at a document, apparently a certificate, and comment on how well it is made. The transcript is brief and fragmentary.

At Shraybman's home the group discusses the date and her husband Yekhiel Shraybman's study with his books and portraits. She says she hopes the room will become a small museum. She speaks of his love of Soviet Yiddish writers and his dream, while still in Romania, of becoming a Soviet Yiddish writer. The question of where his papers and archive should go is raised, and she mentions letters sent to the Holocaust museum in Washington.

Beyond the clippings and the husband's work, the passage covers the study as a future museum and the fate of his archive.

Shraybman recounts how she met her husband, apparently in Hungary, and that she, a Russian from near Chelyabinsk, had never heard Yiddish before. She says he was much older and lived to ninety-six, working almost to the end, and mentions the number of books he published and translations of them. She describes learning Yiddish from him and from his relatives, and the discussion touches on another woman's Yiddish studied with teachers.

The catalogue gives 1969 for the meeting, which is not clearly heard in the transcript.

Shraybman shows manuscripts and items connected with the writer Moyshe Altman, including miniatures he wrote and a piece on Y. L. Peretz. She also mentions that he wrote at the end of his life and spoke about other writers at the Yiddish center. The interviewers ask questions and there is a short exchange about the dog.

The transcript also shows the Yiddish center's meetings and the Sandler seminar.

Shraybman talks about the pictures on the wall and exhibitions. The interviewers mention a phone number and photographs of writers and ask about America. The passage is brief and fragmentary.

Informal conversation in which Kerler and Lemster talk with the man who becomes the next interviewee about America, whether he has been there, and building an archive of Yiddish speakers. The talk turns to wearing tefillin and to his age, about eighty. The exchange is partly garbled.

Lipovetskiy says he worked as a driver, a locksmith and then a teacher of physical education after university, in a school. He recalls prewar schooling in a Yiddish school and a talmud torah in Chișinău, with the names of streets, and a general killed by a bomb. He discusses the difficult economic situation today, his small pension, and living alone, and that his children live abroad.

Beyond the personal data, the transcript covers local sites, the cemetery, pension, and children abroad.

Lipovetskiy gives his name, patronymic and surname, and says he worked in a Romanian-language and then a Moldovan school. He lives in Chișinău and was born there, and his parents were also from there.

Brief passage of mainly Kerler's questions, apparently about years and age, with only fragments of Lipovetskiy's replies.

Abelsky speaks about his work writing articles and publishing in a Chabad newspaper and on the internet. He discusses at length the messianic controversy within Chabad about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and says he was among the first to write about it. He mentions disagreements with other Chabad figures and gives his name to Kerler. He also begins to say he was born in Moscow and evacuated during the war.

The passage also covers messianism and the internet articles, besides his newspaper.

Abelsky tells of his wartime evacuation to Uzbekistan, living in Tashkent and studying in an underground yeshiva in Samarkand. In 1946 he left Russia with the yeshiva, studied for a year in Germany and was then sent on a mission to Romania, where he stayed three years and had trouble with the authorities. He went on to Israel, married, taught in Chabad schools in Kfar Chabad and Kiryat Gat, and came to Chișinău around the Hanukkah of sixteen years before the interview.

The transcript adds his marriage in Israel and teaching at Chabad schools, and the Romanian authorities' investigation.

Abelsky says he is the chief rabbi of Chișinău and Moldova and discusses the weekly Chabad press and the messianic question. He argues at length about the Lubavitcher Rebbe being the 'yakhid ba-dor', quoting the Talmud, and about opponents (mitnagdim) and Chabad figures. He also mentions yeshiva students and a friend from yeshiva days now in Paris.

Abelsky speaks about Jewish life in Moldova today: the uncertain number of Jews, people who do not know they are Jewish, and his students and community, with hundreds of families around him. He mentions the Russian-language newspaper he publishes, his three books and others he is preparing, and a kindergarten and a school with a yeshiva.

Abelsky describes the Lubavitch yeshiva in Chișinău, in which Gemara and Hasidic teaching are studied. Students are sent on to Israel or New York, and the teaching is in Hebrew.