Folk beliefs and healing

Rezmovits recalls a Yiddish theater visit after the war and the humorous way his mother retold the performance. Kerler asks about a Yiddish newspaper and about the terms 'dybbuk' and 'golem', which Rezmovits explains from his mother's stories, and he also mentions films. He adds how the word 'golem' is used for a fool.

Rezmovits answers questionnaire items about dialect words, the evil eye and customs such as putting salt in pockets, and recalls a story about Polish Jews in Israel with a comic speech. Kerler asks about Jewish weddings in Debrecen, and Rezmovits speaks of the village wedding jester and his mother's stories. He mentions learning Aramaic from Sonia and translating a Hungarian poem.

Rezmovits sings or recites a song about poverty and a village fool that his mother knew. He says the family was poor and seldom travelled, and describes Sabbath meals of soup, meat and fish without sugar. In answer to Kerler's questions he gives words for a non-Jewish cemetery, talks about Christmas customs and a rhyme about Yossl, and describes 'zakhor' bundles and a charm against the evil eye.

Kerler asks about the postwar yeshiva in Budapest and puts questions about the words dybbuk and golem, including the Golem of Prague. Gross's wife then comes in; she speaks Hungarian and some Yiddish and says she did not learn Yiddish because she ran away from the private Hebrew teacher as a child.

Kerler asks Herbst about cultural terms such as 'baal-shem' and 'dibbuk' (placed in Prague, with a question about the golem). Herbst then sings a song about a destitute man who sleeps on boulevard benches and is woken by a policeman's stick. Kerler has him repeat it line by line to write down the words. Herbst says it was brought by a cousin from Sighet; Kerler then starts a question on 'barkhes' and challah.

Herbst explains how his mother made mamaliga, layered with cheese, sour cream and butter and baked in the oven. He also says how it was eaten with milk, and what he and Romanians called it (a word possibly tokan). Kerler then asks about cultural terminology: what 'a good Jew' meant (a Hasidic tsadik), and the word for a cemetery as a holy place. He goes on to ask about the golem and the dybbuk, the latter of which Herbst knows only by hearsay. The passage ends with Herbst saying he began work at a sawmill after his bar mitzvah.

Gotlieb says her family was Ashkenazi (not Hasidic) with twelve children, and explains the Yismach Moshe as a Hasidic rabbi who she says waited for the Messiah in a tree. She says her town had three yeshivas and a community, a Jewish population of 3,800 (as heard) among around 14,000, and a beautiful river. She says she went with her father to the Yismach Moshe's grave, and her mother consulted a pious man about kosher questions, but sick people went to the doctor.

Blobshteyn says his father David was a kosher butcher from Siltse, near Mukacheve, and his mother Sara Rivka a native of Mukacheve. His maternal grandfather came from Poland. He tells how his mother, in an earlier cholera outbreak, was said to have been hidden in an attic and sick people were burned alive, and how this gave her second name. He adds that his father, as a kosher butcher, depended on the rabbi, and that the family was large.

Blobshteyn recalls his mother's practices on the non-Jewish New Year to ward off bad luck, such as placing a nail on the lard and keeping poultry shut in. He mentions the family's home slaughter of geese and the food made from liver. Kerler asks about the term for the non-Jewish New Year and Easter, and Blobshteyn recalls that the winters were snowy and cold.

Blobshteyn explains several terms (golem, a non-Jewish house of worship, dybbuk) in answer to Kerler's questions. He goes on to compare Christian and Jewish teaching, including the weekly Torah reading and Sunday services. They then discuss the Christian claim to be the true Jews and the origin of the Arabs. Blobshteyn also recalls a Jewish butcher who was denounced and imprisoned, and a village man he knew as a child.

Herbst answers Kerler's questions about the golem and the dybbuk, saying the golem figure was kept in a synagogue attic. He is then asked about his current life, and the passage becomes a discussion partly in Hungarian.

Reti tells of the Kosoner rebbe's foresight and judgment. The rebbe predicted that a man held by the authorities would be freed by a court, and it happened; this was in Kleinwardein (Kisvárda). Visitors, including non-Jews, relied on him, as he knew why they came. Reti again mentions the brother, Mendele of Kalev, as a small rebbe with a fine voice.

Kerler asks about the evil eye, and about the entertainer at weddings, and Reti is unsure of the term. Reti says his grandfather died before he was born and that his brother is named after him; the grandfather was a learned man. The talk turns to the women who helped at births and the small Sabbath loaves given to children visiting after a boy's birth (barkhes, which Kerler compares with challah), then to other expressions and a yahrzeit blessing.

Reti recites a humorous purim-shpil piece about a bride, at Kerler's request. He then tells stories about a Hasidic rebbe, including one about a lost cow, and answers questions about sick people and non-Jews who came to the rebbe. They also discuss divorce and halitsah and a Tash rebbe near Nyíregyháza (?). Kerler ends by asking about the best time in his past.

Altman recalls a few lines of the song about Beltz, her little town, and describes running from synagogue after Sabbath services to a river. She and Kerler then go through the meanings of several words: a story about demons, a dybbuk, a golem, 'a taste of Sabbath', and a type of wooden clapper.

The sisters describe the end of Sabbath, when the mother said a blessing for a good week, a prayer on rising, and the custom of putting a piece of bread in the water pail. Kerler asks who taught Dzigifker to read and write Yiddish. She says she was sent to cheder in Mărculești but the boys would not let a girl study, so her father took her out and hired a private tutor. The sisters offer songs and stories, and Katz greets them and joins in.

At the Hesed centre the sisters describe the warm welcome of the staff (Roza Yakovlevna is named), and the interviewers chat about being from America. The sisters then explain kosher practice at home: soaking and salting meat and the names Rachel, Rebecca and Leah (not Sarah). They describe the bread custom at the end of Sabbath, when a piece of bread was thrown into the water pail, and the crumbs on the tablecloth were shaken out only on Sunday morning, when the Jewish week begins. Dzigifker describes her prayer for a good week, and they discuss the morning Modeh ani prayer and Hebrew teaching.

Dzigifker recalls Purim in prewar Mărculești, with a festively decorated turkey for a party buffet and children dancing. She tells how the rebbe Shmuel Zandl, from Rashkov(?), stayed in their home for six weeks with two attendants. People came to him for help, her mother's limp was healed by his blessing, and the mother refused payment. The father died after the family went back to the village, leaving three orphans. Practical talk about the recording and a Russian conversation about a scarf and photographs interrupt the passage.

The Katerbergs recall the Yiddish theater of Sidi Tal in Lipcani and travelling troupes, and the question of film. Kerler asks about words such as dybbuk, golem, apostate and convert, and the Katerbergs say what they remember about them.

Kalussky answers whether people went to rebbes, recalling a rebbe at Ribnita near the Dniester. He says Briceni had 14,000 Jews, and tells a long story about a clever visiting rebbe from Khotyn who wanted fish on Friday and received people seeking advice. Details of the story, including horses and a man named Moshe, are hard to follow.

Roif answers Kerler's questions about prewar books and Jewish life in Duruitoarea, saying there were few religious books and no library before or after the war. He recalls Hasidim visiting the villages and his father's visit to the Ștefănești rebbe when his mother was gravely ill. The family doctor, also from Ștefănești, had given up on her; the rebbe summoned him and asked him questions, and she recovered and lived to ninety. Roif also mentions his father's work for the landowner Burski (?) before his emigration to America.

Roif touches briefly on life today and on a radio presenter who asks him to speak Yiddish. He then answers a long run of questionnaire items from Kerler: everyday words, adjectives and adverbs, words for honest and religious, and Hebrew-derived words. He also gives cheder-related Hebrew phrases and speaks of knowing no Hebrew practice. A woman present joins in, and a charm against the evil eye comes up.

Shpitalnik answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology: the word dybbuk and its local meaning, a convert to Christianity (meshumed), the golem, formulas said after a dead person is mentioned, and a blessing that the deceased may plead for the living. She also recalls a known convert (Rovinovitsh (?)) from before her time.

Mester talks about travel to a rebbe in prewar religious life. Her mother went to the rebbe in Rîbnița, who is called a great tsadik. She describes the kvitl handed in with a request and the rebbe's blessing, and says her mother also went to pray for health. She mentions a protective cap that the rebbe's blessing made a good-luck charm.

Abelsky explains how a person asks a rebbe for advice by opening a volume of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's letters with eyes closed after preparation and immersion in the mikveh. He also recites the formula invoking the Rebbe as messiah. Lemster then talks about his own books on Yiddish and religious vocabulary.

Abelsky explains that his blessings come through the rebbe, unlike his grandfather's own power, and tells Kerler of people seeking blessings. He describes a woman who needed milk for her baby and the sceptical doctor husband, and a man injured by an axe who recovered after the blessing and is now in Israel.

Kerler and Katz ask for a blessing, and Abelsky gives one, explaining that a blessing is 99 percent from above and one percent the recipient's vessel. He mentions the Lubavitcher Rebbe as messiah. Kerler describes the archive's description sheet for him to sign.

Asked about Hasidim, Roif says she remembers only her mother-in-law's talk of the lamed-vovniks. She then tells how her husband recognised a woman from the camp at a sanatorium in Odessa, by asking where she had been in the war, and she says the boys could slip out of camp while she stayed inside. She also mentions in Russian her husband's invitations to various cities from prisoners' associations.

Gordin answers questions about terms: a dybbuk, which he explains as someone possessed, and a golem, which he does not know. He then gives the term for the cemetery and explains that in Florești the Jewish and Christian fields were adjacent but separate.

Lemster asks whether Jews travelled to visit rebbes or righteous men; Sherman says they did when in trouble, and that his mother went to a rebbe, perhaps in Ștefănești (?), for a blessing on the home. Kerler and Lemster ask about folk healing and the evil eye; Sherman remembers nothing of it.

Sherman discusses the Dybbuk, which local amateurs staged in the Telenești theater along with Sholem Aleichem. Questions follow on a dybbuk, the golem, the Baal Shem Tov and Hershele Ostropolyer, which he mostly cannot recall. He mentions receiving a Yiddish children's magazine from Bucharest and Itzik Manger's booklet of poems, and says Manger visited friends in Ploiești.

Kerler and Lemster put questionnaire items to Diner. They ask about a rare word of Polish Yiddish origin, Lithuanian Jews and the word for a Lithuanian Jew, and the meanings of 'dybbuk' and of a simpleton or fool. They also ask about the term 'a good Jew', Hanukkah food such as latkes and doughnuts, and the golem. She often does not know the word or answers in Russian.

Mitlaeva and Kerler discuss Polish and Lithuanian Yiddish and how Litvaks were regarded in Chișinău, including a Lithuanian-Jewish neighbor. They go on to terms such as golem and dybbuk. She recalls a Yiddish poem about Galitsyaner and Litvaks being equal before God.

Dajch answers questions about terms such as dybbuk and golem, and Lemster asks for words like 'a pair' and 'table'. She then talks about a child prodigy, Arkadie Pinchevski (?), born in 1930, who performed poems and plays on stage from a very young age. Lemster asks about tailors' songs, and she does not remember any.

Kerler puts questions about the meaning of cultural terms: dybbuk, golem (including a clay golem) and Litvak. Shmid answers hesitantly, giving Russian equivalents and Yiddish explanations for some and not knowing others. The talk is mostly Yiddish with a few Russian prompts.

Lemster asks Shmid about a Yiddish word and about the 'good Jews', wonder-working rabbis who visited the village and whom people travelled to see. Kerler asks whether her father taught her Yiddish or prayer. She says no; she learned in Chișinău at her sister's, at a vocational school where Yiddish was taught but not Hebrew. Kerler then starts a question about a remedy against the evil eye.

Shmid recalls the coal-heated irons of her childhood home and her older sister's bakery in the city, which sent sacks of coals home. She names her sisters, says there were seven children, and says one brother went to America. She says she speaks Yiddish with her relatives. Lemster and Kerler then ask the meaning of 'dybbuk' and 'golem'; she knows the latter as a madman.

Kerler asks Shmid not to touch the microphone, then asks about her work. She finished a vocational school and worked after the war in a factory in Chișinău, perhaps a knitwear factory. Lemster again asks about a word, and she tries once more to recall the Elijah charm and what place the woman was going to, and Kerler suggests the cemetery. She complains of forgetting, praises her son-in-law, and apologises that she has no baking to offer her guests.

Leibelman describes the Bershad camp, where people lay like sheep and the dead were carted away, and the Bershad memorial. After liberation she walked to Rîbnița in April, barefoot. The army would not let them cross toward Rezina, and in a village they were given food and found a house empty for years. She then answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about dybbuk, golem and a legend of the dreamers' boards, about speaking like a Litvak, and about dialect differences.

Kleyman talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular a holy rebbe in Stefanesti (Romania) who foretold a slaughter of Jews on one night. A neighbour is said to have believed the story. She tells of her mother-in-law's visit to the rebbe about where to live, and of the mother-in-law's deathbed warning not to leave the house, which had been blessed. She also tells of her husband, who was taken from the camp to the front.

Shvartzman answers questions about cultural terms: dybbuk, golem, and a Jew who converted. She says she goes to the cemetery to ask for blessings and to light candles. She also mentions her mother's written blessings in Russian script.

Akkerman recounts that her father's brother, who had been wealthy in Brazil, visited the Ștefănești rebbe and died a few weeks after the visit. Kerler asks about the evil eye, a dybbuk and a golem, and she knows only the golem. She answers questions about prewar clubs and the Jewish library, and talks about the postwar years, her hard work and her sons' education.

Kigel talks about a Hasidic rebbe from Ribnitsa (Rîbnița) who was visited by Jews and non-Jews, who bathed in winter and later traveled abroad. She says she knows of him from after the war, not before. She then answers questions on terminology: the difference between rov and rebbe, plurals, and the evil eye and its remedies.

Sharhorodskij recalls that Jewish children all came to school on Yom Kippur, and that matzo was baked at home. He talks about Rabbi Chaim Zanvl, a learned man who studied in a Romanian yeshiva and acted as shochet after the war, and about his hidden prayers in the Rîbniţa ghetto. He tells of his departure for Israel (?) and then America, his winter ritual immersion, his illness and death at about ninety-five, and how others saw him as a fanatic.

Boiarskaia and the interviewers discuss challah and bread baking, including the custom of throwing a piece of dough into the oven and baking at home. She says she knew no Hebrew blessings and that her mother, who was unlettered, kept the traditional women's observances. She then describes how her mother koshered meat, with a braided basket, soaking and salting. Kerler asks what was said at salting and about the evil eye.

Rolshut answers questions on cultural terminology: dybbuk (which she knows from seeing the play), golem, local place, and wishes for the dead. She then talks about prewar Passover at home, with separate Passover dishes, kept in the attic. As a child she asked the four questions beside her father, found the afikoman, and opened the door for Elijah. She also describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles and the Yom Kippur eve table.

Rolshut recalls her mother reading the siddur and attending the synagogue only on the high holidays. Before Yom Kippur the mother swung a fowl over the head (kapores) while reciting Yiddish words that Rolshut repeated. She also remembers going to the river on Rosh Hashanah and throwing things from the pockets into the water.

Mirenburg answers questions on her mother's gefilte fish and on sweet Sabbath cholent, then on Hanukkah: lighting the candles, Hanukkah money and a dreidel from her grandfather, and playing the nut game in a hole. She says little of Purim, mentioning Esther and Mordechai and the Purim play held in the synagogue, and the Interviewers prompt her about Purim mumming, Simchat Torah (carrying an apple with a candle) and a Hebrew booklet about amulets, none of which she recalls in detail.

Mirenburg continues her war account. Her group was sent to Yampil instead of Rîbniţa, and she tells of a family friend from Sguritzy who survived a massacre of a column. Then come the march through Ukrainian towns, food rations, and the Potashna cowshed, where she fell ill with typhus and had a dream while ill. Her brother and then her father died. In Bershad the family begged in the villages, and a Ukrainian village elder beat her and her mother. She also tells of a boy who was tied to a motorcycle. Kerler asks about a song the village boys sang.

Roif talks with Katz about Jewish observance and the Ştefăneşti rebbe. She describes her father-in-law, who spent six years in America and returned wealthy, and his wife's illness. The rebbe sent his gabbai to fetch the doctor. Roif also tells of their kashrut observance and the family's deportation to a camp.

Plotnik says her parents did not let her go to weddings, although a wedding canopy was put up near their house by the prayer house. She names several synagogues in Dumbraveni and Rabbi Sternberg (Shternberg), who came from Soroca. She does not remember folk beliefs such as the evil eye.

Answers Kerler's questions about the difference between a rabbi (rov) and a rebbe or 'good Jew', and about the expression for being buried in a good place. She recalls Khayim Kishkar (?), the local maker of kosher sausage, and gives the Russian term for jellied meat. She then describes customs around a boy's birth: amulets hung up, reading the Shema, the brit on the eighth day, and the lack of a ceremony for girls beyond naming her.

Dunaevskij answers questions about Sukkot, saying the family built a booth, ate there and sometimes slept there, and about the cheder teacher, whose name he forgot. On Hanukkah he recalls Hanukkah money, fruit and sweets, doughnuts (pontshkes) and potato latkes. Kerler asks about the custom of throwing things at Tishah be-Av, which he only vaguely remembers. Kerler then asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish in Ştefăneşti.

Goldshteyn and Luminskaia answer questions on terms for a person: dybbuk, golem, a blessing at the cemetery and a curse (a wish that evil be kept away). They have not heard of the golem, and recall the other terms with difficulty. The passage ends with a question on whether other forms of the formula were used.

Kerler and Lemster put terminology questions to the couple: a cemetery, a holy place, a dybbuk and a golem. Elizaveta says she no longer remembers much Yiddish. Moisei explains the term 'a good Jew' for a rebbe and the custom of travelling to a rebbe, and says there were enough rabbis in Chişinău.

Lemster asks about the term a good Jew (a rebbe), and Meir explains it and the practice of traveling to the Ștefănești rebbe for blessings. He tells several anecdotes: a woman told to teach her child Yiddish, whose son became a cobbler with children who became a doctor and a philosopher. Another concerns a doctor and a bride who was told not to marry; another, a man who photographed the rebbe and suffered afterward. A fourth concerns a sugar-factory partner who died in a Bucharest hotel.

Cohn answers questions about the meaning of Yiddish and Romanian words. These include dybbuk, golem (including the phrase about sitting like a golem) and terms for a Jewish cemetery versus a non-Jewish burial ground or field. Kerler also asks how a field or cemetery is called in Romanian.

Kerler asks Hershkovich about folk stories (stories of a character whose name is unclear in the transcript), schnapps, the evil eye cure with coals and bread, a dybbuk, and the golem and its plural. Hershkovich also gives words for church and for a non-Jewish cemetery. Part of the passage is about speaking Yiddish and Hungarian.

Freundlich answers Kerler's question about a Dybbuk play performed recently in Cluj. Kerler asks the meaning of 'golem' and of 'baal shem', and she answers briefly. She mentions a professor, Abraham Braham (?), who wrote a book on the Holocaust in Hungarian and came to Cluj.

Informal chat among the participants, with practical arrangements about taking Yiddish booklets, addresses and a telephone number. Someone mentions travelling to a town (name unclear, possibly Dornavatra (?)) where the Vizhnitz rebbe used to come. Kerler relates meeting a German-speaking Jewish woman who dismissed his questions about folk customs such as quenching coals, and the others say they knew that custom too.

Meir answers questions on Yiddish terms: golem, dybbuk, attic, the tile stove ledge, bridge, and words for potatoes, storehouse, tradesmen, a non-Jew and a peasant. Kerler and Lemster also ask about his region and he mentions a doctor from Chișinău. He talks about his wife's illness, her operations and her piety, and says he uses Romanian outside the home and his sons know Yiddish.

Grimberg answers questions about terms such as dybbuk and golem, and connects dybbuk to the play she knew. She recalls Yiddish theater companies visiting Dorohoi from Bucharest and Iași. She describes how her father took part in moving the Ştefăneşti rebbe's remains to Israel and how she brought an item from Israel. She also tells about her visits to Israel and her sisters in Jerusalem.

Lipovici and the interviewers go through terms: burrs (berlekh) that catch in the beard, his role as the youngest brother and synagogue attendant, and the lack of a minyan today. Lemster asks about the words dybbuk and golem, which Lipovici does not explain. They then talk about how long the interviewers will stay in Dorohoi and a nearby Jewish town (name unclear, perhaps Săveni).

Lipovici tells how an elderly Jewish couple, neighbours, were killed by a robber. He tells of trouble with a local official over selling sheep, and of the power of the dead. Kerler asks whether he has seen miracles of the dead; he says he felt them. Romanian is mixed in.

Chajim tells of playing in the military band in the army and of Passover with German soldiers and Jews, and of being locked up for several nights. He answers questions about Christian terms and sayings, and about a custom, apparently against an evil spirit (?), of placing a stone in water at night. He seems to say he was born in 1906, but this is not clear.

Resh addresses the occupational structure of Chernivtsi Jews: many were officials, merchants and craftsmen (tailors, watchmakers, carpenters), but fewer intellectuals than in Iași. He then answers questions on terms such as gvir, dybbuk, mamzer, golem, and the words used at a cemetery, which he mostly does not know.

Kaizerman describes the Jewish quarter where he grew up, with many poor, unemployed Jews and a few bankers and doctors. He says Iași had about 80,000 people, 45,000 of them Jews. He mentions several talmud torahs, his melamed, many rabbis, and the meaning of a 'good Jew' (a wonder-working rebbe), including the Ștefănești rebbe visited for blessings and notes.

Lemster and Kerler ask word and custom questions: she does not know dybbuk but explains golem as a slightly mad person. Then come questions on gefilte fish: whether sugar or pepper was added (a little sugar), and vinegar meat. Lemster asks what she cooks today.

Grinberg says her parents' marriage is unknown to her, and she married her cousin for love without a matchmaker. She says matchmaking happened among more pious families. She names a German neighbor, Wagner, who attended the Jewish school. She describes the Jewish school as taught in Romanian, with Hebrew, and then Kerler and Lemster ask about the words dibuk and golem.

Salamon speaks about songs at home: zemirot, and her elder sister who danced and sang; on Sabbath afternoons her father examined the boys, who went to cheder. She describes her bedridden grandmother, who read a large tkhine and predicted the deportations; Kerler asks the grandmother's name and origin. She recalls Italian then Hungarian arrival, trains with Jews passing her garden toward Galicia, and the ghetto, where several families shared a house.

Petraru answers questions about Yiddish terms such as dibbuk and golem, giving 'fool' or 'idiot' for the first and 'lout' for the second. He says Yiddish speakers in town are few, mentions that the community president also speaks Yiddish, and gives a contact name and phone number.

Mehler describes the Ştefăneşti rebbe as a holy man and miracle worker. She also mentions the Paşcani rebbe and compares them with present-day rebbes. She mentions a more recent rabbi, Rose, and her own work as accountant and secretary of the community, with the keys. The team thanks her and ends the formal interview, discussing how a German journalist's interview of her was published.

Bercovici answers questions about her grandparents. She did not know her paternal grandparents, and her maternal grandfather was an estate administrator who went to Transnistria with the family (the transcript is unclear on how this is said). The conversation touches on relatives in Germany and Israel and on a German-language writer in Israel (Hedwig Brenner, name partly clear). Bercovici gives her Jewish and Romanian first names and says she was named after an uncle who died in the First World War. The passage ends as Kerler and Lemster turn to the evil-eye custom.

Bercovici is asked what was done against the evil eye and says she does not believe in it and calls it superstition. She says she has gone to the synagogue for the memorial prayers (yizkor, in the transcript as 'Ischer') since her father died in Transnistria in 1944, and on the holidays. She describes herself as a good Jew but not religious and says she cooks ordinary food. She then recounts her schooling: lyceum in Chernivtsi, a university in Iași, and work as a teacher (dates unclear) and later at the national bank. The conversation ends with her saying that she has been interviewed before.

Weinberger describes local Hasidic rebbes and wonder-workers around Stropkov, mostly from Poland, and who visited them. He talks about a baal shem and a dybbuk, and the kitchers, whose lack of marriage prospects he mentions. He tells a story about a child in cheder, and says he read from the Torah at his bar mitzvah. He notes that his family was not very observant.

Chaimovic recalls a Mizrachi song, dancing the hora and learning some Hebrew. Kerler then asks terminology questions: dybbuk, the difference between rabbi and rebbe, Hasidim, Galician and Lithuanian Jews, and a Prešov cemetery. They also touch on Lithuanian Yiddish, folk tales and a comic character.

Khotenko describes her return from evacuation: she worked in a kitchen, her sister lived elsewhere with her husband, and her mother worked at a pig farm and later with the harvest. She mentions a relative hanged in Odessa and the hunger of 1947. She then recalls a neighbouring Jewish doctor named Viner (Iosif), arrested before the war in the late 1930s (the year is uncertain); he had cured her of scarlet fever. She also describes shortages and fear of arrests, and Lemster asks whether there was antisemitism.

Shor recalls his earliest childhood memory: as a child he fell seriously ill, and his mother's brother took him to a revered Jew in Rîbniţa, who helped after the doctors in Chişinău could not. He then tells a family story about his father's richer younger brother. The brother's wife and Shor's mother quarrelled over a synagogue seat before Rosh Hashanah and drew lots, and the wife later died.

Chukh gives the date and place of the interview and says the Berdychiv tsadik's grave is a pilgrimage site for visitors. She says she was born in Berdychiv, as were her parents, and was evacuated to the Caucasus during the war. Trained as a nurse, she wanted to go to the front but was kept at hospital work because she had a small child. She worked as an operating-room nurse and was later recognised as a war participant. She names her parents (father Yosl/Iosif, a sieve-maker from a place in Poland whose name is unclear; mother Tsirl, a quilt-maker) and her brothers, one in Germany. She describes her Jewish school (school no. 13, seven grades), her later nursing school and her long postwar nursing career in a Berdychiv hospital. She recalls childhood games, dolls she makes today from broken ones, and home life with Yiddish-speaking parents. She tells of the hungry early 1930s, when her mother sewed quilts to feed the children and the school later fed them. She remembers Soviet-era closing of synagogues, the synagogues of Berdychiv, the Hasidic rebbe's prayer house and holiday observance at home but not in school. Chukh also recalls Yiddish literature and press, a large library, visiting Yiddish theaters, the seltzer seller Itsik, and about 60,000 Jews in the town. She describes weddings with music and a rhymester, and Sabbath and holiday foods. She then answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire: translating Russian words and sentences into Yiddish (greetings, household words, animals, colours, adverbs, body and illness terms), plus words like dybbuk and golem.

Skobilitskii recalls the wedding jester (badkhn), who made the women cry and the guests laugh. He speaks in rhymes and has a melody. He then answers a question about the dybbuk, said of a bad person.

Snook talks about the 'good Jews' and rebbes whom people consulted in Khust and nearby places. She says what was said to them was secret. She explains remedies against the evil eye: extinguishing coals and using challah blessed by the rebbe. She says that Jews did not play cards, that spirits were hardly drunk, and that wine was for kiddush and celebrations.

Kerler asks whether her mother taught her folk remedies; Gvinter says her mother was a housewife who did not know such things. She mentions a child of her parents who died of smallpox before she was born. Kerler then asks the meanings of a series of words and phrases (such as a dybbuk, a golem and the Yiddish for a cemetery) and sayings used when speaking of the dead.

Feldman speaks of her health and her daughter's treatment, then tells a story from her mother about her grandfather, who asked for a small window in his grave. She describes prewar burial customs: carrying the dead by hand, washing hands, and the dressing of the dead. She says she speaks Ukrainian and Yiddish and is proud to be Jewish.

Feldman tells a story about a Christian woman whose grandchild could not stay awake and who went to the synagogue with money and food seeking help. She then speaks about circumcision, how it was done in the past and how it is now, and mentions a grandson who is studying at a Jewish school in Zhytomyr. She also recalls antisemitic abuse of Jewish men in the past.

Sklyarskiy recounts how in summer 1943 a group of thirteen or fourteen escapees set out to find the partisans, carrying bread. He tells of a dream voice that warned him to run to the fields rather than the forest. Cossacks attacked in the woods; he escaped but found two of the group shot dead, and he describes the loss of his shoes and a girl who was wounded.

Sklyarskiy returns to the night in the fields and the dream that told him to run to the fields, not the forest. They also discuss a note where he wrote the dream down. He recounts the Cossack attack, the death of those who ran into the forest, and a thirteen-year-old girl wounded in the leg. A cousin who shared his hiding place later became a partisan hero.

Sklyarskiy speaks of the German officer and the shooting after his flight, then of a dream in which a person told him to run into the field and not the forest. He tells how two men who joined the partisans hid in a secret hiding place near the pit where Jews were shot. He mentions help from local people and the driving of Jews on foot and in carts, and begins to speak about the ghetto. Parts of this are unclear.

Sklyarskiy speaks about his family and again about the dream in which he was told to run to the field. He mentions his wife's fasting and illness near the end of her life and the interview his granddaughter made with her. Kerler arranges to photograph him with those present, and there is talk of his writing. A garbled recogniser loop appears in this part.

Lemster asks Loyf about terms such as dybbuk, golem and goylem, which she does not know in that sense, and about the word for cemetery, to which she gives 'holy place' (heylik-ort) and relates it to a field in Dzegovka. He then prepares to read Russian words for her to translate.

Pustilnik is asked what "mame-loshn" means. She recalls hunger after the war, with her mother walking on foot from Yampil to Malyn to buy soap and matches, and the children sold things at the market for bread. She remembers her sister's death in the cart.

Answers Kerler's questions about cultural terminology. She is asked about a dybbuk and a golem, and says she did not know the first. She gives words for funeral, cemetery and holy place. Kerler checks whether the words are Jewish or non-Jewish usage.

Kerler asks about vodka and the word 'dybbuk', which she does not know. She recalls a holy site visited on yortsayt, with a rebbe before Soviet rule. Back in Khmil'nyk after the war she worked at a factory making boilers, in the laboratory and as accountant, before Kerler proposes a short Russian-to-Yiddish word test.

Gammer talks about a rebbe in town before the war to whom boys went. Lemster and Kerler ask about visiting a good Jew (tsadik), whisperers or incantations (oyfshprekhn) and a dybbuk. She says she knows what such healing means but did not witness it.

Srulova answers dialectological and sociolinguistic questions. Items include the words dibek, golem, graveyard, funeral, greetings and thanks, expressions for a cat chasing a mouse, bird names (pigeon), skin, and the cross. She often says she has forgotten Yiddish words and notes that nobody of her generation in Chortkiv speaks Yiddish.

Kerler asks about religious customs. Shekhovich recalls that only her mother and grandmothers blessed the candles, and she remembers little of the Sabbath songs (zemirot) or kiddush. She talks about synagogue-going on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, about Hasidim and yeshiva boys in Sambor, and about the Sambor rebbe, a 'good Jew' (tsadik) to whom the sick and childless would go, though she is skeptical.

Lemster asks Beigel for the meaning of Yiddish words such as dybbuk, golem, mesumad and others, and she gives explanations for some while unsure of others. She also talks about people of a religious sect who did not want to speak with her. The passage ends with a question about where the interviewers come from.

Answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology. Topics: the difference between rov, rebbe and rabbiner, and their plurals; a good place as a name for a cemetery; a good Jew as a rebbe; Litvak; tsadik; Galitsianer; and Yiddish words for various types of person. He recalls a Jewish wedding. He also discusses the Dybbuk and the Vilna Troupe's performance with the Turkow brothers in Stanislav, which he attended in 1924.

Geller says each person observes as he wishes, and recounts the visit the day before with his wife to the village of Klymbovka, where her parents and a sister are buried. He tells, mostly in Russian, of a church caretaker and a priest, and of his own challenge to belief in God. He recalls a local female healer. Kerler asks about spells against the evil eye, wishes for the dead, the custom of visiting graves and leaving food, and the words for 'field' and a holy place. They discuss visiting graves before the New Year and saying Kaddish.

The questionnaire resumes with items on honest, pious and believing, a cross, a headache, where someone is from, and sentences like "my father was a believing man". Yarmolnik answers some in Yiddish, tells about evil eye and its cure, and describes Germans being beaten at the war's end. She also gives kinship words for grandmother and a phrase about sitting at the table.

Kaviner continues with a long tale of the Baal Shem Tov, who lived as a hermit in the Carpathians healing people and animals. He saved a man frozen in the snow who turned out to be the orphan Aleksei, who had worked for a landowner, burned the estate after the landowner killed the woman he loved, and then became the Besht's coachman. Kerler praises the story and asks about unfamiliar words, and Lemster asks if he knows more such stories.

Answering Lemster and Kerler, Kaviner says local Jewish klezmorim played at weddings, along with a badkhn named Itsik-Meyer who recited rhymes to the bride. He is asked about the badkhn's other livelihood and Kerler asks about wonder-workers in the area.

After mentioning the town madman Khaim and legends about the Derazhnya rabbi, Kaviner answers Lemster and Kerler about Rebbe Nakhmen of Bratslav, great-grandson of the Besht, buried in Uman, a great theorist and philosopher of Hasidism. His secretary Nosn was also discussed. He says his daughter has a Russian book of Nakhmen's tales, and says he once saw a lamed-vovnik.

Kaviner tells legends about the Baal Shem Tov: his delay of Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur, and a note that he gave to an innkeeper for the later gabbai Yankl, which showed he could foresee the future. He also tells how the Besht forbade a gravestone, how the grave was marked and the state of the monument before and during the German occupation, when a cemetery guard was killed. Kaviner says he first came to Medzhibozh in 1946, after demobilization, while visiting the graves of holy men.

Kerler asks a short series of questionnaire items, including curses, the words for a Jewish and a non-Jewish cemetery, evil spirits (dybbuk) and the golem, and the word for a rod or whip. Katz also names a rebbe whom his father visited on the High Holy Days, but the rebbe's name is unclear. Katz is invited to talk about his childhood and cheder, answers briefly that songs were not sung there, and says pupils were beaten with a rod.

Zinger recalls the local shoykhet's prayer and recites the Shema and blessings. He tells how he was called to the haftarah and gives details of his bar mitzvah. He remembers a tailor and his parents, who perished. He speaks of Velykyi Bereznyi's trades and professions, naming a tailor, shoemaker, tinsmith and the Jewish doctor Munk. Kerler asks about a folk remedy, "quenching coals", and Zinger explains it. He mentions Hungarian interviewers and the cassettes he received from America. He tells of visiting his wife's grave and the Yiddish headstone designed by a rabbi.

Snook talks about the drink she makes and her garden, then answers Kerler's question about cheder: she studied with other girls under a disabled man who lacked an income, until he received aid from America. She talks about her health, her trips to a mineral spring and a medical examination, then about the high status of teachers under the Czechs. Kerler asks her to turn to life before the war.

Braverman describes the town's only doctor, a Russian field-surgeon, his non-Jewish mistress, and the scandal with his wife; Kerler asks about a dialect word. She recalls the fear of school and a rhyme spoken by an old woman when she was falling asleep.

Questionnaire on food and drink words with Kerler: kugel and babke and their ingredients, rasl (brine or juice), tomatoes, baked goods and pastries, strudel, flodn, kamish bread, evening meal, and the word for vodka (bran(t)fn). Torchinsky says Jews drank brandy on Simchat Torah and Purim but not wine, and that vodka was not drunk on Passover. Kerler also asks about 'dibek' (a bad person) and 'goylem' (golem).

Khandros talks about his grandmother Sure, who died in 1935 and knew Yiddish literature well. She was from a family from Snitkiv, daughter of David Grinfeld; her first husband was a friend of Goldfaden; her second husband was Berl Vaynshtok, Khandros's mother's father. He recalls her love of the written word and his other grandmother Miriam. He describes a fire in the house, and an incident in which his baby brother nearly drowned at a mill. He also mentions the mikveh.

Vider recalls how Simchat Torah and Sukkot were observed, including Torah reading and a rebbe's visit. In answer to Kerler's questions, he describes the non-Christian pilgrims, mostly women but also men, who come to him with small donations and ask that their names be prayed for over health, business or family trouble. He tells at length of a woman whose husband returned after her visit, who then married and had a child, and with the help of Russian he says he writes their names and thinks of them in his prayers, asking that God help them as He helps him.

Belous talks about his band, which plays at the yeshiva on holidays and for visitors. He tells a story about the Tsaddik of Volednik (Volenicker, name uncertain) and a childless couple. He says he visited the Tsaddik's grave so that his wife would become pregnant, and that he has raised his son from infancy in Yiddish.

Futerman talks about her grandfather, who went to synagogue, and an aunt in Kyiv. She tells how her mother went to L'viv and married a drunkard, and how she herself came back from evacuation in 1946 and lived near her aunt. She recalls playing with a non-Jewish neighbour's child and a wartime incident with a grenade. Kerler asks whether folk healers existed; she says people went to non-Jews.

Dialectological questions from the Yiddish questionnaire, with Kerler and Katz asking and Katsman answering. They cover the meaning of 'a good Jew' versus a holy man or tsadik, and of dibbuk, golem and shlimazl. Words are elicited for a book, house, group, skin, mouse, window pane, color terms, illness and sickness, ear, and a ladder. Several items are given in Russian for translation into Yiddish, and some sentences are tried. A second voice repeats the question about the good Jew.

Skop says that until 1937 everything was as before, then schools were closed and synagogues turned into warehouses. Katz asks about childhood prayer, and Skop recalls Hanukkah money and the dreydl, Purim noisemakers, asking the Four Questions at his father's seder, and the labor of baking matzo. He then speaks of Lubavitch Hasidim, who were beloved in Korosten', and of a well-known rebbe whom people from far away, Jews and non-Jews, visited, with trips to a tsadik's grave and how it was spoken of. Katz asks about the Litvaks, and Skop describes the Yiddish of Vilna and Belarusian Jews as hard to understand and tells of his parents speaking Yiddish with Germans. The passage ends with healing practices and a story of a blind child brought to a rebbe.

Skop tells a story of a child who could not speak and was healed through a healer's help; the mother and an older sister are involved and the child finally begins to speak. It is a narrated tale, not about life today.

Gershtein recalls going from house to house in the Purim play in 1936–37, aged about ten, and earning a lot of money from the wealthy. He names the miller Matl and the miller David Katz, who each gave a coin, and describes the poor and the wealthy in town. His uncle Rakhmil Vitsnudl kept a dairy, and he remembers the wandering poor, a Sabbath meal for the poor, the Slikhes wake-up call and the slaughterers' homes.

Talk about food customs: the taste of the mother's gefilte fish, how much salt and sugar it should have, and making it for holidays. Kerler asks about drinking brandy, wine, beer and kvass, and the father's birch-sap kvass. At the end he starts asking about folk remedies and charms.

The informant recalls an old woman who healed by 'exorcising' the evil eye by spitting and similar acts. Kerler asks for more terms: an obstinate person, a dybbuk, a golem and a fool.

Leibel answers Kerler's terminology questions on the difference between rav, rebbe and rabbi, tsadik, 'a good Jew', Hasid, plurals of such words, and the words for a cemetery. He then discusses the term Litvak, Galitsianer, misnagid and dybbuk. He also recalls Hasidic visitors to the Polish school and a synagogue discussion with the rabbi about Sarah's childlessness in Genesis.

Brandler answers questions about the meanings of the words dybbuk and golem, calling the first a bad person and the second a legend of a robot made in Prague. He gives terms for a non-Jewish and a Jewish cemetery. He then explains that after demobilization he found gravestones used as paving stones in Mostiska, and notes how few remain.

Answering Kerler's question about folk cures, Shvartzbroit describes the way an evil eye was spoken away. She says that her mother had no child for thirteen years and "sold" her to a poor widow with children so that she would grow up healthy. Kerler asks about the nickname that came from this and about the rivers and the bathing she was taken through.

She tells of non-Jews, mostly Poles, who spoke Yiddish and Hebrew, including a postmaster's son, and says they lived on good terms. She recalls a Jewish–gentile intermarriage and a case of conversion, which the town condemned. She lists trades and professions: tailors, builders, shoemakers, teachers, pharmacists, a barber, and doctors in Luts'k. She says her father dealt in lumber and travelled to Luts'k by horse and wagon. She mentions folk healing by her grandmother and a midwife.

Terminology and beliefs around death: the dybbuk and the golem, the angel of death, Jewish funerals (the bier carried by several men, and crying), and Yiddish words for a cemetery. They discuss this world and the next, and the word for hospital (balnitse versus the older, Polish-derived shpitol). She is also asked formulas used when mentioning the dead, such as a wish that the dead person plead for the living and a wish for a bright paradise.

Dialectological questionnaire, with Kerler asking most items and Lemster adding some. It covers greetings, kinship terms, words for house and rooms, and food and household words, and also the Yiddish for 'Christian', 'gentile' and Ukrainian-language terms. Further items are religious and folk terms such as dybbuk, golem, cantor, synagogue, dreidel and the evil eye, and sentences testing grammar and word choice. Shvardovskaia sometimes mentions her native town and its Jewish street.

Kaplan talks about his army service, including a Party document shown to the interviewers and a visit by an Israeli guest (Buchbinder) whom he guided around the area, followed by an Israeli television programme whose commentary angered him. He says he never met antisemitism in the army, attributes this to his dutifulness, and mentions Jewish commanders. He says antisemitism has existed and will exist everywhere, including Germany and Israel, and distinguishes good, bad and neutral people. Kerler then asks about expressions and terms (a good place for a cemetery, a good Jew, a good eye and envy, Lithuanian Jews and their speech). Kaplan describes his mother's gefilte fish, home-made horseradish, Passover and Hanukkah foods, mamaliga and malay, and home-made liquor, and says his father was a soap-maker and his mother a teacher. He recalls the ghetto in Mohyliv, the camp at Pechera and flight to Zhurin and Chernivtsi, and reports the recent murder of two Jews there by neighbours who robbed them. Kerler ends with further questions on words such as dybbuk, golem, a blessing for the dead, luck, house, group, skin, mouse and window glass.

Nayman and Kerler talk about a man named Lebovitsh (?) and his father Binyomin, who worked for Nayman's family and lived in a village near Munkács. Kerler asks about a rabbi from Romania who set up a prayer house and mikveh in Munkács. Nayman gives the Yiddish names of nearby towns (including Rakhiv, Khust, Berehove (?), Uzhhorod and Bila Tserkva) and answers questions on the dybbuk and the golem. He also tries to recall prayers.

Pasik recalls the return home in 1944 after evacuation. She says the kolkhoz men and vehicles were mobilized and evacuated, while the women who stayed in the village were killed. She then talks about present-day life, with the hardships and the transport problems of the village. Kerler and Lemster then ask her about a Yiddish phrase about the evil eye, which she does not know.

Kerler asks about the meaning of a few words, such as dybbuk and golem, and Kenin and a man present give their sense. Kenin then speaks of Rabbi Nakhum Schneersohn, who kept a synagogue and fed poor Jews and was shot around 1937. He describes the synagogue as a study house for old Jews and says Schneersohn was a friend of the Lubavitch rebbe, not a Lubavitcher himself. Kerler ends by announcing a series of Russian-prompt questions.

Kerler asks whether Dubinskaia remembers old women who warded off the evil eye, and about extinguishing coals as a cure; she does not remember either. She then talks about good years of married life while her husband was healthy and his death. She tells of a man who invited her to a café and her polite reply. Kerler ends by asking her to sign something.

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.

Brodsky remembers Budapest and Hungary at the end of the war and a landlady there who spoke of a Jew. He answers questions about words (dybbuk, golem), and says there were many Jews in the Red Army and no antisemitism there. Postwar antisemitism and Jews in Odesa during the war are discussed: evacuation was not total, and there were ghettos and camps. He says a non-Jewish friend (Yanya Manevich or Maniovich, now in Israel) was among those who rescued Jews, and mentions a memorial with trees.

Dorfman says the Velednik tsaddik helped people, for example children who could not speak. After the war the little house was repaired, kerosene was sold there and visitors were not allowed. He himself did the first repair, and people from Uman later did a major one. He offers the address of a 98-year-old man who can tell more.

Dialectological questionnaire with Dorfman, mostly led by Kerler. Items include a good place, a good Jew, litvak and misnaged, vodka, charms against the evil eye, mourning customs and graveside signs, dybbuk, a clay golem and greetings at different times of day. Other items are Russian phrases for translation (please, thank you, mouse, book, the cold entryway, skin, window panes), and Dorfman often says he does not know the Yiddish.

Feldman says his father and brother and his grandfather were Hasidim of Skrebelitsh (?). Kerler and Katz ask him what a mitnaged is, whether he remembers Lithuanian Yiddish, and what he knows of Vilna, yeshivas in Volozhin and Minsk, and the Baal Shem Tov and other rebbes. Feldman explains the term baal-shem and mentions a baal shem near Zhytomir, and answers questions about Poland and Slobodka. He has no recollection of shadow-divination.

Feldman names the teachers (melamdim) he studied with in Veledniki, Slovechno and Luhyny, including the sons of rabbis who had studied at the Vilna yeshiva. He names Yosl the rabbi's son and a relative. He also mentions a strange man living near the village. Kerler asks whether being a melamed was honourable, and Katz asks about women healers, who whispered cures and were called babkes (?).

Feldman says people told stories of the Volednicker rebbe helping the childless and the poor. He describes a Khavner (?) man, a trefer (a seer who could tell you your name and background), who was killed in the war. He recalls that this man, who had come to Ovruch, called him by name in 1933 and later met him at work. Katz and Kerler then begin to ask Feldman about daily life.

Kerler asks about cultural terms; Stotland explains what a dybbuk and a golem are, and what a good Jew is. He says people have visited the tsadik's grave near Ovruch since the 1990s and that he has been there often. He says there are no Hasidim in Ovruch today, though a religious man who speaks Yiddish and attends the minyan has recently arrived. Kerler also asks about a sanatorium for Chernobyl children.

Turovskaia retells stories her father told about the Volednicker rebbe, who helped people who came to him. One is about a mother whose son was to be conscripted into the army, one about a baby lost in the winter and found alive after a wolf, and one about a Jew who stayed with a robber one Sabbath. The longest is about a woman with several daughters to marry off who sells bagels and loses her money to a lodger, with the rebbe's help. Kerler and Katz ask about Russian and Yiddish words, such as the verb for abandoning a wife. They also discuss photocopying her father's handwritten notebook of the stories.

Asked about songs from her girlhood, Turovskaia instead describes her childhood: an uncle on her mother's side who died young just before his wedding, her mother's grief, and her own work as the eldest child. She played the fiddle and could play melodies she knew. She says her mother, father, brother and husband have since died.

Turovskaia says she is not in good health. Kerler asks whether she remembers a charm against the evil eye, and she recites one about three women sitting on a stone, partly in Russian or Ukrainian. The interviewers react appreciatively.

Turovskaia says a dybbuk story is among her father's written tales. Katz and Kerler ask what the word means, and she describes something entering a person or animal. They discuss related Yiddish words such as 'apir' (?) and 'efremye' (?). She then mentions Yiddish records: after the war her father brought a record player and they bought records. She says she lived in Siberia until the 1980s.

Turovskaia remembers her mother's charity: sharing cherries from their tree, sending food and matzo, and going with other women to collect for the poor. She says her father visited the tzaddik every Elul and, when too old, still kept the practice. She tells how her grandmother's dream gave her mother's name Alte, and of a 'good Jew' (a tzaddik) who gave it. The passage ends with her account of Leybl of Khabne in Polesye, who could foresee events and was approached for advice.

Turovskaia tells how, when the Germans occupied Khabne, the tzaddik Leybl of Khabne was asked who would win and told them to take two roosters, a white and a red one, and see which won. Katz and Kerler ask which rebbe this was; Kerler notes that the town appears in literature (Sholem Aleichem). Katz also asks about the story of the tzaddik who gave blows.

A stretch of questionnaire work led by Kerler and Katz, with the answers often discussed in Russian and Ukrainian. The items cover the devil and its epithets, a fool, daily greetings and farewells, house and room words, a porch, a window pane, pots, birds, building and stone wall, the grave of the holy tzaddik, borscht, blind, late, near, words like high and higher, breath and breathing.

Turovskaia tells stories about the Volednicker tzaddik. As a boy he was made unfit for the tsar's army. He advised that a dream should be interpreted for the good. In another tale a woman with four daughters and a husband who left for Siberia is told to sell bagels, and the money ends up as the daughters' dowry.

Turovskaia tells how a family on a sleigh lost a child, and the tzaddik sent a wolf to find and warm it. She also tells how her father, resting at a house on the Sabbath, met a vicious dog. The dog was possessed by a dybbuk, and the tzaddik told the man how to deal with it. She mentions her friend Roza Kameranits.

Turovskaia talks about Leybl the Khapner, called the Trefer or the White. He knew who came to him, predicted that the family would survive and that war would come. When the Germans took Khapne, asked who would win, he told them to bring a white and a red rooster to fight. The red rooster won, which meant a Soviet victory. He died a hard death, and Kerler adds his own doubts about the man.

Zak names the director of the Yiddish club, Yankl Kuritse (?), and recalls dancing, singing and meeting people there. She recalls Jewish weddings before the war, when the bride was led to the synagogue and a canopy was set up, though she was still a child. She says her sister had a Jewish wedding with a canopy in the house after the war, and answers Kerler's questions about music at weddings. Kerler also asks whether she knows a badkhn, folk remedies, a saying about three women on a stone, and the word dibbuk.

Fish describes his family before the war. His father was Zalmen der Miler, a bricklayer and house builder, born in Koloniya Olizarka (?), and his mother Khaye was from Zholuds'k. The family built a house in Rivne in 1932 and had five children. He gives the names of his eldest sister and her children, including a nephew renamed Alter because he was sickly, and says they were all killed in the war.

Kerler continues the questionnaire with the word dibbuk. Fish explains it as a spirit entering a person, describes the exorcism by rabbis, and recalls the Yiddish film The Dybbuk and its song, shown in Rivne.

After a cut, Kerler begins his questionnaire (the first part is garbled). Kurliandchik answers about the expression "a gutr yid" and the tsadik, and says he once visited a rebbe in Chernivtsi. He is asked about terms for the cemetery and graves, the Lithuanian Jews and how their Yiddish differs from his, and the word dibbuk. Much of the rest is translation and elicitation of Russian words and sentences into his Yiddish: please, late, earlier, cold, high, soon, near, evening, very, beautiful, ill, build, head, mouse, soup, groats, attic, well, street, road, and kinship words. Some dialect forms are discussed, with a few Russian remarks from a second person.

Litvak sings a children's or folk song, Lomir zikh iberbetn, with its verses about the window, the door and the samovar. Kerler adds another variant of the lines. He then asks what a dybbuk is and whether she saw the Yiddish film.

Fish shows the interviewers old issues of the Forverts and Hebrew papers, passed to him by relatives of a Rivne man who has since died. He says he can read Yiddish with difficulty but little Hebrew. Lemster and Kerler ask whether Jews born in Rivne remain, then about the evil-eye custom and a word for ritual blessing (?); Fish answers vaguely. Kerler then asks what should be remembered about Jewish Rivne, and Fish begins to answer that Jewish schools matter most.

After informal talk about water and arrangements, Vaisman gives personal data at Katz's request: the town's Yiddish name, his address, postal index and telephone, his name and nickname, and his birth in Sharhorod in 1940. He was named for his grandfather Avrum. His father Khayem, born in Sharhorod, lost his right hand and was on a disability pension, and his grandmother had a clothing shop. His mother Blume was born in Kleyn Tshernovits and was a seamstress. He names his sister Roza (b. 1923, deceased), brother Danya (b. 1929, deceased) and Kolmen (b. 1936, in Israel). He describes his work as a photographer and photo-correspondent for the local paper, learned from his brother. He then remembers his father at synagogue and the single synagogue he knew, which was burned down; others say there were eight before the war. He cannot read Yiddish and attended Ukrainian school. He recounts emigration from the town to Israel and America and anecdotes about shopping in Romania and Poland. He names older Jews such as a cantor, a shokhet, a hatter and a felt-seller. He looks at his old photographs, says Sharhorod was a Jewish town and is no longer, and describes the Jews as pious and non-pious. He closes with the two tsadikim and the belief that no Jews were killed under the Germans and Romanians, plus a story about money collected from townspeople.

Outside the Vaisman house the family and the interviewers talk about a document Abram Vaisman was seeking and about the daughter's former typing and stamping work. They discuss computers, a Yiddish word for the harm screens do, and what is left of Jewish life: roughly forty Jews in town and delegations visiting. The family explains why they stay in Sharhorod and not go to America or Germany, and one family member answers in Ukrainian. Vaisman then leads the team to the cemetery of the two tsadikim, with talk of gravestones, inscriptions and a story of a man shot by soldiers. He also speaks of the prewar Jewish population and emigration. Kerler explains the thistles thrown on Tisha b'Av, and Vaisman brings the team to Feyge Rivelis. In the interview Rivelis speaks about her tailor father, her pious parents, and holidays and the Passover seder. She also speaks about a Yiddish school, Sholem Aleichem, the war years of hardship and help from peasants, and her year in Germany. She says she worked fifty years and knows little of Hasidim. She answers a few word questions and Kerler asks about her father's books. The last minutes are garbled.

Kleiner says she married in 1945, after the war, with a cantor writing the betrothal contract and a wedding canopy. She mentions that her son is a painter and her husband a military man, and recalls that she has no wedding photographs. She remembers prewar Jewish weddings, with betrothal contracts (tnoim), klezmer music and the breaking of a plate. She then answers questions about folk remedies such as milk with butter or honey, potato compresses, rubbing with turpentine, kerosene for worms, and cupping.

Dialectological questionnaire. Kerler asks Kleiner about dybbuk and golem, then gives Russian prompts for Yiddish equivalents: greetings and replies, 'please', congratulations, 'late', 'earlier', 'cold' and comparatives. He also asks about 'where do you live', 'how', 'sick', 'beautiful', 'he likes me', 'ten', 'you are young', 'to pray' and 'grandmother'. Further items include 'book', 'mouse', 'pane', 'deaf', 'well', 'to make a mistake', 'many', 'various' and a standing prayer, and Kleiner often comments on the difference between spoken and written Yiddish and on Ukrainian or Russian influence.

Krasner and Kerler discuss the Yiddish words for kitchen and a board. She describes how gefilte fish was prepared: cleaning the fish, the onions, eggs, pepper and matzo flour, and the pot. She then talks about the evil eye (nare) and an incident of three women. Finally she recalls Passover at home before the war: preparing the house, searching for and burning leavened bread, baking matzo with a stamp, and koshering with hot stones.

She speaks about school discipline and the Sabbath, and recalls a non-Jewish woman who did work for the family on the Sabbath. She says her mother wrote letters in Yiddish to a brother and sister in America. The interviewers then ask about the words dybbuk, golem, kisl and others, and about words for a dove or pigeon.

Continued questionnaire work on words for a bad person or apostate, a non-Jew and a Christian, headache, church or monastery and peasant. Talk of a kolkhoz with Jewish members and pronunciation variants such as boymele, followed by sentences on dates, 'you are right', paying for a night's lodging, crying, and the word for grandmother. It ends with a question about charms or spells against illness in her town.

A short answer to a question about charms. She says she knows one that she was taught, and Kerler and Lemster ask how people used to say such incantations.

A long dialectological questionnaire in which Kerler asks for Yiddish words and Vainshelboim replies. The items cover greetings and times of day, animals, body parts and illnesses, colours, house and farm words, a window pane, a stove (?), a wall, stative verbs, belief, religion, apostasy and a peasant, the bed, vodka, potatoes, kinship terms, the midwife (kushertke) and the village healer Menye, and a few sentences to translate. It is interrupted by Russian asides and by his story of an American rabbi with ten sons.

Bivson recalls Jewish weddings with klezmer, a chuppah, gefilte fish and kosher food, and challah baked on Fridays. She answers questions about the word getoyg and about women who exorcized the evil eye (opshprekhn) with coals, saying she does not remember the formulas.

Bivson says she wanted to go to Israel and longs for her friends from Donetsk and Starokostyantyniv. She answers questions about dybbuk, golem and geshmad, and says she knows no Christians who speak Yiddish, though some elderly people understand it. She says she knows a Hebrew prayer and recites or speaks a Yiddish prayer for the cemetery. She also talks about her grandchild, her son who spoke Yiddish, and her Jewish wedding.

Kerler asks various items about customs and terms: the occupation of a maker of rolled cookies, how gefilte fish was made, going to the rebbe for a blessing, and quenching coals against the evil eye. Bivson knows little of charms, and the passage ends with her mentioning her son, a teacher and physicist, who has died.

Kerler asks the meaning of Yiddish terms and sayings (such as dybbuk, golem and expressions about the dead). Bivson explains and says she speaks to her late father in Yiddish at the grave. She says the best time of her life was when her son was healthy, and speaks of his death at about fifty, shortly before his jubilee.

Kerler and Klein talk about Jews in America and the archive, then about dialect differences, including how father and mother were said in the town and in a nearby one. She recalls a trip to a Ba'al Shem Tov site, and Kerler asks about the term 'good Jew' and a wonder-working figure. She cannot say whether a related practice existed.

Kerler asks about folk customs, including pouring wax, an egg for fright and prayers for the dead, which Tartinets mostly does not recall. She says the Jews in the village were poor and worked with horses and carts, and that after the war she returned at about fifteen and worked. She mentions a Jewish wedding that was beautiful, burial customs, the word for the Jewish prayer house versus the church, and an American visitor. The conversation also touches on Kerler's speaking a different kind of Yiddish.

Gliazer names local writers, including Rosenthal and Poliak, who wrote in Yiddish about small-town Jewish life. Katz adds names of regional authors including Abraham Moyshe Fuchs of Ozerna. Gliazer says Bialik was well loved and his books and songs were known. He also recalls the Dybbuk, a book he owned, and gives its meaning as an evil spirit. Kerler asks what a 'good Jew' means, and the passage turns to the Hasidic rebbes his townspeople visited.

The interviewees identify people in old photographs, including grandmothers and a father, and Kerler asks how things are said in the local Yiddish. Petrunenko answers questions on terms such as street, well, buckwheat porridge, potatoes, shop and flowers, and sentence translations. They discuss Passover potato fritters, Hanukkah food and the miracle of the oil. Kerler asks about the evil eye and spoken charms; one woman declines to share most of them but explains that rolling an egg relieves fright, which is partly shown. The passage ends with thanks and farewells.

Kerler is led to the home of the Zhivokritskiis and interviews them. Alexandra, born in Tomashpol' and named Sure, says she was in the ghetto at Zgivka with her uncle, a tailor, while her father was in the army. She recalls her marriage in 1950, buying the house, her two sons (one now in Israel), her parents Grisha and Libe, and Passover at Uncle Yankl's. Her husband grew up as the only Jew in a village. They describe Sabbath fish, the difference between gefilte and chopped fish, grated-potato dishes, and life today. The rest is a long word-list questionnaire: household words, adverbs, kinship, the evil eye, Hasidic terms and sentences to translate.

Tkach, born in 1935 in the small town of Chernivtsi ("Kleyn Tshernovits"), talks about her parents, grandparents and the traditional Jewish house with its mezuzah. She recalls her uncle the gabbai, the synagogue with its women's gallery, her aunt reading tkhines, and the killing of another aunt's family. She describes the war years, refugees and the ghetto, the postwar schools and her brother's studies, and her forty years as a journalist in Yampil'. She then covers food customs for Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah, children's games, Yiddish-speaking neighbors and friends, and weddings with their dances and musicians. She also talks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, the postwar fear of speaking Yiddish and the antisemitism of the Doctors' Plot, and Ukrainian literature. The last part is a dialectological questionnaire: she is asked how various Russian words, phrases and sentences would be said in Yiddish (greetings, house and window words, colors, comparatives).

Interview with Sapozhnik in her yard. She describes how hard her life is now, living alone, not eating well and missing her teeth. She gives her name, birth in Tomashpol' in 1924, her parents Nusn and Rekhl and the family surname, and lists her brothers and sisters, with their birth years and where they ended up (Israel, Moscow, the Far East). She recalls the kolkhoz where her parents worked, the old house with mezuzahs, the Romanian occupation and the ghetto with refugees and killings, and her marriages and the deaths of her husband and son. She also describes Sabbath, Hanukkah and Passover food and fish dishes, the old synagogues and the Yiddish school she did not attend, Yiddish-speaking non-Jews, and a rabbi killed in the war. She tells of her garden and sea-buckthorn oil, and of her mother's folk healing and cupping.

Golfeld answers questions about cultural terms (dybbuk, golem), greetings and thanks, and says what he knows of Lithuanian Yiddish and Israeli speech. He insists that Yiddish is Yiddish and that his own Yiddish differs from Lithuanian.

Kerler asks about a golem, a dybbuk and Purim customs before the war, which Yurkovetskij does not recall. He remembers Passover because his grandmother would buy him a new pair of shoes, and describes the potato dishes eaten then. Kerler also asks about Hanukkah and a Russian-heard term, which he says he did not know.

The speakers discuss prewar religious customs: wearing the tallit, saying the morning prayer, and the mezuzah. Kolodenker then tells at length about a poor man, Ayzik, who showed her how to make a mezuzah from tin and a page of an old prayer book, who was fed by her mother Perl, and who helped her when she was sick in the camp. They also discuss a wealthy woman with daughters hidden after the war (names such as Brane and Gitl (?), unclear), and how Jews helped her.

The women discuss Passover dishes, including a pudding made from matzo meal, and the baking of a special bread eaten at weddings. This bread (kneysh-broyt (?)) was given to unmarried girls and young men as a charm for a speedy match, and Kerler explains it as such. The passage also touches on Yiddish terms for the foods.

Katsman gives personal information: her name in Yiddish and Russian, her maiden name Chechelniker, her birth date and the fact that she has always lived in Tul'chyn. She talks about her family, which includes her father, a brush maker, her mother Perl, and a brother who froze to death in the camp. Her father was taken into the army and died after the war, and the family spoke Yiddish at home. She says the family's house was lost when they were driven into the ghetto. She recounts being driven to the Pechera camp, with disinfection in a bath, a night on the floor among about fifty people, beatings by police and help from some local non-Jews. She also mentions the return home after the war and attempts to claim compensation. Her half-brother in New York, her son in Israel and her second husband come up, along with her work as a tailor for 39 years. She answers Kerler's questions on relations with non-Jews before and after the war, on non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, on the shoykhet Moshe, on Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah food and recipes (gefilte fish, cholent, latkes, varenikes, cakes), on children's games at school and by the river, and on hardship in the postwar years. She also describes annual trips to the Pechera memorial, some arranged by an organizing group; the discussion then shifts to a neighbor Pesia, Kerler's explanation of the archive, and a closing exchange about the mezuzah.

She describes her mother's Sabbath baking and her gefilte fish recipe: the fish was chopped by hand and mixed with pepper, salt and egg, with no sugar added. Kerler then asks whether tatsh (a potato dish) or vodka were known and what Jews called vodka. She explains that Jews drank brandy but not to get drunk. Kerler closes the passage by asking about a spell against the evil eye.

Barshteyn describes kosher meat: the shoykhet slaughtered, the blood was drained and the meat was salted for an hour. She describes Passover preparations, with the dishes brought down from the attic, a special oven for baking bread, and the house cleaned and whitewashed. Her father baked matzo using a perforating wheel. Lemster asks about the fillings of Purim pastries (poppy, jam and similar), and Kerler asks about the evil eye and a remedy using a glass, which she half recalls.

Sobol talks about her childhood while her mother was alive, a poor but quiet home, and being orphaned at fourteen. She describes Passover poverty, her father leading the seder, and a relative who asked the Four Questions. She also covers kashering the house and storing the Passover dishes in the attic. The questions turn to holiday food: Passover dumplings, Hanukkah latkes, Purim treats and the Sabbath cholent. A remedy against the evil eye (a red ribbon) is also touched on.

Lemster asks about expressions and terms: the evil eye, a dybbuk, a golem, an apostate, and the word for a cemetery. Tsodikovich often does not know them. He then says a few things about Vinnytsya after the war: Yiddish theater troupes visiting, and a small synagogue on one street where many Jews stood outside on holidays. He also answers a question about the phrase 'a good Jew'.

Kerler asks Lebvol about the term 'good Jew' for a rebbe, charms and remedies, the evil eye, and a pilgrimage site, then about Litvak, gefilte fish (sugar, pepper, onion and matzo), vodka, dybbuk, golem and sentences for the prayers for the dead. Lebvol answers each of these, with some Polish loanwords. In the last seconds S2 asks about the war years.

Burshtein describes life in Babruysk, where he attended a Belarusian school at about the age of ten or eleven. The family lived at a factory that had trade with Germany, and his brothers worked as a tailor, a sweater maker and a shoemaker. He explains how his brother came to be called Alter Peysekh after a rebbe's advice cured the child's illness. He names his siblings and how names were given, including his own name Lazar after his grandfather, and Kerler asks whether he can speak Polish Yiddish.

Burshtein talks about the languages spoken in Goworowo: Yiddish at home and in the street, Polish with Poles. He comments on life in Poland under Piłsudski and on being frightened as a child. Kerler asks about words for Polish Yiddish, and Burshtein mentions fear of going out at night and the custom of sleeping with the head covered.

Burshtein tells anecdotes about his family in Poland. His father was waiting for a sister in the woods near a town, where he was followed by two silent figures. Another anecdote tells of a man in the woods in 1938 who predicted the war. His father and grandfather, both tailors, were fooled on the way to a fair by a sack of salt that proved to be a demon's trick. He mentions the religiosity of the family, where men slept in yarmulkes, and an incident in which his brothers entered a Polish sausage shop and the rabbi was told. He then begins to recall the start of the war, apparently in September 1939.

Burshtein repeats the rabbi's pre-war call to take the Jews out of exile and the rabbi's walking round the beit midrash with the Torah scroll. Kerler asks if the synagogue was wooden. Burshtein describes it as having a Star of David on the roof and a larger interior, with a shammes in it. They then discuss the meaning of a dybbuk.

Lemster puts questions about the words golem and dibbuk, and Shpitz explains a dibbuk loosely in his own terms. He talks about life today, with its pension and easier living. His children understand Yiddish, and he speaks it at home with his wife. The passage ends with a question about the theater he saw.

Burshtein tells stories from before the war: a naked man in the woods who predicted the war, his father the tailor traveling to fairs, and a sack of salt on the road. He tells how his father was followed by silent figures, and a madman dug up his father's body before a holiday. He recalls fear of demons as a child and how he wore tzitzit to go out. He explains how people were buried in Poland.

Nibulskiy recalls his great-grandmother Klare, who would ward off the evil eye from him with a spoken formula about three women on a stone and a stroking of the forehead. He explains that she was his grandmother's mother (grandmother Khaye Gitl).

Nibulskiy tells how the Makarover rebbe, a guest in his grandfather's house, taught a stingy local man a lesson through a circumcision-related incident, after which the man became generous with charity. He also tells how his grandmother Gitl took his sickly father Yankl to the rebbe, who rubbed the boy's cheeks with his beard. The father lived to a great age and put on tallis and tefillin on weekdays.

Nibulskiy completes the story of a fellow student who was paralysed and cured after his wife went to the Velednik rebbe. He talks about visits to the Velednik rebbe's grave, where people laid coins, and shows a coin he carries with threads, with Kerler asking how a coin becomes a segulah. The word mashbie (?) is discussed, and he begins to say that his father taught him a prayer.

Kerler asks the speaker to travel to Pyotke with the team the next day, but he says he cannot manage the road. They compare the distance to Berdychiv. The others discuss a book that says Berdychiv, along with Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed, is a place whose mention brings good fortune (a segulah), and Kerler asks for an email with its name.

Nibulskiy tells anecdotes about the Makarov rebbe and his family. A fire burned down the house after the rebbe's advice, but the sick daughter, his grandmother, recovered. His great-grandfather Shimonke was a trader, and the rebbe stayed at his grandfather's house. Other stories are about a lessee at Burakuvka troubled by a German neighbour, the rebbe's way of answering by burning a written note, and a non-Jewish woman who asked the rebbe for a child. He also recalls a pogrom threat at Sukkot and a tailor's mishap.

Kerler says they will return for more stories and puts questions, asking Nibulskiy about the dybbuk. Nibulskiy answers with a story of a nobleman and a sorcerer, which he will tell later. Kerler then asks for an account of the war years.

Kerler asks what several Yiddish words and expressions mean: a dibek, a golem, a goy, and a "poylner goy" (?). Sandler gives his understanding of each, and Kerler asks about the languages spoken in Oltkonstantin.

Nibulskiy tells anecdotes he heard from his grandfather: a bad son hammering nails into a gate, the Ba'al Shem Tov marrying a young couple and the feast and gifts from the landowner, and a story of babies suffocated by a sorcerer in cat form. He then tells of a carpenter in Pulen and the Makarever rebbe, and of other rebbes' power over visitors. Kerler asks questions on the words and the stories, and S2 occasionally speaks.

Nibulskiy finishes his story of how a visiting businessman asked for a charm and gave him a hundred. Kerler asks about extinguishing coals against the evil eye, and Nibulskiy explains the term for warding off the evil eye. Nibulskaia says she does not know the custom.

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.