One conversation with Lea Gotlieb, continuing over MDV 95, MDV 96.
Gotlieb speaks about contemporary Jewish life.
Gotlieb and Kerler discuss the idea of founding a school for learning Yiddish in Budapest, and Kerler's wish to come and teach. They talk about Yiddish study at the university and among Lubavitch Hasidim. Gotlieb recalls a young man in Israel who would not or could not answer her in Yiddish.
Adds the idea of a Yiddish school, and the Israel anecdote about a young man who did not answer in Yiddish.
Gotlieb answers questions about food and cultural terminology.
Gotlieb answers questions about food and kinship-related terms: flodn, kugel, the Sabbath morning cake (koilitsh versus khale), the dough offering taken from challah and the word for midwife. S3 and Kerler help in Hungarian and Yiddish when she cannot find the Yiddish word. Kerler and Gotlieb also compare Slavic words and names such as her husband's and Kerler's.
Adds the midwife term and Slavic-word and name discussion.
Gotlieb recalls Sukkot celebrations at home. She describes how she built her family's sukkah, in which her father spent the night. Gotlieb then addresses Hoshana Rabbah (seventh day of Sukkot) and Passover.
Gotlieb recalls Sukkot at home: she says she built the family sukkah with decorations while her father slept in it. She then answers questions about the sukkah roof, Hoshana Rabbah and Passover, including the seder, the four questions and the song about the kid goat, which she remembers only in part.
Gotlieb speaks about praying customs and recites the morning prayer "Modeh ani."
Gotlieb talks about her morning prayers and recites the Modeh ani, blended with other prayer fragments and Yiddish phrases. She explains that she prays each morning, asks God for help and good health, and sees prayer as something not only for men.
Gotlieb speaks about prewar customs on Tisha B'Av. She then addresses folk customs to avert the evil eye. Gotlieb mentions that the community prayed for her when she was sick as child.
Gotlieb speaks about Tisha B'Av, fasting and the children's custom of throwing burrs. She says she no longer remembers many details at 83. She then describes the evil eye and the remedy of pouring water over coals. She recalls being very ill at age nine, when an amulet or ribbon from Jerusalem was brought and prayers were said for her in the synagogue, and Kerler notes she left for Budapest nine years later.
Adds the Tisha B'Av customs and the age of nine for the illness and move to Budapest.
Gotlieb speaks about her life after the war. She lived in Sátoraljaújhely until 1987 and then moved to Budapest, where she worked in the community kitchen. At the age of eigteen, Gotlieb worked at a factory in Budapest.
Gotlieb talks about her work in Budapest and her return home. She worked in a kosher community kitchen and went back and forth to her home town. She says she returned to live in Budapest in 1987 after her son died. At eighteen she worked in a factory, not in the kitchen.
Adds the son's death as one reason for the move, and the return in 1987.
Gotlieb addresses prewar life in Sátoraljaújhely. In particular, she remembers a visiting priest, who spoke Yiddish. She also addresses the Jewish occupational structure and institutions in town. Gotlieb then describes the local bath house.
Gotlieb remembers a priest who visited her father and read and spoke Yiddish with him. She answers questions about local occupations such as leather work, tailors, shoemakers and watchmakers, and about the two mikvehs, Hasidic and Neolog, with their bath-houses.
Adds the leather-trade father and trades, plus the two mikvehs.
Gotlieb addresses prewar cultural and religious life. She then answers questions about cultural terminology.
Gotlieb answers questions on prewar cultural and religious life: the library with Hungarian and Yiddish books and the beis medresh. She also answers questions on terms such as 'good place' for cemetery, 'good Jew', and Polish Jews. Kerler explains that the second woman speaks Sátmar Yiddish well and could be a rebbetzin.
Gotlieb recalls prewar traditional weddings. She remembers the wedding of the rebbe's daughter. His daughter was married to Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira's son. She then speaks about life today.
Gotlieb recalls a grand wedding in Sátoraljaújhely of the rebbe's daughter, married to the son of the Munkács rebbe; Kerler places it in 1933. She speaks about the rabbi (Meizels), his Yiddish and her neighbours. The conversation moves to Yiddish speakers today, who can speak it but will not, a planned visit to the grave of a tsadik, and relatives' marriages in Hungarian.
Adds Yiddish speakers today, the planned grave visit, and the relatives' marriages.
Gotlieb speaks about healing customs during her childhood. They then discuss local geography, before she talks about contemporary Hasidic life.
Gotlieb tells, partly via Hungarian and S2's summary, about her childhood illness and the healing customs used: coals in water and the amulet. She recalls an operation after eating hot cracklings. The group then discusses distances between towns, a cemetery, and a Hasidic businessman, Berkovits, and his factory moving to Romania. Hasidic life today and the High Holiday prayers are also mentioned.
Adds the Berkovits discussion, the factory moving to Romania, and the operation after eating cracklings.
Gotlieb recites again the Purim shpiel. She then explains how children sang it in her hometown and addresses prewar Passover and Purim celebrations.
Gotlieb recites the Purim shpiel verses that children sang in her home town, and answers questions about when and how it was performed, with children going from house to house. She and S2 also describe prewar Passover and Purim customs of charitable collections, such as for a poor bride's dowry, and getting new clothes for Passover.
Adds the charity collections and the new clothes at Passover.
Gotlieb speaks about her and her family's life before World War II. She worked at a broom factory in Budapest at the age of eighteen.
Gotlieb tells, mainly in Hungarian and then summarised in Yiddish by S2, about her family's hardship in the early 1930s. Her father, a hide dealer, lost his goods in the cartel period and the family was evicted and lived in a broom factory, where her brother was born. Her pious mother urged him to buy a horse and cart, which brought him success. Kerler then asks about her mother's Sabbath observance.
Adds the father's trade, the eviction, and the horse-and-cart story.