The first part of the tape includes town footage with a tour of the Odesa community led by Rabbi Zev Shpunt. Rabbi Shpunt talks in Russian about the community in Odesa and surrounding towns. The team walks toward the Odesa yeshiva, passing other community buildings.
Walking toward the Odesa yeshiva, the rabbi (Shpunt, per the catalogue) speaks in Russian about the Kherson area before the war, when Yiddish was official in a Jewish district, and about a Yiddish-speaking non-Jewish driver. He recalls how a 1988 concert led to a Yiddish class, then to a Jewish society whose first chairman he became. The society reclaimed a former synagogue building, he went to a Moscow congress of communities, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's emissaries were involved. He also mentions Yakov Gruzberg and the poet Avram Katsev, and says his Odesa work began when Avraham Wolf invited him to the yeshiva.
Most of the talk concerns the Kherson community and its Yiddish circle, not Odesa and surrounding towns.
At the yeshiva premises the rabbi describes in Russian his Sunday class of adult beginners, aged from about 38 to about 70 and funded from his own money. They study Torah with commentary and the laws of Jewish life. He tells how he grew up in Kherson after his parents' evacuation, and his father's war wound. He recalls that he went to Avram Katsev with his poems at 37, which led him to learn about Jewishness and to study in a Jerusalem yeshiva and kollel. He and Kerler discuss Katsev's life as a Yiddish poet and teacher, and then the group moves toward the school.
The rabbi's own biography, the Kherson link and the discussion of the poet Katsev go beyond the tour of the buildings.
The team continues the tour with Rabbi Shpunt, leaving the school building and headed to the next brief interview with Leonid Moiseyevich Vainbrand. He talks about the local community members.
Leaving the school, the rabbi says that tens of thousands of Jews live in Odesa, about a thousand of them in the Tairov district. He recalls meeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 2001 and a large Hanukkah event in Kherson with latkes served by yeshiva students. He tells how he moved from Soviet activist to religious worker, and he recounts a conversation with a host family in America. As they approach the building he explains that he found the housebound elderly man they are visiting through a charity fund's list, and that he keeps a mezuzah and siddur.
Besides the community members, the rabbi tells of his meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a Hanukkah event in Kherson and his own turn to religion.
The team arrives at the apartment and greets the host. Kerler asks where he was born; he answers Valedniki (Veledniki). Kerler asks whether he can tell about the Valedniker tsadik and about his childhood, and then asks where he spent the war.
Kerler already asks about the Valedniker tsadik and the war years.
Vainbrand talks about his life before the war. He moved to Murmansk, Russia, in 1935. He tells anecdotes about the Valedniker Tzaddik, Vainbrand remembers from his childhood. His father was also born in Valedniki.
Vainbrand says he spent the war in Murmansk and left Valedniki in the mid-1930s (year uncertain). Asked about the Valedniker tsadik, he recalls that people came every year to his grave in a small house near Avrech. He tells a story, as he heard it, of a girl who was healed and began to speak after her mother prayed there. His mother, and not his father, told such stories, although his father was also from Valedniki. There was no booklet of the tales at home, only a siddur and other Yiddish books.
Besides the tsadik anecdotes and the move to Murmansk, he gives a healing story and says his mother was the storyteller.
Vainbrand says he recited the morning prayer and the Shema as a boy, and lived in Valedniki until 1935. He describes two schools there, one Yiddish and one half Yiddish and half Russian. Instruction was in Yiddish, and he spoke Yiddish at home with his mother. He says the town had a beys-medresh and a kloyz. Kerler remarks that few people still remember the tsadik of those years.
The passage also covers school languages, the language spoken at home, and the town's two houses of prayer.
The formal part of the interview begins. Vainbrand provides personal information and talks about his family. His father was cobbler. He also shares his childhood memories. He grew up with three brothers.
The formal interview begins. Vainbrand was born in 1919, and Kerler wishes him health to 120. His father, Moyshe Dov, was a shoemaker, and his mother Libe was a housewife who did not work. He had no sisters and three older brothers, whom he names as Yankl, Khayim, Ruven and Avrom (he himself was the fourth). He did not know his grandparents. He put on tefillin until 1935.
The passage names the parents and brothers and says he had no sisters.
Vainbrand talks about his education at a religious and Yiddish school. He attended a cheder before he joined a Yiddish school at the age of seven. Vainbrand then talks about his bar mitzvah.
Vainbrand says he went to cheder from about age three or four, and began Yiddish school at seven. After that he no longer attended cheder. He remembers his bar mitzvah as a small gathering of about ten men, with a festive meal his mother prepared, a little strong drink and cake. He says there was no Torah scroll at home, only a siddur, and he recites a blessing for Kerler.
Asked about Purim, Vainbrand recalls that his mother made hamantashn, and that there was play-acting and singing. Children were dressed up by their mother, as on the Sabbath. He then describes prewar religious life in Valedniki, with two or three minyans in the kloyz and in the beys-medresh. He says the beys-medresh was large and perhaps wooden, and that he studied there in Hebrew, but he does not remember what. Kerler then brings a prayer book with the Valedniki rite.
The passage also covers prewar prayer houses and minyans, and the setup for the prayer-book reading.
Vainbrand reads from a prayer book and addresses prewar religious life in Valedniki taking place in different prayer houses. He remembers how his mother provided shelter for pilgrims, visiting the Tzaddik.
Vainbrand reads aloud from a prayer book and tries a Kaddish for the interviewers, who praise his reading. He explains the difference between the kloyz and the beys-medresh, saying the beys-medresh stood near the centre and the kloyz was up on a hill. The town's Jews were Hasidic and visited only their own tsadik's grave. Pilgrims from distant cities stayed at his mother's house, which stood on the road, and she served them tea and cookies.
Asked about the term for a 'good Jew', Vainbrand says the town had one, the tsadik, to whom Jews came every year, once even from America. Kerler tells him the grave in Valedniki now has a fine building and that Hasidim still go there. They discuss Rabbi Zev Shpunt, who led the team there, and which synagogue Vainbrand attends: the large city synagogue, since he can no longer walk. He says he is about ninety.
The passage turns to Vainbrand's present synagogue and his age, as well as the tsadik's grave today.
Vainbrand talks about his life during the war. He served in the Red Army for seven years until 1949 in the artillery division in Murmansk. He then talks about his education after school graduation and his family. He worked as an accountant. He raised a son and a daughter, who lives in America.
Vainbrand says he served seven years in the army, on the Northern front near Murmansk, in the artillery, and that he holds an order. He worked as a bookkeeper, and a school question leads him to say he no longer remembers much. He has a son, who is in the apartment, and a daughter living elsewhere (the transcript suggests the States), as well as grandchildren.
The transcript does not clearly give the 1949 discharge date, and the daughter's location is uncertain.
Vainbrand talks about prewar cultural life and his education. He attended a Yiddish school for seven years. He also addresses prewar holiday celebrations, in particular Simchat Torah and Passover. Vainbrand remembers how his mother baked matzos at home.
Vainbrand says there was no visiting Yiddish theater in Valedniki, and that children staged their own singing and dancing in Yiddish. He studied in Yiddish for seven years before the Yiddish school was closed in about 1933, and then went to a Russian school. Subjects included Hebrew, grammar and literature, but he cannot recall the songs. He remembers Simchat Torah as a joyful holiday with dancing and children carrying flags and candles. For Passover his mother prepared a kosher oven and baked matzo at home.
