Hasidism and rebbes

Gross says he prays regularly and describes the nusakh used at home. He mentions a rebbe who visited the village once a year and the Friday-night gatherings around him, and Kerler asks about the Baal Shem Tov, hasidism and visiting preachers (maggidim). He says he remembers little about what was said at the rebbe's study house.

The team greets Gotlieb in her apartment and introduces themselves by first names. Kerler explains the Yiddish interview, and she says she has no one to speak Yiddish with. They speak of the Yismach Moshe Teitelbaum, buried in her home town, and she refers to her husband and son, now dead, and relatives in Brazil. She says the town was called Ihel in Yiddish, and Kerler states the date and begins the interview.

Gotlieb describes prewar Jewish life in her hometown: about three thousand Jews, Neolog, Orthodox and Hasidic communities, and her own Orthodox family. She mentions early morning prayer and study, two mikvehs, three ritual slaughterers, three large synagogues and many small stiblekh. She talks about Hasidic dancing and mentions a rabbi whose son now lives in New York.

Gotlieb says her father was not a Hasid and visited the tsadik's grave only once a year on the yortsayt, as did her uncles, who were Orthodox. In response to Kerler's questions she explains terms such as baal-shem and the cup-pouring at Passover, and what "good Jews" meant.

Gotlieb recalls a big Purim shpil performed by Hasidim in which men dressed as women, and she says it was in Hungarian as well as Yiddish. She recites some Hungarian verse from it. It was about the story of Esther, in which Haman is hanged; she says she was a small child and does not remember more.

Gotlieb answers questions about terms for a cemetery, a good place and a good (pious) Jew, and says she does not know the expression 'Hungarian donkeys', the word for an opponent of the Hasidim, or the word for a Lithuanian Jew. In Budapest she lived among Jews who were less observant than her family at home. She met Polish and Ukrainian Jews but not Romanian ones, and discusses names for Polish Jews. She says that Polish Jews were called untrustworthy, and gives an anecdote about her husband's father, a trader.

Rezmovits describes an older community member who understood but did not speak Yiddish, and his father's friend Nosn Gotlib, with whom he discussed politics in Debrecen (the fall of Singapore). Kerler asks word-pair questions (such as 'zikher/gikher' and 'kokh/kekh'), and they discuss the Yiddish of Carpathian-area speakers. He then reflects on the decline of Yiddish and Kerler's mission, and describes encounters with ultra-Orthodox Jews, including a Satmar man and a Hasid seen in Debrecen dressed as a non-Jew.

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.

Deutsch recalls Hungarian as the language spoken at home, with Yiddish or German used by the parents when they did not want the children to understand. He speaks about his grandfathers and grandmothers, one grandfather having remained in Vișeu and a family connection to the Spinka rebbe. His grandfather and his brothers had a business making matches, and his father worked in a shop. He also mentions an uncle who was a card player.

Kerler asks about stories of a Jewish folk character and Pearl instead speaks about the old Rabbi Rosenbaum, whose table was reused after his death, and about his own cheder years. He says he attended a few Jewish weddings before the war and compares them with later ones. He also mentions the extra payments his father made to the rabbi and the shochet at holidays. Kerler then thanks him and wraps up.

Pearl describes the beetroot soup (tsibere) made for Passover. The Teitelbaum family, whom he says were relatives, cooked a large quantity for everyone, and families fetched it from them. Kerler asks about the dish, and they discuss the word for it and a related term.

Pearl talks about present-day religious singing, mentioning a Sephardic prayer book and the Saturday-afternoon service. He recalls the night-long Simchat Torah celebrations of his youth. He also mentions that he will show the gravestones and a picture of the Belzer rebbe that he distributed. The camera then films his apartment.

Doman describes the yeshiva day, from rising early through prayer, breakfast and Talmud study until the midday meal, plus afternoon and evening sessions and a Friday examination. He compares the cheder system, in which children began Humash at about six. He explains the system of eating "days" with different families, and Kerler asks about the term and the word for beans. They discuss the one Sephardic (Hasidic) yeshiva and how it differed. They also cover prayer-text differences, student helpers who repeated the rabbi's lecture to younger students, and the prohibition on Hungarian books. Doman recalls a song learned from a Lithuanian-born student.

Doman talks about teaching Talmud at the Budapest rabbinical seminary in the 1970s–80s, with students from abroad and from Hungary, taught in Hungarian and English. He says a seminary head named Scheiber (Adolf Scheiber?) knew no Yiddish. S2 tells an anecdote from Doman's book about someone praying in a different tradition, and they discuss the strictness of Hungarian yeshivas, including expulsion for reading Hungarian books. They also discuss the plan for a Jewish university and Kerler's summers in Jerusalem. Doman mentions siblings or relatives living in Israel.

Doman tells a story from the Shavuot night before the war, when yeshiva students were attacked by antisemites on their way to the rebbe's house; one had his arm broken. A tall non-Jewish soldier on leave intervened, and he fled when he saw a bearded man in a black beaver hat, taking him for an angel from heaven. Kerler then asks about the beaver hat and the shtreiml, and Doman explains that Hungarian Jews wore the shtreiml only on Sabbath and holidays, borrowing the custom from Poland.

Gotlieb recalls childhood years and a song about her little town (rendered as Belz?). She says she visits the grave of the Yismach Moshe every few months to pray for health. She describes keeping Sabbath with kiddush and havdalah as she learned it from her mother, and says her sisters stayed behind.

Gotlieb says Jewish history was taught at school by a woman teacher, but in Hungarian, not in Yiddish. Her mother taught her to read, and Gotlieb says she was unwilling. She says her father's mother sang with the family on Sabbath and mentions Sabbath songs, and Kerler asks about a song about the Messiah. She says her mother spoke with the Polish rebbe, whose Yiddish she could not follow, and she was angry at him for a remark about her mother.

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.

Asked about a song on the coming of the Messiah, Blobshteyn says he cannot recall it and mentions the Hungarian song 'Szól a kakas már', associated with the Kolever rebbe. Kerler asks about a secret language used so that others would not understand, and Blobshteyn tells of a servant girl who knew Yiddish. They discuss mame-loshn as a name for Yiddish, and Kerler asks about non-Jews who became Jews.

Herbst answers Kerler's question about who taught him in prewar days. He describes going to a cheder in Rakhiv, nine kilometres away, and eating at different homes, then attending the yeshiva in Oyber-Visheve, where he studied Chumash, Rashi and Talmud. He recalls visiting rabbis and the Friday-night meals.

Kerler asks what a 'good Jew' means, and Reti answers that it means a kosher, observant Jew, and that there are few such people now. Kerler notes that Hasidic rebbes were called tsadikim. Reti gives a saying that where the tsadik is present there is light and glory, and where he is absent there is neither.

Reti answers questions about preaching: sermons were given by the rabbi, not by a special maggid. He talks about prewar visits to Debrecen, Nyíregyháza (?) and Kisvárda and what he remembers of them. He mentions hasidic courts, a prayer house and a rabbi's grandson. He says hasidim spoke Yiddish while others spoke Hungarian, and describes the Orthodox, Status Quo and Neolog communities and the Jewish shops and book dealers around the Orthodox synagogue.

Outdoors, Reti shows Kerler the former Jewish quarter: a rabbi's father's house and prayer house, the ritual slaughter house, a hall where hasidim stayed at Passover, and the beth midrash used all year, with the great synagogue for festivals. He describes kosher butchers, a bookshop and the mikvah, which is cold. He talks about a memorial stone with a board of antisemitic writing and a camera, and about vandals who broke in and set fire to the Torah ark, burning twenty Torah scrolls a few years ago. He names the chief Orthodox rabbi (Tshengeri, name uncertain) and describes the buildings around the synagogue.

Kerler chats with several community members, asking how many tallises or families there were in the community; one answer gives about forty to fifty families. The talk turns to righteous and good Jews and to a rabbi, who after the war was chief rabbi in Budapest. Kerler then suggests going into the large synagogue.

Gurshteyn chants a second version of Shir haMa'alot, which he learned in cheder from a rabbi in a place whose name is unclear (Hoydl?). Samadi recalls his mother's uncle, who sang on Purim and loved singing a nigun. Kerler then asks about Kaliver Hasidic songs.

Samadi recalls visiting Kaliv in 1944, shortly before the Jews were taken away. The head gendarme there was friendly to Jews and helped a young Hasidic man; Samadi also names a Sholem Leyzer. They discuss the Kaliver rebbe's grave and the new ohel built over it. Kerler closes by asking about a song.

Reti and Kerler talk about a man named Goronvalgy(?) who recited a whole Purim play in Hungarian, and about a tailor and a baker who were tsadikim. S2 asks about Jewish life today, and Reti says there is kosher food, a shoykhet who comes from Pest and slaughters cattle, and a kosher shop, but no kosher milk. They also discuss a rabbi and a man who would not pray with a minyan, and Reti sings a snatch of a song.

The formal part of the interview ends with wishes for health and a long life. S3 and S2 comment in Hungarian on Reti's health and his taking things to heart. Reti sings or chants a snatch of text. Kerler then asks about rabbis of Hungary and Lithuania, a book about Hungarian rabbis, and whether a badkhn or grammer performed at Jewish weddings, especially Hasidic ones.

Galambos says all of Vaja was Orthodox and kosher, with Ashkenazi rather than Hasidic Jews, and that boys wore sidelocks. He tells how his mother read the megillah aloud to other women. He describes cheder from age three, including girls' cheder, the teaching of Hebrew and translation, and his own gaps in understanding the prayers. He also compares cheder and yeshiva study of Gemara.

Galambos says the Vaja Jews were not Hasidic and did not wear the shtrayml, only the shoykhet had one. He then discusses prayer and the shtrayml-wearing Jews of Munkács, with some doubtful words, and begins to talk about the Tosher rebbe. Kerler asks about the meaning of "shtrayml-wearing", and about the modeh ani prayer taught to children.

At Kerler's request Galambos chants the prayer for blessing the new month. He is asked about the Kaddish and says he does not say it without a minyan. He says that none of the 41 families in Vaja was Hasidic, that there were no wealthy Jews, and that the trades were tailors, shoemakers and shopkeepers. His father was a cabinetmaker with a shop and fields worked by non-Jews.

Altman recalls a non-Jewish woman in a shop who spoke Yiddish and called herself a Jew. She says her father liked to pray and went to the cobbler's synagogue and another named synagogue. She answers Kerler's questions about Hasidim and about travelling to a rebbe, and begins to mention a rebbe in Ștefănești.

Lemster explains the aims of the dialect project and asks what 'pure Yiddish' means to her. She says many non-Jews spoke Yiddish and that many Jews lived among Christians. He then asks about words, among them 'meshumed', Lithuanian and Bessarabian Jew, and a 'good place' for a cemetery, 'Jewish field' being the answer she gives. Other topics are the town's trades, Yiddish papers and books, theatre, concerts and cinema, which she says were expensive, klezmer, a wedding with a rabbi, hasidim and a 'good Jew'. She says she knows few of the terms.

Katerberg talks about the ritual slaughterer, who came every week from Cotiujeni and served several villages, including a trip to Lipcani. Lemster and Kerler ask about rabbis and the 'good Jew' to whom people travelled. S3 tells the saying about a non-Jew who speaks Yiddish, and Kerler compares this with a Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian he met in Sharhorod. It ends as Lemster asks him a question about his time as a chairman.

Answers questions from Kerler and Lemster about the meaning of terms: a 'good Jew' (a rabbi who judged disputes and gave blessings), hasidim, a holy Jew, giving a pidyon, a dibbuk, a Litvak and a golem. He mentions the yeshiva in Chișinău and the shoykhet who slaughtered only chickens. He also describes how a rabbi ruled on questions about doubtful chickens, depending on whether the asker was poor or rich.

Shmid answers questions about non-Jews in Onitskan: they did not speak Yiddish, only picked up a little from the children. She mentions a gentile who became Jewish and a Jew who converted for love of a Christian girl, whose name she does not remember. There were no newspapers in the village and no rabbi, only a shochet in another village, and the Jews did not travel to a rebbe.

Shpitalnik recalls childhood visits to Dumbrăveni, where local children gathered and a Rabbi Steinberg was arrested in 1940 and died. She describes prewar Jewish culture in Chișinău and Dumbrăveni: Yiddish and Hebrew reading and girls' professional schools. Her father, who knew Hebrew well, travelled to nearby villages from age twelve as a private teacher, was boarded by families, and later trained as an accountant.

Shpitalnik says there were no Yiddish shop signs in prewar Chișinău, only Romanian. Asked about Rabbi Tsirelson, she recalls her grandfather knowing him and describes him as a small man with a white beard, a member of the Romanian senate who tore up his mandate when the fascists came. She also mentions the slaughterhouse where her mother grew up, a street named after Tsirelson, excursions she led, and religious instruction in the Romanian gymnasium.

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

Abelsky talks about religious families and figures of the Soviet period, including a rabbi born in Kutaisi (?) and a family of Lubavitch Hasidim. He tells of a man who saved a Jewish girl and was imprisoned, and of her later marriage to him after the rebbe's advice. He then begins a lighter story about a grandfather and a Mitnagdic rabbi in Moscow.

Asked by Kerler for a tale about his grandfather, Abelsky describes a childhood episode near their Moscow home and a tram accident. He then tells how his grandfather was reputed for learning, how Mitnagdim feared him and how he sent emissaries to Ukrainian yeshivas. He also tells an anecdote about a melamed and sour cream, and recalls growing up in a Hasidic atmosphere.

Abelsky and a second voice sing a Hanukkah Chabad song and niggun, with long wordless stretches and Hebrew text; Kerler praises the performance in Russian and Yiddish at the end.

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.

A discussion among Abelsky and the interviewers about a Hasidic master and his teacher, apparently a story about a rebbe and a grandfather, unclear in the transcript. Katz speaks of living in Vilnius, asks for an address for sending the article, and says he wants it published.

Kishlyansky answers Katz's terminology questions: a cemetery, a fence, the word tsadik, and a Lithuanian Jew. He mentions the Jewish wedding canopy and says he does not recall wedding songs. He describes how a woman charmed away the evil eye, with three women sitting on a stone, and is asked about dybbuk and golem, which he doesn't know well.

Gordin answers Katz's questions about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish: gentile workers in Jewish homes learned it, some well and some poorly. He mentions rare conversions and Jews who converted to Christianity, and says he does not remember hasidim or the rabbi. He describes a folk healing practice for the evil eye, recalling a sick friend who survived, but cannot say how it was done.

Muchnik speaks about the underground Zionist group Gordonia in the gymnasium years, which had the Hebrew name Kvutsa (?) and was visited by a representative from Chișinău. She recalls a blessing said to be given by a rebbe, and the start of the war. She and her sister left on foot while her parents stayed. Asked by Lemster and Kerler about Sabbath songs, she returns to the seder and her childhood effort to see Elijah the Prophet.

Abelsky explains how he came to Chișinău from Moscow at the start of perestroika. An American Chabad organization wanted emissaries in Moscow and Chișinău, and he was encouraged to go to Chișinău, where nobody was active. Lemster remarks that he was in Moscow at the same time, and Kerler then turns to the old Chabad traditions about the Alter Rebbe and Napoleon.

Goldman answers questions about the term 'a good Jew' and about her father's observance: tefillin and Passover practice after the war. She describes borrowing Yiddish and Romanian books from the library, naming Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem, Peretz and Mendele. Kerler asks about buying Yiddish books from her.

Rotner answers questions about idioms and terms, including a phrase involving a good place and the term for a good Jew (a rebbe visited), and says there was no rebbe in the village. She says Jews in the village did not drink heavily and describes her mother baking challah and the village having a bakery. She also names a Jewish doctor, Yigilski (?).

Rojtman speaks about Hasidim and rabbis in the area, saying the local rabbis were good, ordinary men. She describes how people came from nearby towns, how roads and transport worked, and a fire at a Jewish bakery. Answering questions about folk healing, she mentions urine therapy and a Serbian woman healer who spoke Romanian. She recalls her mother's sister's belief in fortune-telling and her own fear of such women.

Rojtman answers Kerler's questions on terminology, including the words for rabbis, rebbes and the title 'good Jew', and names a few food items. She explains the role of a 'good Jew' as a person to confide in. She describes four such people in town and their families, and speaks of a Jewish man who crossed the Dniester and the many who were shot.

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.

Kleyman talks about Jewish life in her childhood village. About forty Jewish families lived among some four hundred people; services were held in the house of her aunt (Khantse), where Jews from Belts and Chisinau sometimes came. She describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, her limited Jewish schooling, speaking Yiddish with Jewish children and Moldovan with Christians. She tells of a Jewish mother and a Ukrainian father whose children did not learn Yiddish. She also tells of a trip to the rebbe in Chernivtsi at Sukkot and a conversation with Christians about guilt for the death of Jesus.

Kerler asks what village Jews did for a living. Kleyman says there were few craftsmen, only some tailors, and that many Jews worked the land and threshed alongside others. She mentions her family's poverty and her father's aunt, who left many daughters. Kerler then asks terms for a peasant, a tsadik and a rabbi, and Kleyman discusses how Yiddish differed between Latvian, Ukrainian and Bessarabian Jews.

Shvartzman talks about her late husband, who played the accordion and sang at non-Jewish weddings. She sings a short Yiddish song and recalls courting in her youth. She mentions visiting the rebbe in Chișinău and her mother's piety (fasting, sending Purim gifts). She tells of her son's wedding, held with a canopy at home with a rabbi brought from Briceni.

Lemster and Kerler ask about her youth. The talk turns to her husband's army service, when he sent her parcels and money. She also talks about hunger and about a golden wedding. She recalls her son's wedding in a restaurant. Interviewers ask about Hasidim; she says she heard nothing about them. Katz explains that he teaches Yiddish in Vilnius, and a Russian phone call interrupts.

Akkerman mentions that her son's children live in Israel. Kerler asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, Jews who converted, and a prewar Yiddish newspaper; she recalls a newspaper issued in Edineț. She also answers about the cinema, Hasidim, her stepmother's husband being a rabbi, and how her mother made gefilte fish, with sugar.

Mundrian answers questions about idioms and terms, and talks about religious life: her uncle going to synagogue in Kishinev, going to rebbes for blessings, cheder, slaughter of fowl before the holidays, and Passover dishes such as latkes, kugel, and potato and matzo meal dishes. She describes how a child's eye trouble was treated with spells and a village healer, and a doctor visit with a relative. Lemster also asks about sayings (a good place, praying on behalf of others, a bright paradise, not to be spoken of, rules about night-time knocking).

Kigel answers questions about the High Holidays, with synagogues bringing cantors, shofar blowing on Yom Kippur and visits to a rebbe. She also covers Hanukkah, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot customs, including the foods eaten on each. She mentions Passover fritters and dairy dishes for Shavuot. Kerler asks about people who converted.

At Lemster's prompting, Sharhorodskij returns to the Yiddish school and its director, Yakov Pogorelskij, who was arrested in 1937. He speaks of Rabbi Yosef Ber, also arrested in 1937 and never seen again, and of the fate of his children. He then describes the teacher Fanya Borisovna, who taught Ukrainian, and remarks on how modestly people lived before the war.

Sharhorodskij speaks about Rabbi Yosef Ber, arrested at night; he knew of it only from his mother, as he was a child of about fourteen or fifteen. He answers questions about a library of Yiddish books and says his father did not read. He then turns to his sister Frume, whom he describes as devout and honest, and begins a story of her behavior in the ghetto.

Kerler thanks Sharhorodskij for his long account, which closes the formal interview. Sharhorodskij says he has told only one percent of what they lived through and speaks of the few Jews left and the lack of Jewish births. Kerler asks whether he remembers a melody of the Rîbniţa rebbe, which he cannot give, and the talk turns to photographs and a portrait of the rebbe.

Boiarskaia describes the ghetto, where it was forbidden to leave and there was no water, and where Jews slipped out to fetch water and bread. She tells of the rebbe who prayed alone by day and night, helped by others, and who was helped to reach the Dniester. They fasted and were brought food secretly by acquaintances; for Passover two brothers had matzo baked for him. She says she was there with her three children.

Kerler and Lemster explain the Russian-to-Yiddish translation task, and Lemster asks if she remembers poems and whether she had a friend. Rolshut describes prewar leisure in Soroca: walks, the park, cafés, the cinema, Yiddish and Russian theater and visiting concerts. Lemster asks about the phrase "a good Jew" and a tsadik; she says there were none in Soroca and defines a tsadik as a good man who gives blessings. She mentions visits to Chișinău and Bucharest with acquaintances.

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.

Answering Lemster's questions, Nusbrokh recalls his father going to the synagogue and says he himself goes every day now. He recounts helping, as a construction foreman, to restore the Soroca synagogue, and names its prewar rabbi as Leyzer, a Hasid, with whom he worked on the revision commission; the rabbi has since died.

Asked about prewar occupations, Nusbrokh names trading, tailors, shoemakers and a Jewish bakery, and says Romanians were not tailors. Asked about Sabbath challah, a Yiddish theater visiting, and Hasidim, he remembers little. He talks at length about a rich shopkeeper (Gotlberg?), a landowner in the Soroca area, and his dealings and horses.

Dunaevskij recalls that many non-Jews in Ştefăneşti spoke Yiddish, among them a Turk who spoke it like a Jew, and that German children also spoke it. He says non-Jews went to the Ştefăneşti rebbe. He recalls Yiddish newspapers, one of them in Hebrew, and that rich Jews ran businesses in the town. Kerler then asks about political parties.

Dunaevskij says that a Yiddish theater came from Iași and that films were shown. He answers questions about cultural terminology: the Ştefăneşti rebbe's followers, a Litvak (a Jew from Latvia), and a tsadik. Kerler then asks the Yiddish word for tomatoes and for peppers, and Dunaevskij gives terms for red and blue vegetables.

Goldshteyn recalls his childhood before the war. He attended a Romanian school in the morning and a Jewish cheder in the afternoon, where subjects such as the prayer book, mathematics and history were taught in Yiddish and Hebrew. He describes laying tefillin at thirteen and his bar mitzvah, when the rabbi of Belz came, and attending the synagogue with his father on Sabbath. He also mentions children's games.

Goldshteyn says there was no rabbi in the village, only in Bălți; there he and his brother obtained tefillin at thirteen, learned the blessings, and had a bar mitzvah with a tallis and kippah. Lemster then asks about the term 'a gutter yid'. Both informants explain it as an honest man who helps the poor and also as a rebbe visited by Hasidim. The talk turns to terms such as 'Litvak', 'Galitsianer' and 'Bessarabian Jew'.

David talks briefly about Jews remaining in Botoșani today and who can still help in the community. Kerler asks what it means to go to visit a good (righteous) Jew and then moves on to Jewish weddings after the war.

Brief names the synagogue his father attended in Chernivtsi and mentions the Vizhnitz rebbe. His aunt, a pious woman, gave money to a rebbe each month. He then speaks of his father leaving and of his own hunger.

Brief says his parents spoke Yiddish at home and describes the Yiddish books in the house. His father read a Romanian newspaper all day. Brief discusses rabbis and rebbes and the difference between a rav and a rebbe, mentions a visiting rebbe, and describes a dish made of white flour and potatoes.

Cohn says about 150 Jewish families lived in Sulița, with five synagogues, one named after Reb Moshele, and some Hasidim. He describes Passover customs, Purim baking and masked visitors, Purim songs and a purim-shpil he took part in, and giving money to the poor.

Cohn says the community called a rabbi from Sighet after the old rabbi, Reb Moshele, died. He then answers terminology questions on rabbi and rebbe and on visits to a tsadik, and on Jews from Galicia and Lithuania.

Grunfeld speaks about Jewish observance in Cluj and Hasidim he saw in Cluj, Dej (?) and Oradea, and about distinctions Transylvanian Jews drew between themselves and Jews from Maramureș, Moldavia and Bessarabia. He says Maramureș Jews were more religious. Asked about Lithuanian Jews and which Yiddish is correct, he says everyone considers their own Yiddish the right one, and he recalls adapting to Bessarabian speech. The passage ends with jokes and Chełm stories.

Hershkovich talks about his father Aharon, who came from Volovets and whose parents went to Israel when he was eleven; he stayed with a brother in Pest, studied, and was then sent to the village. The father came from a Hasidic family, was a follower of the Belz Hasidim and a modern man, and later worked as a melamed in Dej. Kerler asks where Volovets lies and whether the village had a congregation; Hershkovich says about twelve families.

Hershkovich recalls the wedding jester (badkhn) Zoldi of Dej, who was famous in the region, performed in rhymes, sang and danced at weddings, and mocked Hasidim. Kerler asks about related terms and about Hershele Ostropolier. Hershkovich says the jester went to Canada after the war and died there, and that Jewish weddings continued for a few years after the war.

Hershkovich speaks about the evil eye, the practice of removing it with water and coals, and the words connected with it. He knows the word dibbuk but does not use it. He then discusses the word golem and recites a Hebrew saying about seven things of the wise and the golem, tracing it to Pirkei Avot. Kerler closes by asking about the war years.

Kraus names meat eaten at Purim, then recites the morning prayer modeh ani learned as a boy. Kerler asks about yeshivas in the surrounding area, and Kraus names Satu Mare and Sighet and Maramureș with many Jews, and says he heard of a Vizhnitser rebbe but never met him. His family did not travel to rebbes.

Freundlich talks about the prayer house built in Satu Mare for the Bixad rebbe and his family in America. She says she attended school for ten years, in Hungarian after the Hungarians took over, and had a religion teacher who was the brother of the chief rabbi of Budapest. She also mentions Satu Mare's graves and her last visit there in 2004.

Freundlich names her grandmothers and says she is named for one. She names her sisters, the eldest killed with children, and says one sister lives in Miami. She says her maternal grandfather went to the Belzer rebbe, and recalls cake delivered to her grandfather on Sabbath mornings. She is then asked when her son was born, and speaks of his circumcision.

Freundlich speaks about the absence of a circumcision in her family and about rabbis and rebbes known in the region. She names the Shaprana rabbi who came in 1946, the Bixad (Bixad) rebbe who was her neighbor, and his piety and death in Auschwitz. Kerler asks about the Hasidim who came to him and about tsadikim who slept on a couch. She also remembers her father's holiday and Sukkot piety.

Hershkovich answers Kerler's questions about his childhood in Bogata: Yiddish at home, Romanian with outsiders, and Hungarian learned in Dej and later in the army. He describes Jews in Dej, mostly religious businessmen, and Sabbath observance. He then speaks of the Hasidic family of the yeshiva head, who were all rabbis, and says he has lost much of his memory.

Kerler asks Hershkovich what 'a good Jew' and 'a good place' (cemetery) mean, and about the difference between a rov and a rebbe. Hershkovich also talks about differences between Yiddish dialects in Romania and Transylvania, and Kerler begins questions on how things are said in Yiddish.

Freundlich describes her father's religious life in Satu Mare: the seats he held in the Hasidic and other prayer houses, the garden he donated for the Bixad rebbe's beis midrash, and his daily attendance at prayer and study. She talks about the Talmud volumes in leather bindings in the family library, and about the dowry gifts he gave his four daughters. Kerler asks about who studied with whom, and the passage ends with a Hungarian aside.

Freundlich lists Sabbath food at home, including fish, soup, meat and plum compote, and discusses the word for plums. She speaks of her father's custom of bringing a poor guest home for the Sabbath and of the Bixad rebbe's austere eating. There are Hungarian side exchanges about acquaintances in Cluj.

Kerler asks about the 'brogez' dance and other dances, and Freundlich explains that it is a comic dance done on happy occasions and distinguishes it from the mitzvah dance. She speaks about her grandfathers: one was a regular visitor to the Belz rabbi, and the other gave a Torah scroll. She also describes her daughter's religious teaching of women in English and Hebrew, and a visit to Jerusalem.

Freundlich answers Kerler's terminology questions on what 'a good Jew' means, and on words for a non-Jewish cemetery, a church and Christmas. She says her maternal grandfather went to the Belz rabbi, her father was observant without Hasidic dress, and he ran a grocery and ironware shop that was closed on Sabbath and holidays. At the end she talks about Jewish studies at the university.

Freundlich answers questions about the difference between a rav and a rebbe, and says that only the rav was recognised and paid by the state. She tells how a rabbi shaved on a day when it was forbidden because he was asked about it. She also tells a story about a man who built two prayer houses, and answers questions on Ashkenazi prayer and the women's prayers, which were sung beautifully.

Kraus recites a wedding blessing. They reflect on their age and the Yiddish books in the community library. Kerler then asks the meaning of sayings such as 'zog a gut vort', 'a gut ort', 'a guter yid' and 'a guter bruder'.

Grunfeld describes where most Jews lived in Cluj, central streets and quarters, including a street with two synagogues, and a street named for a mill held by a Jewish miller. He speaks of Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Hasidic prayer customs, the Chatam Sofer, and which languages families spoke at home, Yiddish, Hungarian and Romanian. Kraus adds that Hungarian and Romanian were both used.

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 talks about his employer before the war, Dudl Horovitz, a pious man who did not work on Sabbath. Lemster asks about the Ștefănești rebbe, whom Meir did not visit though older people did, and about rabbis, ritual slaughterers and cantors in Dorohoi. Meir says only a few dozen Jews live in Dorohoi today.

Shaia answers questions on Yiddish terms: the meaning of the insult dybbuk, golem, and Yiddish equivalents of Romanian words like 'bridge', 'stairs', 'flowers', 'shop', and 'cemetery'. He doesn't remember some Yiddish equivalents. He also answers about songs sung at work, Purim in shul with masks and noisemakers and a Purim song, and about the Stefanesti rebbe. He repeatedly says he spoke only Yiddish at home.

Kerler and Lemster thank Grimberg and close the interview. She shows a photograph of the Ştefăneşti rebbe and talks about a painted Passover matzo cover. She says she brought it from Israel, and the inscriptions are discussed. The camera also records parts of the apartment.

Lemster and Kerler ask about Podu Iloaiei. Chajim names a rabbi there, Rabbi Benzin (?), and tells how the Russians bombed Iași. He says Podu Iloaiei had five synagogues, including the great synagogue, which was sold, and the tailors' synagogue. No Jews remain there now.

Greetings and chat at the Hîrlău synagogue; Lemster and Kerler ask the man's age, name (Abramovich) and whether he was born in the town. Abramovich says the synagogue is nearly two hundred years old, that there were once six or seven synagogues and this was the great one, and that it was a Hasidic town with several rabbis and shochtim. Kerler asks how many Jews lived there before the war.

Grinberg and the team enter the synagogue. She speaks about what the Germans took over during the war and about a rabbi buried in Jerusalem who served in Safed. She recounts his career, in which he came to Rădăuți from other towns, and the interviewers read names from the commemorative text, with dates they do not agree on. The details are uncertain in the transcript.

Karuel recalls Yiddish films shown after the war and singers who performed at weddings and bar mitzvahs. He describes his own wedding, with a huppah, food and klezmer, and a dance in which grandparents danced a mitzvah dance. He is then asked about Hasidim and rebbes.

Resh answers questions about prewar Jewish culture in Chernivtsi: he recalls German but not Yiddish newspapers, mentions a Jewish theater, libraries, hospital and the Jewish street, and says there were no Yiddish or Hebrew books at home. He says there were Hasidim and many synagogues, and mentions Rabbi Marcus, shot by the Germans in 1941. Lemster then asks about terms such as a good place and a good Jew; Resh defines a good Jew as one who helps others.

Kaizerman briefly recalls Hanukkah in the house, with candle lighting and potato latkes. He then answers questions about local rabbis, the Yiddish words for a cemetery and the Hasidic groups in the city, including Chabad. He is also asked about matchmakers, written engagement contracts and the wedding jester.

Chirilau answers questions about prewar religious life: the rabbi, a cheder teacher and the town's ritual slaughterer. She is asked what the Jews called the town and recalls the names of nearby cities, such as Seret, Iași and Rădăuți(?). She says no synagogue buildings survive and that a Jewish bathhouse also stood in the town.

Leichtner says he learned the butcher's trade from his father before being taken to forced labor. He describes traditional Jewish weddings: the blessings, drinking wine, breaking a plate, shouting mazl tov, and men and women dancing separately. His family did not travel to rebbes. On holidays people visited relatives, travelling by wagon since there were no cars.

Leichtner says people did not sleep in the sukkah because it was too cold, but they ate there and made kiddush. He says there were no songs about the messiah. There were both Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews, and both Ashkenazic and Sephardic prayer rites were used. There was no Jewish pharmacy or library, and no Christians spoke Yiddish. They discuss the share of Jews among the villagers and where they lived.

Shwartz explains that after his father's death a yeshiva student named Mordkhe was assigned to study Talmud with him. He recalls a soldier billeted in their yard during the First World War who gave him sugar, and Kerler works out his age at that time. He describes the mixed Hungarian and Yiddish of the cheder children, depending on whether they were Hasidic or Ashkenazi, and says that his father was Ashkenazi and Orthodox.

Opening of the interview: Kerler gives the date and purpose. Macarie gives her Romanian name Macarie and Yiddish name Khaye Rivke, and says she was born in 1925 in Sighet. She grew up in a village about three kilometres away, where only Jews lived, with one Hasidic synagogue. Her father, Yosl, wore a beard, sidelocks and a shtreimel, and was about sixty-five when the family was deported to Germany. Lemster closes by asking his occupation.

Freundlich continues his wartime story: a group of 47 men held by Russian soldiers, including Jews from the Carpathians who spoke Yiddish and Russian, and an officer who was Jewish. He calls his escape a miracle. Kerler asks about Purim plays and theater, and Freundlich recalls a Yiddish touring actor in Maramureș. He says there were few Hasidim in Baia Mare. He speaks of newcomers and rebbes, a dispute among rabbis, and a visit to a rebbe in Sighet. A passing question about the meaning of a word appears, but a clear dialectological questionnaire is not evident.

Shwartz shows a recent diploma recognising his activity in the community. He then recalls the Passover seder before the war with his parents' and two families, at which he asked the four questions as the eldest, all in Hungarian, with the Haggadah also read in Hungarian. Yiddish he spoke only in the study house and yeshiva. He names the local rebbe Schönfeld, says the town had over two thousand Jews and nine minyanim on Sabbath, and mentions wishes of going to Palestine.

Shwartz discusses the prewar Hasidic and non-Hasidic communities of his town, its rebbe Benjamin Schönfeld and its various study houses, including the Baker, Wiznitz and Kalev ones, and says the groups lived in peace. He explains how he came to the yeshiva after his father died, when a yeshiva student who ate at their table was the reason. Kerler asks him about a song of the Kalever rebbe and Hasidic melodies; he says he cannot sing but that his voice returns in prayer, and begins to sing.

Answering Kerler, Mezei talks about Passover in her prewar home: matzo dishes, borscht made by her grandmother, and whether matzo was soaked. She mentions her uncle and a relative who was a Vizhnitz Hasid, and says that her father studied textiles in Budapest and served as a Hungarian soldier in the First World War. She then shows photographs of her father, her school days, her sisters and relatives who died at Auschwitz or live abroad.

Grinberg talks about prewar religious life and charity in Fălticeni: collecting donations for the needy, and the two rabbinical families, including the Rozen family. She says a Rozen rabbi gave her father the name at her naming and names the role of the marriage helpers, with Kerler and Lemster asking about naming customs for girls and the term for the person who gives the name.

Grinberg answers Lemster's questions on Passover in her home, saying her father and later her husband led a fine seder. She talks about her father, who was orphaned young, and her family's observance. She says her father was not a Hasid, though a Fălticeni rabbi (Tversky) is mentioned. She mentions her mother's Yiddish songs, her own lack of a singing voice, and her daughter's accented Yiddish.

Cojocaru answers questions about the terms "mame-loshn" and "a gutr yid". She says there are no good Jews today, and remembers that formerly Jews were friends and visited on Sabbath. She describes an unpleasant encounter with a non-Jewish neighbour. She says she knows of no other rebbe besides the one of Ștefănești.

Kurtsberg says his grandfather was a Hasid of the Chortkiv(?) rebbe. He tells of attending the Romanian school in the morning and cheder for two hours in the afternoon, where he learned Hebrew, Torah and Humash. He recalls the custom at the river, shaking out pockets, which Kerler identifies as Rosh Hashanah (Tashlikh), and jokes with his grandfather. He does not remember Tisha B'Av customs.

Kurtsberg talks about Hasidim in Siret and describes the holy place (the Jewish cemetery area) with its old and newer parts and the graves of famous rabbis, visited by Hasidim from America and Israel. The team then plays him a recording of Iosif Kogan singing songs from the Bershad ghetto, with brief remarks identifying Kogan, now in Tulchyn.

Petraru speaks about his role as community head and about contemporary religious life: the cost of coming to the synagogue by taxi, his praying at home, and the Federation in Bucharest. Lemster asks about Rabbi Moses Rosen, whom Petraru describes as a person without equal. Petraru also speaks of attending a cheder and then a Jewish school with Romanian lessons in the morning and Hebrew in the afternoon.

Kerler asks Petraru about the Jewish cemetery, from which the tsadikim were moved to Israel, and about Hasidim and rabbis in Dorohoi, including the last rabbi there. Kerler also asks what he knows about Suceava and Bukovina. The passage then turns to a language exchange about Romanian and local expressions for royalty and a dismissive saying about the dead.

Weinberger says no relatives remain, and that he visited Israel in 1969 for about five weeks (?), at a friend's invitation, and met Stropkov landsleit there. He then speaks about the contemporary Jewish community, including a woman from Breznica in Bratislava who knows Yiddish, an ethnographic project in Bratislava, other survivors of Auschwitz from the Stropkov area, and a book on Stropkov published by a woman in Be'er Sheva. He also mentions the Halberstam family and a Košice rabbi with an ohel in Košice.

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 says that after three years in Prešov he studied at the yeshiva in Hanušovce, 65 km from Košice. He describes Prešov as a Jewish city of six to seven thousand Jews, mentions its rabbis and its Hasidic synagogues, and talks about a rabbi's dispute. He explains the expression for a good Jew, and Kerler asks whether he remembers a Hasidic melody.

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.

Pivnik discusses relations with non-Jewish neighbors before the war and after it, and neighbors who brought her father produce and invited him to their weddings. She says she saw no Hasidim in Balta, then talks about a rich Jew named Pisarevsky (?) who built the Jewish hospital. She remembers the cantor Slivke, whose wife and children sang with him. Concerts were given in the synagogue after services, and she and other children ran in to listen. She also lists shops, craftsmen and synagogues she remembers.

Borukaeva recalls her prewar childhood: playing with other children and going to the cinema, and the language of the home. Her father, born in Pyshchanka (?), worked as a baker and died in 1944; her mother died later. She names siblings, among them two brothers killed in the war and one who died in Israel, and a sister now living in Germany. She also tells of a husband or relative whose character and illness are hard to follow, and of her mother's illness, ritual slaughter and a trip to the Rybnitsa rebbe.

Katz and Kerler ask the difference between a rav and a rebbe and what is meant by a good Jew. The Vaismans say they know little about Hasidism before the war. They add that going to a rebbe with a question and to a rav for a wedding canopy is known.

They discuss prewar Jewish religious life in Berdychiv, with a view that there was one religion and no sharp split between Hasidic and other Jews. A companion tells that people used to walk at night to a grave in town and an anecdote of Rabbi Bik on the Sabbath goy. The informants also recall that the lamp was kept burning on the Sabbath. Kerler then asks plural forms of rav and rebbe.

Skobilitskii speaks of the present-day yeshiva in Berdychiv, where Yiddish songs are sung, the Torah is read and Jews are invited for cholent on Sabbath. He mentions American support of five dollars a month and Kerler asks whether it is Chabad; he says it is Skvira. He then returns to the Yiddish school, where subjects such as physics, geometry and botany were taught in Yiddish. The books were destroyed by the Germans, and he still has some prewar Yiddish books.

Skobilitskii says that small children in cheder were not taught tales of the Baal Shem. He discusses the shrine built over the site connected with the tsadik Levi Yitskhok of Berdychiv, with Katz and Kerler asking what it was called. They discuss words for a pious grave-site building and for 'going to the tsadik', and continue the questionnaire with items such as ears, book, mouse, luck, and pigeon.

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.

Tour of Berdychiv by van with Skobilitskii: Makhlevka (now Sverdlov street), signs in English and Hebrew, a hotel building bought by Menlovich (?) for visitors from America, Chabad and its relations with the Skver rebbe, a monastery, and the ghetto monument. Jewish houses and the Lubavitch house are pointed out, and the group says it will return to see the synagogue of Feygele Magazanik (?).

Berzon speaks about Lipe, who ran the synagogue, and his sons. She says there were many synagogues, about thirty, in Berdychiv before the revolution, and that one reopened after the war. Kerler asks about the Berdychiv rebbe Levi Yitskhok and his grave. She says older people knew where the tsadik lies.

Semyon Berzon recites a humorous Yiddish song about a rabbi, his goat and his wife and the faith of simple people who send the rabbi gifts. Kerler has him repeat it slowly line by line, asks the meaning of words such as lotkes (pancakes), and reads back what he wrote. Berzon says he learned it as a boy in the town and adds a short riddle-like song of opposites.

The speakers recall that they knew little of Jewishness or the Berdychiv rebbe's grave, and compare the Soviet period with today, saying clothes are plentiful but money is lacking and pensions are small. They also talk about relatives in America and Israel, dental costs and the present situation in Ukraine and Israel.

Kogan and Kerler discuss Deborah and her husband Gedalye, the cantor at the High Holidays; Kogan tells of refugees from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Hungary in the ghetto, and of Romanians murdering Jews in a pit near Bershad and forcing a German to dig it.

Asked about well-known Berdychiv Jews, Vainshelboim names doctors, butchers and writers, among them Ilya Ehrenburg's Black Book. He mentions a tsadik buried in the Jewish cemetery near Berdychiv, whom people visit. He then explains his return to belief: during his wife's illness he vowed to go to synagogue, and he describes praying and asking God for her health.

They discuss the language spoken with grandchildren, who understand Yiddish, and the family in America. A grandson there is a pious Skver Hasid, and the interviewee talks about the visa and emigration difficulties and his studies there.

They talk about life today: the possibility of travelling to their children in America, staying at home, pensions and war benefits, rising prices of medicine, and the fall of the dollar. They also speak about the Skver rebbe's family and his grandson, and the death of the rebbetsin, who left eight children.

Snook says she was able to study little and attended a Czech school, which cost money. Her father was a middle-class man who kept a cow and a pair of horses. She also mentions a rebbe's grave in a nearby place where people go (the name is unclear), where a building has gone up.

Kozak describes children throwing burrs at one another on Tisha B'Av as a game, then answers questionnaire items (face, grown together, tooth, ten). Asked about rabbi versus rebbe, she does not know, and says her grandfather was a pious man who died in 1924 (?), a story her mother used to tell.

Conversation among Kerler and the local hosts about the region's small towns, Jewish cemeteries and a rebbe's grave, and the many Hasidim once in Bershad. Kerler explains that the team is recording for an archive. He asks to be taken to a household where a husband and wife still live. Kerler also speaks Russian by phone to someone named Yuzik (?) Moiseevich, asking whether the visiting scholars may call on him.

Kerler asks about sending Purim gifts and whether Purim plays or klezmer musicians were known in Bershad'; the informant remembers little. The rest is questionnaire work on words and phrases, the difference between rav and rebbe and plural forms. S4 asks whether a rav could be Hasidic.

Feldman talks about rabbis and about relatives who left for America, including a sister in Brooklyn. She recalls trips to synagogues in Uman', Vinnytsia and Kyiv, and a visit to a rebbe's grave. Lemster and Kerler ask what several words mean (dybbuk, golem, a good Jew, a person who is out of his mind).

Berkovich answers questions about terms, including his mother tongue (Hungarian) and the Yiddish for 'cemetery', which he has forgotten. Asked about the town's trades, he lists carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, barbers and wigmakers, and says some Hasidim sold lemonade and ice cream.

A second man (Hodinger, per the catalogue) talks about prewar religious life in Berehove, including going to the Spinka rebbe on festivals and the Sabbath, and the father writing a petition for the gabbai. The recording is hard to follow, Kerler pauses to take notes, and the interview with Berkovich closes.

Talks about the postwar family in her home village and about a rabbi there. She tells of her mother's encounter with the rabbi, set around a sister studying in Odessa and a relative. She describes her mother baking bread and praying while baking, and her brother cutting wood. Lemster and Kerler then ask about the words for room and house.

Kupershmidt says no Hasidim were left after the war; the last shochet was in a camp and his sons were killed. Many who returned from Russia died or emigrated, and he has not heard of mitnagdim. He then says his eldest brother was a Zionist who had Zionist friends, and that the authorities jailed Zionists.

Kupershmidt describes the current mood towards Jews in Ukraine as calm for now, but says Jewish graves in the fields have been desecrated. He says only about five Jewish families remain in Bratslav and that many Jews live with non-Jews, and he speaks of conflict among Jews. He also mentions a Hasidic man in Vinnytsia who runs a Jewish school and an old rabbi hidden in the area.

Kupershmidt tries to recite the morning prayer at Kerler's request and recalls only a few words. He says he reads Yiddish a little and subscribes to a Jewish newspaper, and Kerler puts a few more terminology questions. Kerler asks to be shown the graves of the tsadikim, and Kupershmidt agrees but worries about the road.

Sofia gives her mother's and father's birth decades. She says that before the war over five thousand Jews lived in Bratslav and that most perished in the camps, while local policemen plundered Jewish houses. She recalls five synagogues, one with a mikveh. Asked by Katz about Bratslav Hasidim, she says she remembers none, though Nakhman and Nosn are mentioned. She also recalls her mother praying in Hebrew and telling stories at home in Yiddish.

Kupershmidt begins the interview by describing prewar Jewish Bratslav, including its prayer houses and the synagogue and the Hasidim there. He lists the trades (smiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, hatmakers), says the Jews were poor and helped each other, and mentions the town's charity. Kerler also asks him about the Yiddish word for the pack frames used for carrying loads.

Kupershmidt says there were four synagogues in Bratslav before the war, including the big one with two floors. His father believed in a rebbe whose name sounds like Proyke (?). He says the late 1930s were better. Kerler then asks Hebrew-derived words such as bread, water, meat and apples, and Kupershmidt supplies a few. He closes on the dwindling Jewish community and intermarriage in America.

Footage of the old Bratslav Jewish cemetery. Kerler reads Hebrew gravestone inscriptions aloud, works out dates from the letters, and speculates about a woman's grave and about a rabbi's daughter or saintly woman. He mentions names including Yisroel Meir, Menachem Mendel and a Rabbi Mordechai. Other voices comment briefly.

The cemetery caretaker, speaking Russian, shows the team around and gives information about local graves. He mentions a mill owner named Soliterman (?) who was shot, the graves of Nathan and Nachman's Bratslav disciples, and the tourists and Hasidim who come, including large crowds at Rosh Hashanah on the way to Uman and Mezhybizh. He also points out the grave of Kupershmid (?) and his family, a man who saved Jews in the war, vandals taking bricks from graves, and the few Jews still in Bratslav, including an old man David Geller (?) and a woman Kelmenson, whom he suggests the team visit.

The interviewers ask whether Jews used to visit Bratslav for a sacred site, and Kelmenson says she did not know of visits before. The conversation turns to people they have already met in town, including a coppersmith's grave and an older woman who speaks Yiddish.

Asked about prewar religious life, Khavin says the Jews were very observant and each of the three synagogue halls held a minyan of about a hundred men. He explains the terms tsadik and guter yid, and recalls his father bringing poor guests home from the synagogue for the Sabbath. A visiting guter yid stayed with the family for about a week and Khavin spoke with him about Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Khavin explains that he studied ten years in a Russian school, which is why he lacks fuller religious knowledge. Kerler asks whether sick people came to the guter yid; he does not know, and says the visitor stayed in the family's big room for a week or two.

Kerler asks whether Khavin's father told stories about rebbes and tsadikim; Khavin says there was no such talk in Soviet times, though his father took him to the synagogue. They discuss which cities counted as Jewish: Vilna, Kyiv, Vinnytsia (?) and Chernihiv. Khavin gives figures for Chernihiv's prewar population, and Katz clarifies them as 56,000 inhabitants of whom 26,000 were Jews.

Bielaia says there were no Hasidim in her town and has trouble explaining what a rebbe is. She mentions Sovetish Heymland, and says there was no professional Yiddish theater but amateur drama, in which her husband acted in Chernihiv before the war. She worked in Chernihiv and left in 1943.

Katz asks for the Yiddish names of towns near Chernihiv, including Kozelets, Homel, Brahin, Pripyat and Chornobyl. Khavin says he does not know the Yiddish forms of some. Kerler mentions the Chernobyl rebbe, Reb Nokhum.

Burg talks about Vyzhnytsya, where nearly all of the roughly 6,800 inhabitants were Jewish before the war. He mentions the Vyzhnytsya Hasidic dynasty and a Jewish doctor who revived a small community there. He then discusses the Jewish population of Chernivtsi before the war, after the war and today, the census figures, and the decline in emigration-era readership of the Chernivtsi newsletter. He mentions his honors as honorary citizen of Chernivtsi and as a writer, his small pension, and his lecturing and publishing in Germany and Israel. He also mentions his visits to Israel and several recent books and friends who helped with them.

Burg reflects on the fate of Yiddish culture. He names Hitler and Stalin as destroyers of Yiddish writers and culture, and the State of Israel as sharing the blame for weakening Yiddish. He lists great Yiddish poets and writers such as Leivick, Manger and Halpern. He notes that Hasidim in Israel still speak Yiddish, and that younger people elsewhere do not. He recounts a Berlin evening commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz and speaking Yiddish there, and receiving letters from Germany about Yiddish study. He tells how the German journalist Michael Martens (Frankfurt) visited him in Chernivtsi and Vyzhnytsia and wrote a small book about him; Kerler remarks on the German interest in Yiddish.

Burg speaks about his memory of the weekly Torah portions and his bar mitzvah haftarah, then recounts the Jacob and Rachel passage he was told to review. He calls it poetry, history and Zionism together, and defends cheder education as the source of Yiddish writers. He answers Kerler's questions about cheder and yeshiva in Vyzhnytsya, whether he was called a heretic, and his religious practice today. He describes Sabbath in Vyzhnytsya, including his father's pipe, and compares the town's moderate Hasidim with Hungarian ones, with a remark on Yom Kippur in Chernivtsi.

Burg recalls attending a Romanian state school until age thirteen and the cheder in Vyzhnytsya in the afternoon and evening. He names the melamed Shloyme Hersh and describes his discipline. He then recalls Eliezer Steinberg's children's stories and summer colony, and retells a tale about the Baal Shem Tov meeting a Hutsul leader in the Carpathians. The passage ends with a brief aside about women wearing bracelets.

Gimelbrandt, born in 1932 in Chernivtsi, gives personal information and talks about her parents. Her father, Margulis (Simkhe, called Fridl), was a tailor born in Sadgora and raised among Hasidim, and her mother, Leah, was also a tailor, born in Vyzhnytsya. Her grandfather Yisrol sewed uniforms for the rebbe of Vyzhnytsya, and she names her grandmother. The start of the passage still carries the end of Kleiman's part.

The rabbi says he was born in Chernivtsi in 1946. His parents came from Siberia, and his grandfather, a rabbi (a Belz Hasid, as the discussion suggests), taught him religion in the afternoons. He studied physics at the university and became a professor. He describes rebuilding the synagogue's kitchen and mikveh, daily minyan, and the small size of the community, which is shrinking through emigration. He names his parents, and a son in Israel and a daughter who teach. He talks about links with Chabad and Rabbi Zalman Abelsky in Moldova. Kerler explains the Indiana project.

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.

Shames speaks about Jewish life in Khmil'nyk after the war: she and her mother worked and prayed there, a synagogue existed for a time and was later closed, and she cannot say when. Today there is no synagogue and she says few Jews remain. Kerler asks about a shoykhet, Yom Kippur fasting, whether she receives matzo or help from outside, her TV viewing and Israel, which she has never thought of visiting. She speaks of a Christian helper and her family.

Srulova describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, and that her daughters do so today. Katz asks about prewar Jewish culture in Zvil: visiting Yiddish theatre troupes, Yiddish and Soviet newspapers, a Yiddish library and school. She recalls the rabbi who stayed through the war, the Jewish street, and weddings with a canopy, breaking of a glass and a fiddle.

Camera cutaway of Chortkiv, with the team at the grave of the Chortkiv rebbe and an old synagogue; the speech is mostly garbled or inaudible. Only fragments about the rebbe, a gravestone and a Russian remark are legible, so what was said cannot be described.

Answers questions about his bar mitzvah, his cheder and a Polish school in Nadvirna, which languages were used, and whether he learned to write Yiddish. He says there were no Hasidim but a rabbi and several synagogues, including a big one and a tailors' one, and that he went with his father on Sabbath. He recalls non-Jews in Nadvirna who spoke Yiddish better than he did, learned from Jews at the market.

Shekhter answers a dialectological questionnaire from Kerler and Lemster. Items include words for pious or honest, sick, and the 'good Jew' to whom people traveled, and terms for house parts (window, door, entry hall, belly, skin), a pigeon, deaf and blind. He also gives greetings with their replies and a word for thanks. Several items he does not remember.

Bukshtein states that only Yiddish and Romanian were spoken in Novoselitsa. He recalls the Cuza government in the 1930s and the antisemitic pressure on shopkeepers and customers to speak Romanian, with a joke about a woman buying figs. He then tells about a visit by a cousin from Israel and his wife Mila, a Yiddish speaker from Vashkivtsi, and an anecdote of Mila speaking Yiddish with Hasidim on a plane. He also tells about a Chabad visitor who knew a relative, and about an older sister who went to Palestine after the war.

Bukshtein recalls organising a minyan for a rebbe's descendant at the grave of an ancestor near the Lviv border, then contrasts a rabbi (rov) with a hasidic rebbe, and describes the town rabbi inspecting the kashrut of a slaughtered hen. Kerler asks about terms such as good Jew, honest, a good place in the cemetery, misnaged, Litvak and badkhn. Bukshtein recalls Jewish weddings, klezmer music and tunes shared with Ukrainian and Romanian songs, whether Jews drank vodka, and the town's one Jewish drunkard. He explains the pastry fladn, gefilte versus chopped fish, a dybbuk and a golem, and begins to recall a funeral from sixty years earlier.

Katz mentions his membership in a youth organization, Hashomer Hatzair, but cannot recall Hebrew songs. Asked about Passover at home, he says his father, a Hasid, took little interest in the Four Questions. His father worked for a Polish landowner whose name is only partly clear in the transcript.

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.

Fishman says many Jews, including Hasidim, lived in Chudniv. He recalls that a small community used to come from Zhytomyr and met in a house, until its owner died in an accident. The community then dwindled, and he mentions that he has a daughter.

Vertman answers Kerler's final dialectological questions: words for a deaf person, the cantor's stand, Yiddish equivalents of Russian items, singular and plural of 'rich man', 'river', 'suddenly', 'various', 'each thing', and 'a lot'. Kerler also asks about the difference between rov and rebbe and whether there were Hasidim or an old-age home in Zaslav. Kerler then thanks him and ends the session.

Lys recalls studying about two months with yeshiva students from Poland in Samarkand, after which he could not read or write Yiddish. He tells how, at eight or nine, he held a neighbor's boy at his circumcision. He then speaks of Lubavitch Hasidim and a phone call from Zhytomyr about the rebbe's anniversary. He describes the minyan he organizes in the office, saying kaddish from Russian transcription, and a visiting rabbi from New York who gave him tefillin to pass on to his grandson.

Geller remembers his religious paternal grandfather, a carter and porter at the railway station, who prayed while waiting for customers and used a large samovar. He describes him as a Talner Hasid who wore two pairs of tefillin. Kerler then asks whether religion was taught against in school.

Kerler puts the dialectological questionnaire to Geller, covering words for a good or holy place, a pious person, a good Jew, hasidim, 'dybbuk', 'golem' and 'goyets'. They go through Russian-prompted words and sentences: politeness phrases, cold, high, fast, near, early and late, and being ill. They also take body parts, house and building terms, the days and numbers, and words for a rabbi. Geller's idiom for 'Lithuanian Jews' and a story from his work after retirement appear in the course of it. A few religious terms he does not know.

Outside Gelman's house and on the drive to the old town, a speaker (probably Gelman) with Kerler discusses a small prayer house and the old buildings of the Jewish district of Kamianets-Podilskyi, when they were demolished and when the synagogue was closed by the Bolsheviks. At the former Great Synagogue, now a restaurant, they talk about its origin under Turkish rule and its later history, and local Russian speakers describe its fires and restoration, the old town, the prison, the burnt archive and the church. The speaker (apparently Gelman) tells how his family fled in the war, the sister died on the way and the father died in 1943 (?), and he found his mother and a brother on returning in 1946. From about 26 minutes Kaplan, in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, tells Kerler about the Jewish museum, the community room, the old cemetery with its tzadikim and the synagogue's weekly and Passover events, and about Polish volunteers, the monuments to victims of the camps and ghetto (Pechora, Skazyntsi), his army service and communism, and how prayer continued in homes until a synagogue opened in 1948. He discusses prewar Jewish numbers, synagogues, hasidim and shoykhets, relations with the Baptists who took over a synagogue building, the community leadership, and a critical view of Joint, Hesed and Sochnut aid and of emigration.

Kaviner says he knows the Baal Shem Tov stories from reading them himself in Yiddish, since there was no one to tell them. After the war he obtained two Yiddish books of Besht tales, and read stories of good Jews in Hebrew in a collection.

Kerler and Lemster ask about wedding customs, and Kaviner says a high round loaf was called a "malkhes broyt" (?). They discuss the badkhn who led the wedding, naming Shmuel Moyshe and Penia Sinderovich as badkhonim in Derazhnya. He then tells a short story about Hershele Ostropolyer as badkhn of a rebbe.

Vaisblai sings a Friday-night song, then a song about a rebbe and Hasidim, and part of a comic song about a neighbour. Kerler asks for more; Vaisblai says he is not supposed to sing some of them.

Kerler asks about the village life of Snook's parents. She answers briefly that her parents were killed, and that they kept a cow, observed Passover and the festivals, and describes Yom Kippur as a holy day. She tells how she dressed up on Purim and went from house to house for money, and Kerler asks her repeatedly for Purim sayings, which she does not recall. Kerler mentions his own life in the US, and she recites the morning prayer on waking. They also talk about Hasidim in the village, visits to rebbes, and a visit of her son to the Rybnitser (?) rebbe, whose photograph she has.

Snook sings a long Yiddish Hasidic song in which a speaker pleads to be a good Hasid, and answers Kerler's questions about where she knew it from. She says she learned it long ago, perhaps from her father. Kerler explains the recording will help young learners of Yiddish, and she comments on young people who want to learn it.

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 talks about his trip to Israel with the Swiss group, flying from Budapest about six years earlier, and his two-month stay with his son near Tel Aviv. He describes his son's work at a bank, their contact and his grandchildren. He speaks of his late wife and his daughter, who cares for him in Uzhhorod. He recalls the Mukacheve rebbe's food assistance, funded by the Joint and since ended.

Questionnaire work with Smelanskii. Kerler asks how to say the year of his birth and ordinal numbers, then a series of everyday words such as room versus small room, cheder, pencil and pen, and the Friday evening before Sabbath. He goes on to the difference between a rov and a rebbe, forms of the verb for speaking, and the names Samuel and Shmuel. The last part covers the siddur and tefillin, and whether there were Hasidim in his town; Smelanskii says there were several rabbis but no Hasidim.

Kerler and Katz ask Shapiro about Jewish life in Vinnytsya before the revolution, including holidays, prayer and observance. Shapiro recalls a Jewish town with five rabbis and five synagogues, among them the Sandagerska (?) synagogue with a separate women's section and the Krochyk synagogue with a children's choir. He describes Yerusalimka, the neighbourhood where he was born, and his father's search for a larger apartment in the centre. He mentions his late wife's written memory of a Vinnytsya wedding, and explains that his father Yosele was a dayan, who settled disputes and was more popular than the rabbi.

Shapiro describes the synagogues of Vinnytsya, among them a workers' synagogue and one connected with a hasidic rebbe, and Katz asks which kind of hasidim the rabbis were. He remembers carrying a tallis as a child, the women's section, a choir and music at one prayer house. He also says his father knew little Hebrew, and that he himself later became an officer.

Braverman recounts the first postwar visit, in 1946, when her sister found the house plundered, and she describes the family home. She talks of the many Polish families, teachers and watchmen near Solkhov and how they spoke Polish. Kerler asks about the name Solkhov in Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, and she recalls the Hasidic kloyz, Jewish holidays and a childhood memory of the synagogue gallery at Sukkot (?).

Melamed describes the language shift across generations: Jews arriving from Poland spoke Yiddish, the next generation was bilingual and his own generation spoke only Russian. His grandparents used Yiddish at home. His grandmother came from a shtetl and his grandfather from Korostyshiv. He recalls a childhood visit to the surviving synagogue and being punished at kindergarten for mentioning it, and the double life of religion in the Soviet period. Later, as a historian, he found official reports on religious holidays and pilgrimages to a tsadik's grave, which the authorities suppressed.

Kerler asks about synagogues in Skvire, and Torchinsky names a prayer house kept by a yeast maker and cantor. He describes a recent visit with American rabbis and Hasidim to Skvire, where he said Kaddish at the site of his father's grave and found nothing left of the cemetery. Kerler asks for Yiddish terms for the cemetery, such as holy place and good place, and explains their meaning. He answers whether the tutor taught him the morning prayer Modeh ani, and comments in Russian.

Khandros relates how his grandfather, from a family of melamdim in Chernobyl, was orphaned in an epidemic, was taken as a child by cantonist recruiters and served in the army for many years. Afterwards he studied in Zhytomyr, and Khandros tells why he came to Ozarinets: as a boy he had been a friend of a tsadik's grandson of the Twersky dynasty, who later became the tsadik of Ozarinets. Khandros discusses the tsadik's grand wedding and says he will tell more in the third part of his book. Kerler also asks whether the Russian term for the Pale of Settlement existed in Yiddish.

Khandros says the Yiddish school opened his eyes to the world. He describes meeting Bratslav Hasidic pilgrims in Uman (?), who understand Yiddish. One of them sat with him for hours and wrote down the songs his father sang. These Hasidim read no Sholem Aleichem or other Yiddish literature. Kerler comments on the writing-down of the songs and asks which kind of Hasid he was, and the answer is Bratslav. The Hasid gave Khandros his address and invited him to Jerusalem.

Answering Kerler's questions, Khandros says Hasidim lived in Ozarintsy in the early 1900s, but the tzaddik died when he was a child and the community declined. He remembers praying with the tanner Hershl Koyfman and Koyfman's old mother Rachel, who told him and his cousin Lusia Bible stories. He wrote these down in his booklet. He recalls the mikveh near the mill, where his father's elder brother Itsik Khandros, who lived in Mohyliv, took him as a boy. He also describes the town's three prayer houses, among them the beys-medresh, whose walls still stand.

Kerler puts dialectological questions on Berdychiv Yiddish to Derbaremdiker, who often answers with a literary form and recalls what was said at home. Items include greetings and the phrase 'God help', polite requests and thanks, the bat, adverbs of time and degree, 'very ill', 'beautiful', 'to run away', 'stone wall', sour, 'little', the headache, the street, mill, 'all people', numbers of people, bread, vodka, sugar sweets, praying, and 'taste'. The last part turns to rabbi/rebbe terms. Derbaremdiker also mentions a Stolin Hasid, Dov Bleich, whose children speak Yiddish.

Rusakovskaia says she finished four classes of the Yiddish school in Chornobyl', which was then closed, probably in 1936–37. The pupils were transferred to a Ukrainian school, where they studied until the war. She says her older sister finished seven classes in the Yiddish school. She can still read, write and speak Yiddish, and reads Yiddish booklets from her library. Kerler then asks about the Chornobyl' rebbe, about whom she remembers little.

Rusakovskaia talks about the shoykhet before and after the war, and about the 'Khabne seer' (?) whom people visited. Kerler asks about Hanukkah, and she recalls gifts of Hanukkah money from relatives, latkes, and her mother's fattening geese. She also describes Friday night with Sabbath candles and cholent in the Russian oven. Kerler asks for terms such as 'believer' and 'honest', and she tells about Tisha b'Av and children's games, including nuts at Hanukkah.

Vider sings a Hebrew song from his time in the Beys-Arn yeshiva in Iași and talks about its teachers, naming a rebbe (the name is uncertain in the transcript), and about the modern Hebrew he studied, reciting some grammar and verb forms. His sister later tried to study Hebrew in Palestine. He then explains the difference between a rebbe and a rov: a rov is asked questions of law, such as whether an animal is kosher, while a rebbe is a Hasidic rebbe.

Vider answers Kerler's questionnaire on plural forms of rov/rebbe (rabonim, rebbes) and on the Yiddish term for a good place as a euphemism for a cemetery. He says a cemetery was called a holy place or house of life. They then discuss the word Litvak, Lithuanian Jews and their Yiddish pronunciation, an anecdote about a Lithuanian youth praying in a local synagogue, the word misnaged, and whether he had heard of the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov.

Kerler asks about Zionist and political youth groups, and Grayf recalls only some of them, among them the Bund. He remembers there was a Jewish football team. He read Yiddish books and newspapers before the war but remembers little, and does not remember a public library. Asked about Hasidim, he says there were rabbis.

Krotsh sings a Hebrew song and says the tune came from the tailor he worked for. He tells a story about a bearded Jewish tailor who was called up in the First World War and was released after the rebbe's prediction when two generals quarrelled. Kerler asks about the Romanian phrases in the story and then about the Stefanester rebbe's miracles.

Krotsh begins answering questions about terminology: the words for a cemetery (including a non-Jewish cemetery), and what 'a good Jew' (a gutn yid) means. He explains that a tsadik is not necessarily a good Jew and that people were sent to a good Jew, the rebbe, for advice with problems such as a daughter's marriage.

Returning to his father, Vider says he taught the children the alphabet and prayers from an early age. He also talks about the Hebrew teacher at school, and answers Kerler's question about the rebbe and Hasidim of Hîrlau. He then at length demonstrates his father's finger-counting method for multiplication and other number-guessing tricks with written digits, which Kerler tries on paper. Later he describes using such tricks and a counting game in the mine. Kerler finally asks about Yiddish theater in Iași, and Vider says none existed there.

Krotsh recalls his father, a gabbai in Botoșani, and the father's friendships with rebbes and his hope of seeing his children again. He says no Jews are left in Botoșani or in the small towns of Romania, apart from perhaps a few in Iași and Bucharest. He describes how Jews left Ștefănești for Israel after the war, with the militia itself urging the last ones to go.

Krotsh says he does not know Itsik Manger. He mentions a Hasidic man in Ştefăneşti, Chaim (surname unclear), who was close to the rebbe and was sent to Transcarpathia after the war. He says he married in 1949 a woman from Russia and came to Kolomyya the same year. He lists the places he lived and worked as a tailor, among them Balta, Kuban and others; the transcript is unclear on several of them.

Krotsh repeats a Yiddish song about the Jews at Sinai, whom the non-Jews could not understand. Kerler then asks about the phrase 'good Jews' for rebbes' followers and about rebbes, including the Podolier rebbe, whom crowds went out of town to welcome. Krotsh says he studied at a yeshiva for half the day and learned a trade for the other half. He was about thirteen when his father, advised by an older man, decided he should leave the yeshiva for tailoring.

Krotsh describes the war years, when he was drafted into the Red Army at Kirovabad. He did heavy military construction work there, with hunger and thin soup, and was then put to work as a tailor. He tells of meeting a Jewish workshop head, getting a sewing machine, and being helped by a senior party woman, so that tailoring saved him. Kerler asks whether he went to a rebbe, and Krotsh answers that perhaps his father's blessing helped.

Katsman recalls that Korosten' had five synagogues, and a great cantor Glazman with a choir who came for holidays from Kyiv. Katz tells where his own family comes from. Katsman also mentions a clois, women's sections, and Rabbi Matisov (?).

Katsman recalls Friday and Sabbath at the synagogue with his grandfather and says he knows little about the Baal Shem Tov. He mentions the Narolitcher (Narodichi) rebbe. Asked about prewar Passover, he first speaks of the army, where he did not know of Passover or Yom Kippur, and then of keeping a kosher home before it.

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.

A man named Groysman, from Tarashcha, is introduced and speaks some Yiddish about his move to Korsun' in the 1950s (?) and later departure. The rest is a tour of the museum of the association of Jewish shtetls. A Russian-speaking guide explains exhibits: old family photographs, famous natives such as the Tverskys of the Chernobyl dynasty, writers including Ivan Kulyk, Shimen Dobin and Itsik Fefer, descendants of Mendel Beilis, and the 1919 Jewish self-defense unit of Korsun' with a saber from Kotovsky's cavalry. Other exhibits are pogrom committee papers, a 1926 Berdychiv prayer book, Yiddish-Russian documents from Jewish village soviets, a Jewish school open from 1924 to 1938, family silver, a gefilte fish mold, a clockmaker's tools, a mezuzah and handwritten calendars. The guide also describes how the museum was assembled with American help after the association was founded in 1993. Kerler asks about scanning and clock terminology, and at the end the guide shows books by Poroshenko and Malka Pen.

Gershtein describes Holoby's big synagogue and the ritual bath he visited with his father each Friday, and names two ritual slaughterers, Chaim Wolf Goldberg and Abba Sima. He says the nearby villages had only small prayer houses, and that the dead of Holoby were taken to Mel'nytsia for burial. He mentions a rebbe in Lutsk, childhood games, bathing in the river and a Polish ball game. His siblings were pioneers (khalutsim). He also recalls the Zionist youth club, where children danced and sang Yiddish songs.

Kerler asks about the terms rov, rebbe, melamed, Hasidic rebbe and their plurals, then expressions such as 'a good place' for a cemetery, beys-oylem, a good Jew, a tsadik, Galitsianer and misnaged. They then compare Lithuanian and local Yiddish pronunciation (sibilants and the r). Some Russian talk about the history of Yiddish is mixed in.

The group visits the Hasidic cemetery in Zhovkva. They discuss who built it and when, how Belz Hasidim stop there on the way to Belz, and the tombstones reused under the Communists in a wall. Kerler also asks about a Yiddish word for a Shavuot item and the terms for cemetery (beys-oylem, beys-khayim), and explains the title of a book written by the tsadik buried there.

At the grave of the tsadik Efraim Zalman Shor, Kerler and a companion read and explain the inscriptions and the titles of his book. The informant adds that even among the wealthy there was no separate synagogue, only a study group. Russian comments about the concrete structure date it to the 1920s.

Nisman recalls Purim as a joyful holiday, with her father playing dreidel with the children, and visits to the Sadagora rebbe's courtyard, with singing and dancing. She recounts how Rabbi Mark walked with the cardinal. Passover recollections: the search for chametz and burning it, and who asked the four questions.

Kerler asks about Jewish life in Peremyshlyany. Brandler discusses the postwar Jewish presence there and how he and the partisan commander Shimon Zisser saved the cemetery and the small hall holding the tsadik's grave. He names the tsadik as Reb Meir (?) and compares him to the Belzer rebbe. He tells of Zisser's wartime partisan unit, and of a survivor named Kirzhner who escaped a shooting, along with other friends, and of Jewish police betraying people in hiding.

Shvartzbroit speaks about Yiddish schooling being closed and the reopening of synagogues after the war. She recalls Hasidim and Simchat Torah in Mohyliv. She tells a story of a wise rebbe who advised how to save Jews from a planned killing by buying horses, and she mentions a tzaddik to whom people went, with lights, to pray for a child. The details of the stories are garbled.

Shvartzbroit speaks about her grandfather, who was a cantor and a Hasid, and about few Lithuanian Jews in the town and their way of speaking Yiddish. They discuss which Yiddish is nicer. Kerler tells of his parents' origins in Volhynia and Podolia, and the two compare the years of their lives, his emigration, and a friend she supported in the war.

Answers Kerler's questions about prewar religious life: whether there were Hasidim, and yeshivas (young men studied in Rivne rather than locally). She is asked what rov, rebbe, rabiner and a 'good Jew' mean, and the term 'gut ort' for a cemetery. Her answers are brief and in places uncertain.

Dialectological questions with Kerler: plural forms of rov and rebbe, and what Jews from Belarus, Lithuania, Galicia and Volhynia were called (litvak, galitsyaner, volynyaner). She is also asked the meaning of tsadik and misnaged. She says her community had no Lithuanian Jews and does not know the word misnaged.

Khaiut demonstrates making gefilte fish with the knife and newspaper, then answers Kerler on prewar Jewish life: the family's rented house, candle-blessing, a separate synagogue for each trade, guest cantors, Sidi Tal' and other visiting artists such as Kobzon, and Sholem Aleichem's 200,000. Kerler asks whether the Soviet Yiddish school was hostile to religion; she denies it and says the synagogues were closed in the 1930s. She recalls food and games for Shavuot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover and Yom Kippur. Kerler then asks about fasting, language on the street, her son, Yiddish books, folk sayings and her son's circumcision. Later come the rabbi and melamed, burial places, then her wedding with the musician Moyshele the drummer, the badkhn (Berl Sanver, name unclear) and the chuppah, ending with a long run of vocabulary questions and recipes for tsimes and flodn.

Kaplan describes his father as a soap-maker and cantor, and talks about Sabbath food and customs, a Russian neighbour lighting the stove, Hanukkah, Purim, and Hebrew lessons. He tells of the camp at Pechera, the escape of a group of Jews with a Ukrainian guard's help, the walk home along the river, and the family's hiding in the cellar of Polish neighbours (Zbigin?) until 1944. He covers the Jewish police, the drowned orphans off Constanta, commemoration work led by the late rabbi Sobol, and a ghetto song. He also tells of secret Passover matzo baking after the war, the three cemetery fields, non-Jews who speak Yiddish, the word Litvak, and the term for a 'good Jew' (rebbe or tsadik).

Kaplan answers Katz's questions about the meaning of words (dibbuk, golem). He speaks briefly about postwar hardship and the poor food of the 1940s, including cornmeal dishes. He explains the difference between a rav and a rebbe, and the Jewish burial place and mass grave. He mentions a man who died the same day, and recalls the prewar amateur Yiddish theater and Chabad Hasidim. He gives the town's Jewish population today as 360 (formerly fourteen thousand), with sixty-six children, and says emigration has stopped and a few people returned from America and Israel. From about 12:00 he is asked, with Russian prompts from a second speaker and questions from Katz and Lemster, for Yiddish equivalents. These cover greetings, thanks, luck, household and food words, body parts, adjectives, converts and Christians, peasants, directions and everyday sentences, with discussion of what is said in Mohyliv.

The group looks at family photographs, then walks through the former Jewish quarter. They reach the building of the former Hebrew gymnasium and look inside; Vider recalls playing football there and the Jewish team Makabi, and the other local and Jewish teams from nearby towns. A tune of Hatikvah is mentioned. The passage ends with a remark that the Hasidim, and the Munkács rebbe in his sermons, opposed the Zionists.

Vider tells a joke at the expense of the Jews of Berehove, whom the Mukacheve Jews considered foolish, about carrying stones up and down a hill. He explains the difference between a shul and a besmedresh and the small kloyz and shtibl prayer houses of Mukacheve. He talks about Hasidic groups, Zionists and the Jewish street today, saying he is an honest Zionist and works for the Hesed and the community. Kerler then asks about people in Berehove and more stories, and Vider reads out items from the internet. The segment ends with talk about wild blueberries, coffee and Russian-language anecdotes about Mussolini and the 1944 front.

Kerler asks about Jewish life in Mykolayiv in 1940, and Tzentziper says many Jews lived there, some well off with houses and animals. There were Hasidim and three synagogues, some of which were closed after the war while others remained, and the modern synagogue with its mikveh is discussed. A shoykhet also continued after the war, and S2 gives Russian comments on the date of the slaughterer. Lemster asks about writers and Kerler about a singer. Tzentziper then tells of Golda Meir's visit in 1948–49 (?), when people gathered to be sent to Israel, and she rather urged them to go to Birobidzhan (?).

Kerler asks how the town's name was said in Yiddish, and about Hasidim and who is buried in the cemetery. Kenin says the Lubavitch rebbe and two other rabbis are buried there. He then describes the Yiddish school he attended for seven years, where all subjects were taught in Yiddish and Russian and Ukrainian were taught a little. He names teachers, including Malkin (mathematics), Simen (biology and chemistry), the director Dulchin and Kurachka (literature). He took part in plays and sang in the school choir.

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.

The team goes to the grave (ohel) of the Mitteler Rebbe, with a local guide. Katz explains that he is named Dovber after the rebbe of Lubavitch. There is a prayer or chant at the grave and talk about leaving a note.

Masovich talks about his grandparents, a tailor and a grandmother with ten children, and says he learned his songs from his father. He recalls Friday evening and Sabbath at home in a poor family where the father did hard work in an artel, and a chicken for the Sabbath. Kerler asks about Litvak speech and Yiddish words, and Masovich recalls the Lubavitch rebbe.

Informal chat about Kerler's daughter, smoking and drinking, then talk about rabbis in prewar Novoseltsy. Trachtenberg says there were many rabbis before the war and none after, and recalls learning tefillin and his bar mitzvah, held in Novoseltsy in the 1940s. Kerler asks about the pronunciation of 'bar mitsve'.

The tour continues. Listengurt names the streets in the former Jewish quarter and mentions a park and a poet, speaking about language and the shift of the word 'Jew' (zhid, Hebrew). She points to a former prerevolutionary building and the rabbi's flat (the rabbi had five or six children). She remembers going to the synagogue at Yom Tov and Yom Kippur, with two synagogues and many orphans there, taught trades. She also talks about the first rabbi who came to Odesa and who blamed the Jews themselves. The recording is interrupted by suggestions to sit somewhere quieter. A remark about the Jewish tree (?) and a request addressed to Lemster in Russian are also heard.

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.

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.

Vainbrand describes how, in the month of Elul, pilgrims with children stayed at his family's house near the rebbe's grave in Valedniki, and how a man wrote notes (kvitlekh) that were taken to the grave. He then says how old he is and why he did not remarry, that his wife died after the war, and that he says Kaddish and lights yahrzeit candles. Kerler and Lemster then ask about the non-Jewish boy who learned Yiddish and became a policeman or translator for the Germans, who he says needed someone to tell them about the Jews.

Dorfman recalls Slovechno as a Jewish shtetl, about ninety percent Jewish, with shoemakers, tailors and smiths and no antisemitism. He attended a Yiddish school until age six(?), then a Ukrainian school with seven grades before the war. He cannot name children's games, mentions friends Motl and Asher, and begins to tell about the tsaddik of nearby Velednik.

Dorfman answers whether there were Hasidim in town: he did not see men with sidelocks, and there was no rebbe or tsaddik in Slovechno, only a rabbi he does not remember.

After the interview with Dorfman, the team greets Feldman and sets up the recording in his home. He gives his name and birth year, and says he was born in the village of Yanova Rudnya, about 20 km from Ovruch. He talks about his father, who leased a mill and farm from a landowner and was killed in 1919, and about his mother, sisters and five brothers who went to America. He tells of his melamedim and the Velednik tsadik, whom his father followed. He recalls his father's Sabbath tunes, studying and teaching at cheder in Luhyny, and recites prayers (kabbalat shabbat, kaddish, kiddush); the transcript is garbled for most of this. He also remembers Christian farmers in his village and begins to speak about Rosh Hashanah.

Feldman and Kerler talk about the Hasidic rebbe buried in Volednyk (Yisroel Leyb, son of Yosef), the shtetl and its Jewish absence today. In Ovruch he led a minyan of older men until recently, and handed two Torah scrolls to the community. He complains that the rabbis of Zhytomyr and Kyiv do not answer letters. Kerler then asks about his home village.

Feldman says half his pension goes on medicines and utilities. Katz and Kerler ask how a friend in California could send dollars to Feldman; he answers that letters with money do not arrive, but bank transfers do. A relative in Philadelphia has sent money that way. He gives his address in Ovruch for transfers. Feldman then explains Tisha B'Av and the destruction of the Temple, and says there were opponents (mitnagdim) among the Jews, who disbelieved the Messiah's coming.

Asked about pious non-Hasidic Jews before the war, Feldman says he does not remember, mentions that he lived in Ovruch from 1933, and says there were Hasidim in the area, including Volednicker Hasidim and Chernobyl ones.

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.

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 talks about the Yiddish school in Veledniki, which she attended for four grades. She recalls the subjects, all taught in Yiddish. The school was closed in about 1935 or 1936, and she moved to a Ukrainian school and finished ten grades. She mentions that visitors still come to the tsadik's grave from Moscow, Leningrad and Siberia.

Turovskaia speaks about her present life and her health. The interviewers say where they come from, Kerler near Chicago and Katz born in New York and living in Vilnius. She says she knows little about Vilna beyond that tzaddikim lived there. Katz tells a story of meeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe and receiving two dollars for charity from him.

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.

Kerler and Katz ask about the term for a holy place. Turovskaia speaks of the graves of her grandparents and relatives in Velednik, and of the tzaddik buried there, with Katz and Kerler asking about Hasidic groups (Breslov, Chernobyl, Chabad) behind the restoration of the tomb at Uman(?). She names a rebbe from Kotelnitsh(?). Kerler then asks about visitors who spoke a different kind of Yiddish.

Turovskaia says she taught history. Lemster asks which kind, and she answers general history. She then speaks of what she knows of the town's Jews and says she is herself from Veledniki, the home of the holy tzaddik.

Turovskaia says she finished four grades of Yiddish school and can read and write Yiddish. Her sister in Israel writes to her in Yiddish and Russian. At Lemster's prompting she tells in detail how her father, as a teenager, fell into the hands of bandits, probably from Kobyl'ye, during the Civil War. They cut the owner's fingers for gold, he escaped through a window, and she names the year uncertainly. Other tales follow about his supplying food, and about the grandparents naming him for the tzaddik after a dream. She then turns to a Polish occupation of Ukraine and Cossacks at the door.

Kerler asks about the Yiddish school. Turovskaia remembers a teacher named Avrom but not the subjects. Talk turns to a booklet of her father's stories about the tzaddik, which she has prepared for the interviewers. She says the tzaddik knew who came to him and why.

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.

Zak says she founded the library in 1945 (?) and that before the war the public library held many Yiddish books as well as Russian ones, which she used. Asked about Hasidim, she mentions one Pasik (?), who slaughtered fowl (?), and that Jews gathered for prayer in private houses with ten or twenty men. She says her husband does not understand Yiddish.

Kerler asks Vainsheinboim about the difference between a rav and a rebbe, including the Hasidic rebbe (a 'good Jew' whom non-Jews also visited), and about their plural forms. Vainsheinboim answers briefly, and Kerler then turns to his war years.

Fish speaks of the old Jewish cemetery, destroyed by the Soviets and replaced by a school, with only a small mixed plot left. He says there is no holy place or tsadik's grave in Rivne and that no real rabbi remained after 1941, though Hasidim once visited. He mentions Ben-Gurion's visit and cantor Kusevitsky's broadcasts. He then explains that Jews and mixed families receive meals and help from the community.

Opening of the interview. Kerler sets up the microphone and explains the consent papers and his own work as a Yiddish researcher. Litvak says she mostly spoke Russian with her husband. She tells of a Chabad rabbi and his wife (named something like Shmilek and Sterna, unclear) who stayed with her one Rosh Hashanah and with whom she was photographed. She offers their address in America or Israel, and Kerler asks which name the town had, Zvil or Novohrad-Volynskyy.

Kerler asks Khiterman about Jewish life in her town and what a 'good Jew' (a holy man or rebbe) meant. She answers that such men helped many poor people and that food was sent for Sabbath. A Russian exchange with a relative, probably her son, follows about whether she and others still speak Yiddish and about the language of the film. She says she once spoke Hebrew and had a teacher, but cannot remember his name.

Khiterman talks about the rabbi, the priest and a Hasidic rebbe and his wife in her town, and Kerler asks for terms such as 'pious Jew' and a pejorative for a Hasid. She mentions Jewish records she had at home and how she fled from the Germans leaving everything behind. Kerler asks how a Russian sentence about running away from the Germans is said in Yiddish. She then recalls the Germans of the First World War from her childhood.

Kupershmidt takes leave of the team in Bratslav and gives directions to the field and the tsadik's grave. He points out former Jewish houses, a Jewish blacksmith named Rozenberg (?), the wartime ghetto and its camp, a visiting Hasid from Israel, and the old mill. Kerler and Katz then discuss the route to Uman and Rebbe Nakhman of Breslov, who was born in Medzhybizh. On arrival in Sharhorod they begin an interview with Yerikhman, who says he was born in 1939 and names his parents and his brothers, one of whom died in Moscow. He describes a relative with a non-Jewish wife who observes the Sabbath, the sale of the family house, and the Jewish town of about 7,000 where Yiddish was spoken, still with 3–4 thousand Jews until the 1990s. He recalls that only two or three Jews died in the war, accidentally, among them a deaf man shot by a German. He also says the ghetto held mostly women and children while the men were in the Red Army, and discusses the Pechora camp and who was killed there.

Kleiner answers questions about a Jewish library in town and the difference between a rav and a rebbe. She discusses plurals and the terms for Litvaks, Polish Jews and Galicians, and how Jews from other regions spoke. She says that anti-religious mock trials and Komsomol checks on synagogue-going and baking were held; she says there were no Hasidim in Shepetivka. She also describes the rabbi acting as judge in a Jewish court.

Krasner tells of a Russian customer in a shop, and of being Jewish, then answers questions on words such as 'modest', 'drunk', 'brandy', 'hat' and 'kippah' in Yiddish. She describes leading a group of Hasidic pilgrims to the rebbe's house and grave, with the rebbe's son Itsikl carried by Hasidim, and the dancing at the grave. Left-handedness is chatted about. She recalls the Pechera camp, where prisoners died of hunger and a starving Jewish youth ran about naked.

At the cemetery Krasner speaks about graves and burials: a tombstone, her brother who made it, relatives who died in camps, and a neighbor. Katz and Kerler read gravestone inscriptions, including a rebbe's tomb, with a death date in the early 1920s (?), and ask about word forms, such as the plural of tsadik.

During the tour of the synagogue complex, Shvartsburg explains that he designed it from pictures brought by Americans of the old synagogue, and that building it took four years because money was short. He describes the hotel, the mikvehs, the large prayer hall and the size of the building. He also mentions pilgrims, the Twersky Rebbe's visits, and an American claim to the property that was settled for money. Kerler asks about visitors, the Berdychiv rebbe and the minyan on Sabbath.

The tour continues with talk about fundraising, including a portrait and the Chabad rabbi's contribution, and about the burial place of Itsik Twersky. Shvartsburg recalls that a synagogue was built in 1860s (?) and that the Soviets later closed it. Kerler asks about the postwar period and who still prayed there.

On the drive to the grave of Rebbe Itsik Twersky, Kerler and Shvartsburg talk about the large hotel built for the Hasidic pilgrims, who come in large numbers on Yom Kippur, and about the town's river, which Kerler asks whether it is a river or a lake. Russian directions are given to the driver.

Liberzon says her father was a rabbi, and he or the family is said to descend from the Ba'al Shem Tov (the transcript is unclear). Kerler says he and the other interviewer come from America, he from Moscow originally. She mentions Shepetovka and Reb Pinkhas of Koretz, and Kerler confirms they are in Slavuta.

Liberzon tells the family story of her ancestor Reb Liber, who was thrown from his horse and beaten in the woods while praying by a river. He healed a squire's son in return for a promise not to harm Jews, and this is connected to the founding of Berdychiv. She links her mother's side to the Tverski family of Chernobyl. Kerler asks the year she was born.

Liberzon shows Kerler documents from Israel and America about her rabbinic lineage, including a journal on rabbis. Kerler reads aloud the Hebrew text, naming Liberzon, Reb Liber of Berdychiv, Rabbi Khayim Shapira the Slavuta rabbi, Reb Pinkhas of Koretz, and the Chernobyl and Belz rebbes. He also notes the yeshivas, including Zvill (Novohrad-Volynskyi). Names and relations are uncertain in the transcript.

Mostly chat about practical matters, the equipment and travel to Rivne, with Russian speech. Liberzon tells about her father, who used to travel to a tsadik's grave, and a neighbour who advised him. A tale of two strangers buried near the grave of a holy man is told, and a Hasidic site was fenced in. A recorder is brought in, and the transcript shows no clear chanting.

Kerler talks about his own writing in English, then asks how Litvaks and Galicians were referred to; Liberzon discusses Litvak speech, Belarusians, Lubavitch and Brestlov Hasidim and an unclear conflict between them. She describes a Jewish religious school in which Yiddish and Jewishness are taught with sponsors from America.

Liberzon talks about her grandfather Khayim Shapiro, who moved from Bessarabia to Slavuta and went to a rebbe after losing children. She describes her father's father, a physician for fifty years who took no money and called it a mitsve. Kerler then asks what her father told about the Vilna Gaon.

Kerler asks about misnagdim versus Hasidim, the Vilna Gaon and the Annopol rabbi. Liberzon looks for and shows a note about the grave of a rebbe, and a family lineage of rebbes is read out. They also discuss Lubavitch, Breslov, and the debate about the messiah, and she mentions a Jewish school where children learn only to pray.

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.

Largely garbled with Russian: general remarks of good wishes, then Kerler asks about a Yiddish library, newspapers and theater in Polonne, and about visiting a rebbe or a 'good Jew' for a blessing, which Bivson explains.

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.

The guide gives the history of the synagogue in Lviv: built under Poland and not destroyed because of the nearby railway station; the Germans used it in 1941, and after the Soviets a sports club used it and the community got the building in about 1990. A new rabbi from New York came, whose wife heads the Jewish school. Kerler asks whether he is a Hasid; the guide says he is a Karliner Hasid, and speaks of Chabad in Ukraine, a kosher restaurant, a mikveh, and rabbis from Belz, and people leaving for Israel and Canada.

Gliazer says he studied in a Polish state school for seven classes. In the late 1920s, he says, he went to learn the printing trade in a printing shop in Podgaytse. He lists the work printed there: documents for merchants, posters and brochures for Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish organizations, and pamphlets for Catholic clergy. The shop also printed some Jewish material, including Hasidic leaflets. He remarks that the community had been rich and lively. Kerler adds a break and a question about reading.

Gliazer talks about the town's bathhouse and mikve, which men used on Friday before the Sabbath; his father or older brother took him. He lists the large synagogue and several small prayer houses (kloyzn), including a Hasidic one and a Chortkiv kloyz. He also answers whether there was a beis-medresh and whether yeshiva students ate days at members' homes.

Questionnaire session with Tkach. She is asked for Yiddish equivalents of Russian and Ukrainian words and sentences: verbs, adjectives, synonyms for 'sick', words for honest and religious people, a convert, a midwife, family terms, house and household words, the dreidel, and sentences to translate. She says she has not spoken Yiddish for some fifty years. Katz and Kerler then ask about earlier songs, pious Jews and a poor 'tsadik' in Kleyn Chernevits (Mala Chernivtsi?), tsadikim's graves, the abandoned houses there and Yiddish writers she has read.

Vainer-Shpak gives personal information (born in Vinnytsya in 1921; the address of her prewar home) and names her family: her father Froyke, a Bratslav Hasid, her mother Dobtse from Pryluky, brothers, sisters and grandparents. She tells of her Jewish model school in Vinnytsya, her studies as a dental specialist and the assignment to a sugar factory village in 1940, then her journey toward Odessa on foot at the start of the war and her return, hiding and survival in Vinnytsya, with her husband. She also talks about her parents' religious life, Sabbath, Purim and Hanukkah food and customs, the synagogues of Vinnytsya, and a story about Haman and Esther.

Conversation in the community office about Teplitskaia and other possible interviewees. A woman called Manya Faynkold (?) is described in Russian as the one person in town who still speaks Yiddish perfectly; she went through the ghetto. They also discuss pilgrims coming to Rebbe Nachman's grave, the lack of a year-round rabbi, and Uman' before the war, when about 32,000 Jews lived there and about 25,000 were killed by the Germans.

The team and guide set out on foot toward Teplitskaia, who is already waiting for them. On the way they talk about a woman said to be the last good Yiddish speaker in the city, about Bratslav pilgrims and the lack of a resident rabbi. In Russian they speak of the old Jewish places, and a speaker gives the prewar Jewish population of Uman' as about 32,000, of whom 25,000 were killed.

Teplitskaia describes the mass grave in the forest near Ternovka, where her father's relatives lie. She says the site is neglected and that this year she brought flowers. She says she bought a burial plot beside her mother in the Jewish cemetery and stresses honouring the dead. She says she visits the grave of Nahman of Bratslav and pleads for her children's health there, and that she went in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing her son.

Answers questions from Kerler and another person about whether Ternovka's Jews knew of Nahman's grave before the war, and she says they did not. Her father did not know of it or go there, and he worked all day. She says there were few Jews in Ternovka and that her father died after 1977 (?). She says people began going after the war.

Teplitskaia says she began to go to Nahman's grave after returning from the Germans, when people began talking about him, and the neighbours showed her the hiding place of the tsadik. She says non-Jews called him a saint. She describes Bratslav Hasidim and pilgrims from America, England and France coming on holidays. She mentions that they are robbed, and that red items are given out recently, as Kerler asks what that means.

Katz and Kerler talk at the grave of Nahman of Bratslav with Rabbi Kirshnboym (who gives his name as Abraham Moyshe) and other Breslov Hasidim. They discuss the word Breslover, Breslov teachings on joy and not despairing, singing and dancing, the Yiddish prayers and songs of Breslov, and Yiddish as a language of the rebbe's teaching. The kibbutz word, a singer from Kibbutz Nahal (?), the cantor Levi Yitzhak Bender in Uman' and Israeli election jokes come up. The group also tells a story of a letter to Rebbe Nahman and talks about Breslov books and scholarship, with Kerler photographing the site. The recording contains much recogniser looping.

A gathering at the grave of Nahman of Bratslav. The community members discuss Rebbe Nahman and his disciple Rabbi Nosn, the Bratslav teachings, the ten psalms and the idea that every Jew has some good point, and they sing Bratslav melodies together, including one about a joyful year. They talk about Sabbath songs and the differences between Bratslav and other Hasidic groups. The talk turns to Yiddish and Hebrew vocabulary, with some word discussion and a few parables. Katz and Kerler are asked about themselves (Katz born in New York and now living in Vilnius, a professor of Yiddish language, literature and history), and the group talks about yeshivas and rabbis of Lithuania, Poland and Brooklyn, and about praying together.

Kerler and a local man (S3) discuss the buildings of Uman' as seen from the deck: the choral synagogue, a plant (zavod) on the site of buildings from Reb Nahman's time, and a large building opposite. They mention Gonta, Zheleznyak and Khmelnytsky. Kerler asks whether Jews went to the grave in Soviet times and is told that they did not know of it.

Rubin recites or sings short Yiddish songs, including one about a tailor and one about a girl sewing, together with a saying attributed to Reb Nahman about dancing in hard times. Kerler asks him to repeat them for the microphone and asks about their source. Rubin recalls his grandfather, who died before the war and who took him to the beys-medresh and sang Sabbath songs. Rubin says he studied in Odessa before the war.

Kerler and S3 discuss a saying of Reb Nahman, then the origin of the name Uman', with a story about a woman named Manya who drank tea. Kerler says the team is going to Bershad. Asked about Buki, Rubin recalls that houses were roofed with straw, and that a man was paid to set fire to the roofs at night so that people had to buy tin from merchants.

In Krasheny's flat Kerler tries to get a deaf man to talk about Uman' and Yiddish life there. S4 and S3 explain in Russian that photographs show a first minyan some fifteen years earlier, and that a man in them went to America. An elderly man (S2) rambles in Yiddish about the first pilgrims to arrive, Yom Kippur, his grandfather the tsadik and a dream; the transcript is too garbled to follow in detail.

Halpert talks about weddings: the traditional Jewish weddings after the war were modest, but one in Munkatsh (with rabbis from Zhytomyr and Berdychiv, and Taykhman) was large. Kerler recalls attending one in the late 1960s (?). Halpert then remembers the prewar wedding jester (gramer) Asher Zelik (?) and his jokes, and says much was forgotten after the war.

Chirkova speaks about teaching in a dance class for children for about six months, and Kerler asks whether her parents took her to synagogue in Krasne. She mentions separate prayer groups of the shoemakers and tailors and answers questions about Hasidim in the town. She then moves to her postwar working life, studies and a long, partly unclear story about an illness and treatment.

Katz asks about tsadikim and a hazzan and rabbi in Krasne. Chirkova describes a boy becoming a Jew at age twelve with the tallis, and gives advice on how to be a good person, to help others and keep faith in God. She says who can be a tsadik or a 'good Jew' and a rabbi.

Vainer-Shpak answers questions about Yiddish newspapers read before the war, including the Moscow Emes. Kerler asks about her father, who is identified as a Bratslav Hasid. She says he was not a cantor but sang at the synagogue. A cantor in Vinnytsya used to call him over when he led the prayers.

Vainer-Shpak remembers the rabbi of Vinnytsya as an important man with a fine head and beard. She answers Kerler's questions about the terms 'a good Jew' and 'tsadik'. She recalls no Hasidim beyond her father's Bratslav and calls Bratslav a very Jewish town. Kerler then begins asking about Sabbath bread.

Barshteyn describes Jewish life in prewar Sharhorod: the many synagogues, the great synagogue that still stands, and the Romanian Jews who prayed there during the occupation. She recalls Passover at home, her six years at a Yiddish school, kosher meat and the shoykhet, and the two tsadikim's graves that the Jews refused to have moved.

Barshteyn continues about the tsadikim's graves and visits to them, including Jews who went to Israel and came back. She says she travels once a year to her parents' graves, and gives the dates of her father's and mother's deaths.

Barshteyn says non-Jews took over the Jewish houses. Lemster asks about stories, and she says her father told Yiddish stories, including an anecdote about a joker and a stern rebbe. She recalls the town cantor and describes weddings with klezmorim brought from Moldova and Bessarabia, the chuppah held at the synagogue, and the women's gallery upstairs. Better cantors were hired from Zhytomyr and Moldova.

At the old cemetery, Barshteyn explains that part of it was cleared for a road in Soviet times. Her mother helped gather the bones, and the gravestones of two tsadikim were left standing. She tells of the tsadikim's legendary powers and of Jews who emigrated to Israel having the graves repaired. Katz and Kerler try to read the Hebrew inscription (Naftali Hertz) and work out dates. She then takes them to her mother Brayne's grave and says a few words there.

Sobol speaks about her children and a son who caused her trouble, and about her husband, who spoke a different Yiddish and no Russian. In answer to Kerler she names Chernivtsi and nearby places in Bukovina as his birthplace, and says a book records it. She mentions the tsadik (a "good Jew") of that shtetl, and Lemster then asks about Yiddish theatre.

Sobol says that Yiddish theatre troupes used to visit before the war. Her husband told stories about the good Jew of Shishkivtsi (?), whom people travelled to, and about Jewish soldiers asking for Passover leave. She explains the word for a shepherd, and speaks about postal telegrams from relatives in America. Kerler asks about the Kozenits camp; she describes work under the Romanians, the rich buying their way out, and Ukrainians helping Jews with food.

Fishman recalls two prewar visits to Medzhibozh, the second at age eight in 1939, and four visits in the last ten years. He mentions the large synagogue built by American Jews by the grave of the Baal Shem Tov, where only two Jews remain. He remembers a river near his grandfather's house and the geese and feathers, and retells a story his mother told about Hershele Ostropolyer as a poor guest who pours soup on his fine coat.

Tsodikovich recalls Kopayhorod, whose population was about half Jewish, half non-Jewish. He says there was no antisemitism, and that non-Jews helped during the ghetto. He names Jewish neighbours, a water seller called Avrom Rud(?), the rabbi and the shoykhet Leyb. He says a mohel was brought from Sharhorod or Zhmerynka, and matzo came from Mohyliv(?). He describes festival dishes, and mentions Yankl, the shoykhet in Vinnytsya. He also gives dates: studies in Zhytomyr, army service on Sakhalin and Kamchatka from 1958 to 1961, and a wedding in Kopayhorod around 1961, without a khupe but in the club, with Jewish klezmer in heavy snow.

Kerler asks more dialect questions about words for ill-behaved or released people, and for a snack or an extra course after a meal, and Nayman gives a few answers. She recalls fragments of Yiddish riddle songs and a Purim rhyme, and says her mother did not sing. They discuss a planned visit to the Munkacs rebbe and Nayman's memories of him. Nayman says she does not care for theater but recalls school plays. The tape ends with talk, with S2 and Katz, about sending a cassette or DVD of the interview to her daughter, mentioning Spielberg and the earlier interview.

The drive leaves L'viv for Zhovkva. Dorfman tells how the Russian printer Ivan Fedorov took his press from the Jews of Zhovkva, and mentions the Jewish cemeteries and the visits of tourists. He also talks about the nearby border at Rava-Ruska, the rebbe of Zhidachov, the old monastery and the Jewish houses of the town. They arrive at the house of the interviewee.

Lebvol returns to the Yoysef play, in which twelve brothers and a sister were needed, and recalls a blind man who led the player of Jacob and ran a library. She says the play was organized by one man and tickets sold, and that all the shops in the old town were Jewish except one Polish and one Ukrainian. Kerler plans to drive her around to show prewar sites, and asks about a good Jew in Zhovka.

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.

Katz and Kerler interview Goluvinskaia, who is said to have turned a hundred, with a helper explaining a Hesed video. She was born in Zhytomyr. Her father worked at a factory and died when she was a child, leaving five children, and she names her mother and some siblings. She worked in a cinema before the war and was evacuated in 1941, the place being unclear. She recalls praying, going to cheder alone, Sabbath candles and holidays, which she mostly no longer remembers. She says her grandfather was a rebbe who held gatherings at his table, and she mentions a Russian school. She then answers Russian-prompted questionnaire items (breathe, ear, attic, sky colour, mouse, deaf, pigeon), with some of her answers uncertain.

Geller gives his Yiddish name as Binyomin, nicknamed Mime, and says he is nearing eighty. His father Yankl was a glazier until 1932, and his mother and her family's names are discussed, including a grandmother Etshi and another named Mintsi. His parents had no child for ten years until the rebbe promised one, and his mother lived to 93. A relative of his grandmother had 23 children. His mother was taught by a tutor, studied two gymnasium classes, and loved Pushkin and Tolstoy.

A short account of the history of the renovated Zhytomyr synagogue. It was built about 130 years ago on a street with other synagogues and was used by traders. It was open until 1941, when the Germans used it as a warehouse, and was handed back to the community in the early 1990s. During repairs, prayer books and the names of women were found hidden in the walls. The speaker describes today's community, with a daily minyan, a school and an orphanage. Informal talk follows about the cantor Krinsky, hearing the Megillah on Purim, and Lithuanian versus Hasidic towns in the region (Rovno, Lutsk, Slavuta, Yampol).

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.

Geller talks about Pyatka before the war. Young people left the town in the 1930s for big cities, and he mentions a Jewish council (?) and Jewish craftsmen. His father Yankl worked in a factory, which closed during the hunger. Yankl went to look for work elsewhere, fell ill, returned in 1934 and died. His mother lived to 93 and kept house for four children. He then begins on his maternal grandmother, who had no child for ten years and went to a rebbe who promised her one child who would live long; the rebbe's name is not remembered.

Burshtein describes the German entry into Gorovo, when the synagogue was undermined and the Jews were herded together. He says a great rebbe had blessed Ostrów Mazowiecka, and that many people tried to flee there. The rebbe was thrown into a fire. He was a child and studying gemara at the time and does not remember details.

Nibulskiy talks about poverty in prewar Pulen, with no factories and many poor people living on credit. A man bought furs and roosters in the German colonies to resell. His grandfather collected from the rich to bring Sabbath food to families like Nokhem the shoemaker's. He then tells a story of Shmilik, a bonder from Lithuania, who consulted the Baal Shem Tov (Reb Yisroel) and found gold in his oven, which led to a furniture workshop. Kerler asks about word meanings and the man's name.

Nibulskiy continues the story of a quarrel in Pulen between two wagon drivers (or between occupations). The Makariv rebbe came on a Sabbath, with Sabbath candles burning on the table. He told one man to ask forgiveness, and a candle fell and went out when the man refused.

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 speaks about his observant father, his own cheder attendance, his wife's Jewish schooling and his self-taught Yiddish reading. He tells how the Makarover rebbe visited his great-grandmother in a nearby town, where she recovered after a fire. He describes his great-grandfather Shimunke, a farmer and crop adviser. He also tells of a Jewish lessee in Burakivka troubled by a German over hops, who went to the Makarover rebbe for help. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for a village.

Nibulskiy discusses non-Jews in Puliny who understood Yiddish, and how his grandfather spoke Hebrew words on Sabbath, naming a number of items. Kerler asks about Sabbath songs and the phrase 'a good Jew', which Nibulskiy explains as one who believes and prospers. He starts to tell of a Christian woman visiting the Velednik rebbe.

Nibulskiy tells further Hershele Ostropoler anecdotes, including how he had a hat made and tricked innkeepers into feeding him by waving it, and one about tearing cloth for trousers by force. These end with a saying that things are not torn off without force, which Kerler asks about as a proverb.

Nibulskiy tells a long legend, which he heard from his grandfather, about the Baal Shem Tov and a young couple who worked at a tavern and wanted to marry. Their stingy employer gave them money instead of a wedding. The Baal Shem Tov met them on the road and married them under a makeshift canopy of sticks. He then helped an injured nobleman's son, and the local landowners gave the couple land as a wedding gift. Kerler asks how a wedding canopy was called in his town and comments on the story.

Nibulskiy describes his grandfather Avrom's Sabbath hospitality for poor visitors from nearby small towns: a large table, challah, a samovar, and kiddush with brandy. Stories about the Besht and the Veledniki and Makarov rebbes were told. He begins the story of a girl who lay ill and a father who rushed to the rebbe.

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.

Nibulskiy tells how his grandfather Avrom, a tailor, burned a hole in a customer's garment, and the Veledniki rebbe, who happened to arrive, advised him how to repair it. He then explains the family: his great-grandfather Shimonke and grandfather Avrom Alters, who was killed by the Germans in 1941 after refusing evacuation. Avrom was a synagogue warden and supported a poor shoemaker's family on the Sabbath. Nibulskiy compares this with the complaints about aid today.

Nibulskiy says the Nibulskiys came from Lithuania. He tells about a poor family of binders, whose oven would not bake, who went for advice and returned with a pot of gold from a cracked oven. He then adds that the man opened a workshop in Pulen and became wealthy. Kerler asks about the name of the object and the term bonder, and about the rebbe's role.

Nibulskiy tells several anecdotes of Hershele Ostropoler's cleverness: tearing cloth with a cry, the saying about not tearing without force, and the hat story played on a rich man and an innkeeper. He then returns to rebbe stories, including a woman who asked how to deal with a daughter-in-law and a young man who slept beside a beast. Kerler asks about words and meanings.

A short passage in which Shraibman says he and his wife survived and lived in a good village. He starts a story about a Jew coming to a rebbe by train, but it breaks off.

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 tells a story from Berdychiv in which the rebbe is imprisoned and the Jews bribe the guards so that they can keep Sabbath and sing there. A baptized Jew sent by the tsar investigates and hears a story about a landowner's son, and the Jews' accusation is shown to be false. Kerler asks where the rebbes lie buried, and the discussion mentions Levi Yitskhok.

Nibulskiy tells a short anecdote in which a man asks his rebbe why rich people turn away from him while poor people greet him. The rebbe has him compare a window with a mirror, which has silver behind the glass. Nibulskiy says he also read it in a magazine. Kerler then asks about a different story, connected with Abimelech (?) or with vareniki.

Kerler asks about plural forms of 'rebbe' and 'rov' and about the term for a 'winter fool'. Nibulskiy then tells a Chelm story about two halves of the town quarrelling over how to lay the boards of a bathhouse floor until the rebbe's ruling. He follows it with a Hershl Ostropoler story in which a miserly rich man is tricked by a multicoloured hat made by a hatter. The hat is sold on at a profit, and the miser is cheated of a meal and drink in several places.