Sabbath

Rezmovit relates the legend that the Kaliver rebbe heard a song from a Christian shepherd and turned it into a Hebrew song, keeping the Hungarian words. Kerler establishes that the rebbe only heard it and did not buy it. Rezmovit tries to play or recall the Hungarian melody on the harmonica and sings, with Kerler, the Sabbath song his father sang. He then speaks of his father's piety and his remark that a Jew on a mountaintop must still be a Jew.

Gotlieb names her paternal grandfather Moshe Friedmann and grandmother Malke (née Blumenfeld), and mentions five uncles and one aunt on her father's side. The family dealt in leather. She helped her father, then after the war ran her own business with her husband until the Russians took everything. She speaks about her town's location, now in Hungary, and about her very religious mother's last words on keeping the Sabbath.

Gotlieb speaks about Sabbath-ending prayers and the greeting "a gute vokh" with its replies, then the prayers she learned as a child. She recites the morning prayer "Modeh Ani" and other prayer texts, though the transcript is largely garbled here.

Gotlieb answers questions about the baked goods her mother made, which she calls very fine, and about wine and brandy (palinka). She then speaks about healing customs. As a very sick child she was given a red ribbon from Jerusalem and prayers were said for her. She and Kerler discuss extinguishing coals in water as a remedy, and the havdalah custom of putting money in the pocket for a blessing.

Asked about his childhood, Pearl describes Tállya's one synagogue, daily minyan, cheder, mikveh and rabbi Rosenbaum, who came from a place whose name is unclear in the transcript. There was no yeshiva in the village, but there were several in nearby towns, including one his brother attended. He says the rabbi preached in Yiddish and kept strict observance of the Sabbath and kashrut, and that about 3,200 non-Jews lived in the village without antisemitism. Only one non-Jew, born in Munkács, knew Yiddish, while Jewish women spoke it.

Pearl recalls that his mother read the tsene-rene on Sabbath afternoons and that his father's sister told the stories to the children. He speaks about his wife, who was a professor of analytical chemistry and wrote a monograph, and about his daughter, a physician. He mentions a recent health scare and says he is now better.

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 she came to Budapest to work at eighteen, when young people were taken away for labor; the year is unclear (Kerler says 1934, but 1943 is also heard). She recalls her mother's advice about Sabbath, then says she was one of seven children, a brother and a sister died, and a brother named David studied at a yeshiva in Uzhhorod while the others worked with her father. Kerler asks about her learning to read Hebrew letters.

Gotlieb answers questions about everyday food at home: cholent on Sabbath, potatoes and baked goods in the week, and meat and fish only on Sabbath. She says she made fish herself but not stuffed fish with sugar, as the Polish Jews did. Kerler also asks whether she remembers Hanukkah songs, and she names Ma'oz Tsur.

Gotlieb recalls childhood games in the courtyard, such as jumping over squares, while there were no animals as the courtyard held over forty children. She says she carried a chicken to the ritual slaughterer for the Sabbath, and meat was eaten only on Sabbath. Kerler then asks about the school she mentioned.

Gotlieb answers questions about food and kinship-related terms: flodn, kugel, the Sabbath morning cake (koilitsh versus khale), the dough offering taken from challah and the word for midwife. S3 and Kerler help in Hungarian and Yiddish when she cannot find the Yiddish word. Kerler and Gotlieb also compare Slavic words and names such as her husband's and Kerler's.

Gotlieb tells, mainly in Hungarian and then summarised in Yiddish by S2, about her family's hardship in the early 1930s. Her father, a hide dealer, lost his goods in the cartel period and the family was evicted and lived in a broom factory, where her brother was born. Her pious mother urged him to buy a horse and cart, which brought him success. Kerler then asks about her mother's Sabbath observance.

Briefly discusses wall decorations in the home, including Purim items, papercuts and children's pictures, and the terms for Sabbath bread (challah versus barkhes). Blobshteyn then describes his father's place at the table and the respect given to him, including that no one sat in his seat.

Blobshteyn recalls working as a kosher butcher after the war. A Jewish woman once bought meat that turned out to be treyf, and the episode shows how the sale was handled. He mentions that he went to pray every Sabbath. He then talks about his sister and brother-in-law, who lived in Mukacheve, and of the dwindling number of Jews after the war, and says he is now losing his sight. Kerler adds remarks about a planned visit to see him and about phone calls between them.

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.

Reti recalls a fish-seller, the 'fish Jew', who brought fish from Debrecen every week on his back to the villages; Reti's Hasidic father bought fish for the Sabbath. Kerler asks how it was prepared: Reti describes cold boiled fish and the stuffed fish made from the skin, using a Hungarian name for it, and says he dislikes the sweet Israeli version, which he calls Polish. They go on to the terms for Polish and Lithuanian Jews, whom Reti regards as very pious people.

Reti says the village had one Orthodox synagogue plus the rebbe's own beit midrash, and that every village had a brick synagogue. He explains how the mikvah was heated with a samovar and wood, hot on Thursday and Friday, with the water changed on Sunday morning. Kerler asks about the Sabbath goy; Reti says Jews did not work on the Sabbath, but a courtyard non-Jew, called the 'hoyf-goy', did the heating and other chores. He adds that relations with the non-Jews were good and there were no quarrels.

Galambos continues describing his schedule as a child, with school and cheder every day from age six, and says he had little real childhood. He also describes Sabbath afternoons at cheder. Kerler asks whether certain texts were said with a melody, and Galambos has not heard that.

Galambos answers questions about which prayers and Sabbath rituals were sung with a melody, such as Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Friday night and kiddush. He sings a song about the town of Belz and childhood there. They then mention a brother who has died, and Kerler asks about his years in yeshiva.

Galambos says he still makes his mother's dishes, such as gefilte fish and cholent. Kerler asks about Sabbath loaves, dumplings and the terms for them, and Galambos says he still has matzo meal. They discuss whether Jews drank palinka and whether it had to be kosher. They also cover wine, drinking on Passover and Purim, and toasts at kiddush in the synagogue. The recording has English and Russian fragments from others in the room.

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

Asked about childhood in Gertop, Dzigifker says there was a synagogue and Jewish life. As a child of about ten she fasted on Yom Kippur until two o'clock, and the children then asked for pretzels. Both sisters say they still fast. They describe their mother's kosher practice: soaking and salting meat, the names Rachel, Rebecca and Leah said at salting, separate dishes for milk and meat, and Sabbath candles and challah.

Reizman says she married in Tighina under a chuppah, and her husband was a painter. She describes the wedding food, the match and the way she met him. Lemster then asks about dishes: sweets, flodn at Purim, chopped and gefilte fish, matzo dishes for Passover, kishke, stuffed stomach, stuffed ducks and bread. She says her mother baked at home, with a cholent of beans, while they bought white bread.

Boltykh describes how his mother celebrated holidays: matzo and special food for the poor at Passover paid for by the rich, her separate Passover dishes and knife, gefilte fish, and Friday candle blessing. He mentions Purim visits with presents to neighbors, fasting, and a blessing from the rabbi of Bălți. He says his father could not pray while his mother was learned.

Katerberg recalls long winter evenings when neighbors gathered in turns at one house or another, baking bread and drinking tea, and Friday baking of challah. Lemster asks about Sabbath food: meat, gefilte fish, which Tatyana still makes. Her name is given as Tube.

Goldberg describes Sabbath table customs with kiddush and zemirot, and says prewar Jewish trades were mainly tailors and shoemakers. She says that now many people want to be Jews in order to emigrate to Israel or Germany. Questions follow on a tale of Hershele Ostropolier, the phrase "over there crazy" about a nearby town, and annual cemetery visits.

Mester recalls her mother's religious practices: a prayer said before lighting the Sabbath candles, kiddush over two challahs on Friday night, and soaking and salting meat to kosher it. She says her mother put a piece of challah into the oven. Kerler's question about an anecdote begins the next story.

Roif sings a love song about a girl abandoned by the lover who gave her a ring, and says her husband stopped her singing in the car. After declining to sing more, she tells Katz that Passover was the best holiday, with dishes brought down from the attic. She says she and her father went to the kloyz on Yom Kippur and Sabbath. She begins to say that her mother was ill and died, and her father remarried.

Gordin speaks about the single synagogue in Florești, which functioned until some time after the war, and about a short course in Yiddish with Itsik Landa that lasted only a couple of weeks. He then answers Katz's questions about holiday customs: Yom Kippur fasting foods, Hanukkah dreidel and money, and cheese bagels on Shavuot. He says he does not remember blessings or Sabbath songs.

Diner talks about her mother's cooking, including gefilte fish on Sabbath, kugel, tarts and bagels, and says she moved to Chișinău in 1965. She recalls her sister and brother coming home in the summers from the conservatory in Bucharest with their friends to play and sing operetta and opera. Her father wanted her to become a doctor, which is why she later could not study in Siberia.

Goldman describes prewar holidays at home: going to synagogue, the Passover seder at which he as a small boy asked the four questions of his father, and Sukkot, when they built a sukkah and only ate in it. He remembers little of Hanukkah, Shavuot or Purim, mentions lighting Hanukkah candles, and recalls only some of his mother's cooking. He cannot say what tatshikelekh (?) were. In the middle he asks where Lemster was during the war and speaks of Israel.

Goldman answers questions about prewar religious customs: girls did not bless candles before marriage, and the seder with the Elijah cup and hidden matzah. She recalls the morning prayer, her father's synagogue, and how matzah was supplied after the war.

Benderskaia describes her mother's gefilte fish: carp chopped with onion, cooked with oil, pepper, a little flour and sugar, and sweet rather than salted. Benderskij says his grandfather liked it salted, and potatoes with fish are mentioned. Kerler and Lemster ask about the preparation.

Dajch describes children's games in response to Kerler's questions: stone knucklebones, sticks, buttons in a hole, and nuts. She then recalls how her grandfather brought a sugar lump from synagogue on Sabbath mornings and how the children shared it. She also covers Sabbath bread and meals and what her mother cooked, and Yom Kippur at home, including her brother's prayers. She begins to recite a poem.

Rotner describes how her mother made gefilte fish rather than chopped fish, using a knife and later a grinder, with the skin removed. The questionnaire continues with words for animals, colors, building a house, weather, distance, time, illness, piety, the street, the river, potatoes, flowers, and the home. Kerler and Lemster also ask about non-Jews who worked for Jews on the Sabbath, the Jewish New Year versus the Christian one, midwives, kinship terms, the prayer leader's lectern, the afterlife, and a game with dice. She says the session made her recall Yiddish she had not used for many years, and that she speaks Russian with her children.

Fershtman describes holidays at home before the war, including Sabbath, Passover and separate dishes for milk and meat. He talks about attending school on Sabbath or Sunday (he is unsure), going to the synagogue and kapores, and not having been taught to pray or recite blessings. He mentions that his relative Berl Fershtman wrote in Yiddish and studied in Odesa, and the interviewers suggest looking for his publications.

Rojtman names childhood friends and the games they played, with Kerler asking about hide-and-seek and blind man's buff. She recalls a visit by a rich Chișinău man who staged a performance in Romanian. A private teacher, a member of the Dascal family, taught her Yiddish letters at home. She describes her grandfather's observance, Sabbath, her grandmother's baking, and the family seder, where the rabbi's family and the siddurim figure.

Shmid mentions her son-in-law and then answers Kerler's questions about drinking in the village: Jews drank on holidays but were not drunkards, unlike the non-Jews. Her father took a small glass on Sabbath. She calls her parents' home very Jewish, and says the family went to the city for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, staying with relatives and later with the married children in Chișinău.

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.

Kleyman answers Kerler's questions on food and holidays: her mother baking Sabbath challah, Sabbath dishes such as cholent, fish (kulen, chopped and gefilte fish), vinegar meat and the meal before Yom Kippur. She also recalls Hanukkah money, Purim noodle kugel, and baking at Passover in the oven. She remembers little of the Purim reading and the seder, and speaks of her sister asking the four questions and her mother lighting candles. Lemster and Kerler exchange words with a man from Israel about food terms.

Raisa speaks about her mother and prewar home life; her blind grandmother Rivke was burned with other elderly people in the woods near the ghetto. She explains how to make gefilte fish (skinning, grinding with matzo meal, cooking two hours), cholent-like dishes and tzimmes with beans, and how Russian-speaking local intelligentsia came to eat at her home. She then talks about prices, pensions and the support she and Iosif receive from Hesed today.

Akkerman talks about her sons' studies and work and about her husband, a conscientious bookkeeper. Lemster asks about childhood games and Jewish weddings in Edineț; she says her own wedding was with a chuppah, as were her sons'. She answers briefly about wedding customs, musicians and the grandparents she never knew, and Kerler asks when she married. Lemster then asks about food in a Jewish home, including Sabbath baking.

Akkerman describes Sabbath at home: her mother's baking, cholent put into the oven, and her mother's generosity. She recalls Passover matzo and kugel, but not Hanukkah customs. She remembers the Purim baked goods (hamantaschen) and says there was a Purim play, though she cannot recall who performed it, and answers Lemster's question about theatre visiting Edineț without remembering details.

Mundrian talks about holidays and food in her mother's time and after the war: Yom Kippur fasting, Sabbath candles and kiddush, and her mother's Hebrew. She also tells of baking matzo secretly and the difficulty of getting kosher meat. She describes dishes such as meat in vinegar sauce, and gives a detailed recipe for gefilte fish, a favourite of her uncle and her son. She mentions her 1957 wedding under a huppah, with the contract in Yiddish.

Sharhorodskij speaks of his sister Frume, who finished school in 1941, studied law after the war, worked as a notary, married in 1958 and died of tuberculosis. Her daughter lives in Israel with her family. Kerler asks about the neighbor Shepsl who served the Germans. Sharhorodskij also describes his parents' observance: his mother's Friday candles, his father's prayer shawl worn in the kitchen after the war, and the seder.

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

Rolshut recalls prewar holidays at home with her parents: her father lighting Hanukkah candles, Purim, Yom Kippur at the synagogue and Friday-night Sabbath candles. She mentions Purim baking, potato dumplings and dreidel at Hanukkah, and sending baked gifts. She can describe only the content of the Purim play, about Haman and Esther, and does not remember it being performed in Soroca.

Rolshut talks about her mother's cooking: gefilte fish, separate meat and dairy kitchens, and how she koshered meat using a wooden board and salt, timed by the clock. She recalls Friday challah baked in a Russian oven and mentions jam made from rose petals. She does not remember what her mother said while salting.

Plotnik recalls begging for food in the Bershad ghetto, and how her mother had sent poor guests to the house on Sabbath before the war. Kerler asks about songs of the ghetto and the camp at Balanivka (?), and he mentions a computer. She does not remember them, but sings a song about papers.

Kerler asks about prayers she learned from her mother, and she recalls Sabbath preparation, challah, Sabbath fish, and fasting. She mentions the Purim customs: sending gifts and making filled pastries (flodn), and children going from house to house. Kerler asks about Purim plays and how the pastry is made. She also mentions Passover baking.

Talks about her parents' house and her grandmother, who baked home bread and Sabbath challah and kept a small shop. She mentions Passover baking, her father as a good provider, and that the family sold their house. The transcript does not clearly show a move to Soroca before the war.

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.

Nusbrokh says he does not remember attending Jewish weddings; after the war weddings were mixed. When asked about wedding songs he names "Mayn shtetele Belz". Lemster then asks about Jewish dishes (gefilte fish, Sabbath foods, tsimes, potatoes) and Nusbrokh talks about a landlord, Shloyme Roytman (?), and his buyers.

Dunaevskij talks about his father's religious observance, who worked on the Sabbath out of necessity but kept to Jewishness and sent his sons to cheder. He recalls a family acquaintance, Eliyahu's father, a pious man who worked alongside his father, and Uncle Motl, who lived in Rivne (?). He explains what a Purim play is: children with masks went from house to house for small payment and sang. Kerler recites a few lines of a Purim song.

Kerler asks about the taste of her mother's gefilte fish. Klichinskaia says it was lightly salted and peppered, and then gives her recipe step by step, with fish, onions, a roll, spices and potatoes. She mentions that the cutlets are fried and then stewed in the oven.

Luminskaia describes what her mother cooked for holidays, including gefilte fish and a cholent baked in a Russian oven. She recalls the local ritual slaughterer, who was still active in the late 1920s. She mentions her grandfather's sons who went to America.

Asked about the holidays in Talmaz, Grinberg says her parents observed Passover and Jewish custom, keeping separate dishes. She mentions that the family had a cow. Prompted on Sabbath, she names the blessing of the candles and speaks of Hanukkah. Her account is halting and mixed with Russian.

Lemster asks Elizaveta about Jewish weddings in her town. She recalls watching as a child, the chuppah, the music from Jewish musicians and the dancing, but not the songs or whether the musicians were Jews or Gypsies. Kerler asks about singing at the Sabbath table, and she answers that she went to synagogue.

Elizaveta says her sisters and brothers are all dead, some having gone to Israel, and that her father and two brothers were killed in the war. She talks about her mother Gitl, who died young, and the grandmothers she cannot name. She says the family speaks Yiddish, Moldovan and Russian, and Lemster asks about Sabbath candles.

Meir describes weddings: the rabbi's long speech, the chuppah, a modest table of cake and wine for the poor, and klezmer or Gypsy musicians. He mentions the dance brugsl (?) and says he cannot sing. Lemster's questions turn to food: cholent baked in a home oven for the Sabbath, strudel, red borscht at Passover, a traditional dish made from flour, and brandy at kiddush.

Finkel says there were three or four synagogues in Sulita and about three hundred Jewish families. She tells how her father led the Passover seder at home but remembers little of the customs. She did not go to weddings and says there was no Yiddish theatre in Sulita. Prewar Sabbath practice is touched on briefly.

Finkel explains how her mother koshered meat by soaking it for half an hour and then salting it for an hour. She remembers that her mother baked challah every Friday in the communal oven and mentions Sabbath soup and baked goods. She says she blesses the candles in Hebrew and has forgotten the Yiddish prayers. Lemster asks about gefilte fish and chopped fish, and she describes how fish were prepared with little salt, sugar and pepper.

Burg retells the anecdote he told at the ceremony, about a Jew who found a purse full of money on the Sabbath and prayed. A miracle made it Thursday around him while it remained Sabbath where he stood. He used it to ask the audience to keep the event short. He then tells of a lonely friend who phoned him in December and died within days, and says he cannot sleep or leave the house for three years.

Asked about his childhood games, Grunfeld recalls being upset on Sabbath afternoons when the other children played while his grandfather made him recite from the Pentateuch. He then explains the difference between cheder in Zău and the Talmud Torah in Cluj, where he began Gemara at nine or ten and studied only a little.

Hershkovich answers questions about food terms and customs. These include the loaf called dalek, meat dishes, cholent with kishke, and the Sabbath fish, with imitation fish (made of meat) as an alternative. He names the word for brandy and the kinds of fruit brandy.

The man shows a Hebrew family-tree or yikhes letter, naming Menakhem Yehuda as himself and his parents David and Miriam Guta (?). The talk drifts to the interview and recording, with Romanian and Russian asides and a mention of the languages he uses. He mentions a village about thirty kilometres from where he grew up with a stream, and Friday-night fish at home.

Freundlich describes her observant childhood home and her mother's blessing over the candles. She recalls the kosher butchers, the shochet and the rabbi in Satu Mare, and describes how meat was salted and soaked. She talks about taking challah and recites the Saturday-night prayer to the God of Abraham, in Yiddish, at Kerler's request.

Hershkovich describes the small prayer house in Bogata, with families walking in from nearby villages for Sabbath prayer under an eruv. He studied in Bogata until age eight or nine, then went to the yeshiva in Dej. He also learned from his father, who was a learned man. Part of the passage is interrupted by a Romanian remark from a woman in the room.

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.

Asked what she remembers of childhood in Satu Mare, Freundlich describes a strictly observant home with honest Sabbath keeping and simple parents. She tells of her parents' and siblings' deportation, a married sister deported with her husband and three children, and her youngest sister now seriously ill in a hospital in the United States (Florida/New York).

Kerler asks whether gefilte fish was eaten on Sabbath. Freundlich answers that she now makes fish in aspic, shows a photograph from her grandson's bar mitzvah and discusses the name for the dish in different languages.

Freundlich speaks about life today and Hungarian radio, saying she can no longer sing. She then recalls her nursemaid from Maramureș, a Ruthenian-speaking woman who taught her Yiddish songs and refused to wear shoes on Shabbat. She also talks about wedding customs and a choir led by her daughter, and says that nowadays only Purim songs are sung.

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.

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.

Grimberg says the family went to Transnistria in 1941 and returned in 1943, when friends and acquaintances helped them and her father came back. Lemster asks about her role as prayer-reader and consultant, and she gives an example. She describes how meat is kashered by soaking, rinsing and salting, and recalls her mother's Friday baking of challah and cracklings.

Grimberg discusses fish dishes: gefilte fish, how it was cooked for Friday night, and a recipe question from Lemster and Kerler. Kerler also asks about a custom of throwing something, probably burrs, at a holiday. She then answers questions about whether Yiddish is still spoken in Cluj and Satu Mare. She mentions the true tzadikim of Sighet and says that today men cook better than women.

Lemster and Kerler ask Lipovici about songs he sang as a shepherd and in what language. He talks about what he ate in the field and about Sabbath food. He recalls a local kosher butcher, Moshe Yankl(?), who was found alive after a shooting and later taken to Israel by his son.

Hirsch and Kerler discuss gefilte fish and "false fish" (made when there was no fish), and whether the fish was sweet or salted. They discuss a Passover potato dish, sweet pastry and bundlekh, then the dishes for each weekday, including the weekly soup with meat on market day and Sabbath cholent. Many dish names are garbled.

Lemster asks what he remembers of songs, including Romanian ones. Chajim says he sang much but has forgotten most, recites a few lines of a song, and talks about a rich employer who paid late. He recalls his father telling him as a boy to go to the synagogue and then make Friday-night kiddush.

Chajim describes Friday-night family observance in his childhood, with kiddush and Sabbath dishes such as kugel, and his father's wishes concerning kaddish. He says he cannot recite kiddush any more. He tells Kerler and Lemster, who are from Edineț, how glad he is to talk to someone from there, recalling work in Galați and in Rujniţa, Briceni and a village near Edineț.

Chajim gives his birth in Podu Iloaiei, about October 1906 and his age as nearly 100, and says he remembers everything. His father was Chaim, and he himself is Chaim Itsik. He recalls Sabbath kugel his mother made and a customs-related remark on Purim.

Asked about kosher meat, Chajim says he buys meat slaughtered by a Jewish butcher and never ate from a Christian. His wife observed the same custom. He speaks about the mezuzah on every door and about blessing the Friday-night candles. He tells of an heirloom Hanukkah lamp from his father's father that an American wished to buy, and of going on errands before Rosh Hashanah.

Chajim says that the people around him were mostly Jews but also Christians. He says he can read and speak Yiddish and used to sing Yiddish songs. He reflects on how hard it is to be a Jew, naming Kiddush, the Shema, candle-blessing and Hanukkah. The wedding is hardly addressed. Kerler then asks about life under the Communists.

Chajim explains that he was a Communist because they gave him bread, and speaks of escaping from a camp. His father died in Israel, and he mentions sitting shiva for his wife. He names his mother, remembers her cooking (kugel, fish, gefilte fish on Sabbath eve) and her candle-lighting. He had six brothers and two sisters, and all the brothers are dead. His father and grandfather were tailors. He was also a tailor and president of a cooperative. Lemster asks about Yiddish theatre, which he does not remember.

Answering Kerler's questions, Finkelshteyn describes what Jews drank before the war: wine on Friday night and for kiddush, little brandy, and mostly tea. He tells of a Jewish tavern keeper and how he sold his drink.

Resh describes prewar holidays in his parents' home: a kosher household with pork not allowed inside, his father blowing the shofar and going to synagogue on holidays, his pious mother and her candle-blessing. He explains Sabbath food, including cholent kept warm, and gives the recipe for Jewish gefilte fish, which he still makes himself, as well as how his mother salted meat.

Chirilau recalls her childhood schooling in the Romanian school, where Jewish children also had a couple of hours of Jewish instruction a day. She mentions the rabbi and the shoykhet, and describes how chickens were made kosher with salt on a board. She recalls that Jews, Germans and Romanians lived together peacefully, and she describes weddings and Sabbath treats for children.

Leichtner says he wrote letters in Yiddish and received some, but none are preserved, and he has not read Yiddish books or newspapers. He recalls singing nigunim at the Sabbath table with his father and brothers. He says he liked all the tunes and cannot name a particular one.

Leichtner describes how his mother koshered meat by soaking and salting it, and how she baked challah and bread at home for the week. He answers questions about grandmothers, Friday-night candle blessing and fasting on the Ninth of Av, when children threw burrs from the garden. He is also asked for Yiddish sayings and some Yiddish greeting phrases.

Freundlich speaks about Jewish weddings, to which only families were invited, and about his non-religious youth. His father did not reproach him, while his mother kept her traditions. He describes working all week and joining a Zionist youth organisation with weekly discussions.

Freundlich describes how his mother baked for a family of seven children: the dough, about six kilograms, was prepared at the end of Sabbath and carried to the baker, and he as a boy carried it there and back. He explains the weekly rhythm of bread, mamaliga and the large challah made on Thursday for Friday night, which the children kept eating; the family had no oven at home. Lemster asks about how challah was baked.

Freundlich describes how his mother salted meat and stuffed geese, and recalls as a boy of ten to twelve carrying the goose's gizzard (?) to the shoykhet and to the rabbi to be checked for kashrut. He then talks about fish dishes, including falshe fish made from goose meat as a Friday-night starter, and the head and jellied fish. Lemster asks for the Romanian terms and prods him to recall a Purim play.

Freundlich describes the poor Maramureș Jews who traveled as guests from town to town and were hosted for the Sabbath, and the way Maramureș Jews were seen. He then answers further questionnaire items, including words for grandmother, potato, flowers, bridge, telephone, and prayer, as well as 'or' and 'but'. At the end, he says he knows Zionist songs and a Yiddish mother's song but is not a singer.

Macarie describes working in a laboratory with medicinal plants after the war. She recalls her childhood up to eighteen in a large, happy family where Yiddish was spoken at home and Romanian learned at school. Asked whether the Yiddish of Maramureș differs from that of Moldova, she says no. She recalls holiday preparations and what her mother taught her in the kitchen: cooking, kneading bread, Sabbath cholent and kugel.

Macarie describes her mother's baking of challah and bread, using a peel and different shapes, and her salting and washing of meat as required by kosher rules. She recalls her mother making gefilte fish and, after Lemster's questions, begins to give the recipe: carp cleaned, skinned and boned, the flesh chopped.

Shwartz sings Lekha Dodi, and Kerler remarks on his voice. He says he never sang before, and Kerler asks about a Hungarian song about the Messiah. Kerler then thanks him and ends the interview.

Answers Kerler's question on the language spoken at home: her parents spoke Yiddish and Hungarian, the children Hungarian and Romanian, and the grandmother Yiddish only. She recalls her grandmother's shock at her using an umbrella on the Sabbath and a sister who smoked. She says she read in Hungarian and Romanian, including Gorky and Dostoevsky from her father's library, and she begins a joke attributed to Sholem Aleichem about a widow's daughter.

Grinberg talks about her good parents and being an only child. She says her father, a pious man, led the prayers, and recalls Sabbath at home. She tells how he founded a prayer house next to their home and brought food to a poor old neighbor. She also talks about the name Borukh being shared by father and husband, and Kerler's Yiddish.

Grinberg tells of a German neighbor girl who attended the Jewish school and wrote Yiddish for her. Lemster and Kerler then ask about her mother's blessings and her own daily prayers. She recites parts of the Sabbath-night prayer, says the modeh ani every morning and the Shema at night, and says she prays for her daughter and for a sick Christian professor.

Cojocaru says she had a Jewish mother who kept the Sabbath and ran the home. After the mother died, the father remarried, and the stepmother treated the children well. She names the stepmother and says her father attended synagogue morning and evening. She recalls the call to the synagogue in Romanian and tells of a local Jew who married a non-Jew and wished for a Jewish burial. She also mentions the large Jewish cemetery.

Marcus recalls that matzo was baked before the rebbe's death, and that the rebbe's remains were taken to Israel. He says he visited the grave at about the age of ten, when many people travelled from the region. He discusses his mother, who blessed the candles every Friday and baked challah at home. He mentions that kosher meat was bought and describes the town's shochet after the war. He had one brother, who is no longer alive and was two years younger.

Salamon describes how she lights Sabbath candles today and says only the blessing. She says her mother knew the old prayer and that she herself was not taught, because of the deportation. She explains why Jews left for Israel, recalls her visit there, including Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and Sukkot, and recalls how Sukkot supplies were once sent from Bucharest. Lemster asks about Christians who spoke Yiddish and about Jews who converted.

Answering Lemster, Kurtsberg describes his mother's Jewish dishes such as jellied fish and goulash from offal, and the drinks at Friday night and Sabbath meals (home-distilled grain brandy). He also answers a question about kosher sausage.

Mehler speaks about her family: a grandfather, named Mendel Weinstock, and a grandmother who lit Sabbath candles and said blessings. She remembers the grandfather as a rich cattle dealer with a big farmyard and exporting animals, and recalls his funeral. She also says she does not speak Hebrew.

Mehler speaks about her mother, who came from Iaşi but went to school in Dorohoi, and about summers there. Jews sat outside their gates on Sabbath and spoke Yiddish. She names her mother's Romanian name as Clara. The talk turns to her daughter's marriage, her husband from Siret, and the German-like Yiddish of the Suceava area and Mihăileni.

Galambos speaks about Sabbath kiddush wine and bread, and the term for the braided loaf, and about burning the challah portion as a commandment. Kerler asks about theater, and about the terms dybbuk and golem. Galambos explains the golem as a figure from the Haggadah.

Weinberger recalls songs learned in cheder, including a verse about Rachel's grave that he sang as a child, and describes how the cheders and teachers varied in learning. The talk turns to folk remedies for the evil eye using coals, to Sabbath rules about milking and electricity, and to opinions on modern religious practice.

Chaimovic chants Lekha Dodi at Kerler's request. Kerler offers to send him a cassette, and he talks about how his brothers took turns leading prayers and how his father immersed in a stream on Sabbath. Kerler and S2 discuss the Slovak and Yiddish words for stream and lake.

Chaimovic recalls being caught and sent to the Sered' camp in 1944, where he saw Germans shoot the Prešov rabbi, named Katz. He names Prešov and another town as places he knew, then recalls Košice as a place with good people who invited the poor to Sabbath meals.

Chaimovic and Kerler discuss the term for a Wirtshaus (inn) in German and Slovak, and a joke figure, Soldier Schweik. Chaimovic then recalls working 32 years (?) in a shop with a hundred twenty employees, where he was the only Jew, and the antisemitism he met. He says he was jailed for two weeks after a false accusation and made Kiddush at home on his release.

The team enter the house and greet Lokteva's sister in Yiddish, and Lokteva shows them around, including the stove. She answers questions about Sabbath cholent and holiday cooking, and then about foods such as gefilte fish, chopped fish and potato pancakes, with some talk of how they were prepared. She says she learned cooking from her mother.

Borukaeva answers questions about the family and prewar religious life: her grandmother died in the ghetto, and she attended a Russian school, not a Yiddish one. She recalls her mother's cooking for Passover, the Purim pastry, her mother's Sabbath prayer and her father's synagogue attendance. She explains that her father and the father of Mulerman were brothers, and that his family lived in Kharkiv. She also mentions the one remaining Jewish woman in Pyshchanka and says she used to sing.

Kazakevich answers Kerler's questions about prewar Lityn but remembers little. Her father went to the one synagogue and she cannot recall whether he wore tefillin. She attended a Ukrainian school and was about fourteen when the Germans came. She recalls the Sabbath baking, played with Jewish children, and cannot recall the mother lighting Sabbath candles or the preparation of fish. Kerler's questions cover Sabbath customs, games and the home.

Zhovtis describes Sabbath in his parents' home: his father went to prayer, his mother blessed the candles. They talk of children's gifts at Hanukkah, fasting on Yom Kippur, and Purim and its sweets, and of the dreidel. He does not recall Shavuot customs, and Tisha b'Av is only vaguely recalled.

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.

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

Skobilitskii describes food before Yom Kippur and the cholent kept in the oven, sealed with clay. He says the family was very poor before the war, with bread and butter and milk in the kitchen for four hungry boys, and herring was cheap. Kerler also asks about smoked fish.

Furman answers Kerler's questions about his mother's cooking. She made gefilte fish, a little sweet, fish and soup, and baked cookies, strudel and challah, and lit candles on Friday. Kerler and Lemster ask what it was filled with and what else she made.

Soyfer and the interviewers discuss Jewish food: fish every Sabbath and a baked stuffed stomach dish, chicken soup, and the scarcity of kosher meat. They add carrot tsimes, Passover dishes, fruit brandies, and the Yiddish word for vodka, with Lemster comparing Moldova.

Asked by Lemster who made the meat kosher, Vainshelboim describes the shoykhet who slaughtered chickens, and the home procedure of salting, resting and washing the meat. He then explains how fish was cleaned, salted and cooked, naming kinds of fish, and how gefilte fish was prepared with ground fish and onion and cooked for a long time. He also describes Sabbath cooking done on Friday, bread dishes with preserves, and what his mother baked and cooked, such as pancakes and potato latkes made with buckwheat flour.

Kerler asks what Soyfer remembers of his childhood home in Berdychiv before the war. He speaks of an old house and street name, whether he can fix the year of Passover 1930, and says he was not invited to Jewish weddings. His father the shoykhet kept the holidays and the Sabbath, and the passage ends with Kerler and others commenting on reading and eyesight.

Vainshelboim states that he served in the air force in Latvia (Daugavpils) for four and a half years. He then worked 25 years at the fifth mill in Berdychiv and five years at a brewery. He says he now bakes rye bread every Friday for the synagogue. He recalls the Jewish baker Yoyne (Yulik) in the postwar period.

Vainshelboim speaks about the postwar period: his pension, a plot of collective-farm land and growing wheat and potatoes, and grinding grain at a small mill. He describes a salad. Kerler asks about a bread called malke's bread, which is not recognised. Vainshelboim lists French rolls and prewar bread prices, says no challah was baked for Sabbath and begins speaking about the Cook's synagogue.

Burmenko answers questions about the food her mother prepared for holidays and the Sabbath: poppy-seed cakes, oven-baked cakes, gefilte fish, stuffed chicken, and challah baked in the oven. Kerler asks her to explain a term. She says she was a careful housewife taught by her mother. Russian side talk about keys and a shop interrupts.

Kerler and Lemster ask Snook about the 'gut vort', the Saturday-night greeting, and about the blessings that began it, starting with the God of Abraham. She remembers only parts and says she has forgotten much. Lemster then asks what the village Jews did for a living.

Kerler and Snook talk about when her son will leave hospital. Lemster asks how she made gefilte fish, and she describes it using carp and chopped fish with pepper but no sugar. Kerler says the team will leave in a day or two. Lemster asks whether she still speaks Yiddish with people in Khust.

Kerler opens with the date and Kozak's address, then she gives personal details: her Yiddish name Sheyndl (Zhenya in her passport), her birth in Bershad and her maiden and married names. She names her parents, Avrom Hershkovich and Blume Shlomovna, and their birth years; her father was a furrier who worked in the villages, and her mother was a homemaker and, after the war, a baker selling bread at the market. She recalls her siblings, a Ukrainian eight-year school, evacuation to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and her return in 1944 to find strangers in their home. She then describes prewar Bershad as a Jewish town, her grandmother the midwife and her grandfather's death after a rescue in the snow, and the town's water-carrier, shoykhet and mohel. Kerler asks about weddings and klezmer musicians, a relative's wedding in Khust (?), Sabbath cholent and challah, fish dishes, latkes, Passover and Sukkot, and the old synagogue. She ends by singing two Yiddish songs, one of passionate love and elopement and one about a poor orphan boy.

Kozak briefly recites a bilingual rhyme (a Yiddish-Russian song) set in Odessa. She answers Kerler's questions about how a kind of pastry (varnitshkes, name uncertain) was made. She then describes her mother's gefilte fish in detail: ground fish with onions, boiled for two hours, with pepper and little sugar, not a sweet version. She also mentions holiday dishes such as horseradish, stuffed fish and kezelekh.

Bershadskaya answers questions about food: how mamaliga is cooked, with milk or cheese, and how her mother made stuffed fish from local fish, and Sabbath meat dishes. Kerler asks about the term for Sabbath bread (challah) and other words.

Gvinter describes his mother and grandmother attending synagogue, with the women sitting upstairs. He recalls Passover bread and Sabbath meat. He then tells of a Soviet-period episode in Bershad' involving a local official who visited and checked on the household after a letter to the authorities about his brother at the front. The details are hard to follow.

Loyf describes Passover customs in Dzegovka: neighbors gathered to bake matzo, and a non-Jewish woman did tasks on Sabbath. She says her mother prepared Sabbath food, and she reconstructs her move to Boryslav in 1953 and marriage in 1956 (dates discussed back and forth). Her husband came from Podkova (?).

Loyf recalls the shoykhet in her town, whom people visited on Fridays, and how her mother koshered meat, though she cannot recall the blessing. She says her mother baked bread in an oven every Friday and worked hard all week, resting only on Sabbath.

Berkovich says that what his mother cooked on Sabbath included fish and a potato soup. He says his parents were very pious. He has a son, born in Berehove and circumcised there by a shochet.

She explains a way her family prepared meat before the Sabbath, with washing, onions and a little vinegar. She gives her date of birth as 16 March 1930, and names her parents Ruvn and Khayke and her grandfathers David and Leyzer. She says her father was a tailor working in an artel who later went blind, and her mother also a tailor; she finished seven classes of a Ukrainian school.

Rakhil answers questions about how holidays were celebrated before the war. Sabbath was a day of rest on which cooking was forbidden. She recalls the Passover seder at the house of her uncle, a rabbi, and the opening of the door for Elijah. The passage includes some confusion between speakers and a Russian-language stretch.

Sofia describes how few Jews live in Bratslav today and that there is no militia or police presence. Asked by Kerler what she remembers of old Bratslav, she says she was born into a drayman's family. Her mother kept the home and lit Sabbath candles, and her grandfather, a melamed, was killed in the pogroms of 1918. The war began when she was twelve, and her father had a wagon with two horses.

Kelmenson recalls her mother's Sabbath food of stuffed fish, soup and challah, and the Passover seder in the attic, where her grandfather asked the questions. She then describes antisemitism in university admission, with her brother and son rejected despite good marks, and says the family worked and lived modestly.

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.

Bielaia remembers the Passover seder led by her father, with a handsome table and matzah. Her mother blessed the Sabbath candles and Bielaia, the youngest child, helped. She mentions the war and her husband's not returning.

Khavin describes the Passover seder in his parents' home before the war: the search for hametz, the foods, the seder plate, and his father's song. He also mentions Purim gifts carried to relatives, Shavuot as a favorite holiday, and the Sabbath songs at home. Kerler asks whether songs were sung for Purim and Hanukkah.

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.

Geinik describes the good life under Romanian rule and the seven classes she attended at a Romanian school. She recalls speaking Yiddish with friends, playing with dolls, her grandparents, her Yiddish name Henye-Sure, and her mother's Sabbath baking and fish. She talks about holidays at home, including Sukkot, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Passover and Shavuot, and the dishes made.

Kleiman describes his father as an honest, pious man who prayed daily, and recalls the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, Passover preparations and food such as gefilte fish, and Purim customs. He remembers going with his father to the rebbe on holidays and the rebbes and dayan of Vadrashkov. He also covers the Jewish centre of the town, trades, reading, visiting theatre troupes, political groups, Hebrew learning and weddings with the chuppah by the house and the badkhn.

Kerler asks about the taste of her mother's gefilte fish. Gimelbrandt says she makes it the same way, with a little sugar, and bakes a Sabbath loaf for the Hesed group. She names the dumpling she calls kezelekh against the Bessarabian name (?), and discusses brandy at kidesh and yortsayt. She then recalls her grandmother's remedy for the evil eye and agrees to give the wording.

Shternberg talks about prewar Yiddish culture and Eliezer Steinberg, a Yiddish writer, though the passage is hard to follow. She describes the Sabbath gatherings at the Hesed today, and the Yiddish theater in Khotyn, where touring artists from Moldova and Romania performed; she mentions a Sidi Tal performance (?). Kerler thanks her at the end.

Shternberg sings a comic song about a bride and groom and a dowry, and Kerler identifies it as coming from a Purim play. The interviewers then try to copy her cassette and discuss it, partly in Russian. She is shown photographs and asked to tell more. Talk about visitors from the Czech Republic and a rabbi is followed by a long stretch of garbled speech. A second voice then sings or recites songs about Jewish life of the past, covering the synagogue, Sabbath, girls and a cottage with smoke, as well as songs about a bird and a boy.

Kerler asks whether her mother made gefilte fish and whether she could read Yiddish books. She repeats that as a child she learned Hebrew from a teacher but forgot it. Questions about whether her mother taught her candle blessing and about the arrival of Soviet rule (1919 (?)) follow. She cannot recall details of her studies in a technical school elsewhere.

Gammer answers questions about prewar Sabbath and holiday food. She mentions challah, fish, noodle kugel, cholent and vinegar meat, and discusses terms for chopped fish and a jellied dish. She recalls Hanukkah latkes and children singing a Simchat Torah rhyme, which she repeats for Lemster to record. There are brief answers on Purim and a Passover memory of her grandfather, the dishes and the four questions, with goose fat for Passover. She says her mother died two weeks before the war, so she has no memories of her blessing the candles.

Srulova answers the interviewers' dialectological questionnaire, giving how she says words and phrases in the Yiddish of Zvil. Items include words for window panes, the colour of the sky, building a house, kissing, cold, fast, near, living, ill and weak, running away from the Germans, an honest or pious person, and the second-person form 'you are right'. They continue with the bed, well, potato, shop, vodka, 'back', cross, Zvil's non-Jewish name, midwife, 'what does he want', attic, wagon, a rich man, and sudden and many guests. In between she talks about food: Passover potato puddings, the Sabbath cholent and braided challah, and the family's poverty. She also recalls a taxin (?) in Zvil where relatives in America sent dollars, and Kerler explains the purpose of the archive.

Weiss recalls going to the Spandorf synagogue with his father on holidays. He answers questions about words for Sabbath and about whom he studied with as a small child: a melamed, plus Hebrew classes from a general Zionist organization. He says Jews mostly spoke Polish, with Yiddish used by older people and in the synagogue. Spandorf, the wealthy chairman of the synagogue, and the prewar mayor Tetlboym (name as heard) are mentioned.

Shekhovich talks about prewar Sambor, which she describes as a Jewish town with one large synagogue and small prayer houses. She recalls her mother's Sabbath fish and her own knowledge of how to prepare it, the Passover seder led by her father, and food made from matzo. She says she cannot remember Purim plays or a prewar wedding. Polish was the language of the town and Yiddish that of the home. She says she remembers few Yiddish songs.

Shekhovich briefly mentions a Yiddish song her husband sang to the children, then answers questions about words such as dybbuk and golem, which she does not know. She talks about attending cheder, her mother's candle blessing and the koshering of meat by soaking and salting, and says her mother baked challah. She describes the lack of Yiddish speakers today, even in the Hesed.

Vertman says his mother was very pious and that his father went along with her. He describes the Sabbath meal kept warm in the closed, sealed oven, and discusses with Kerler the word for the Sabbath stew and the difference between chopped and stuffed fish. Despite the catalogue, the passage does not deal with typesetting.

Vertman describes how his religious mother ran the home, and how the Sabbath food was cooked on Friday and kept in the oven. He and Kerler discuss the stew term and the sweet, unsalted fish, and the difference between chopped and stuffed fish.

Lys says he heads the local Jewish community and gathers Jews in its office for Sabbath and holidays, since no one in town can lead prayer. He recalls his mother's candle blessing, and baking matzo at home with boards and a Russian oven. He begins on Samarkand, where his mother arranged Yiddish lessons from yeshiva students.

Lys speaks of his granddaughter, who studies Hebrew, lights Sabbath candles and visited Israel, and his hope that she will marry a Jewish man. Kerler then asks about prewar holidays. Lys recalls his mother's strict Passover kashrut and Sabbath, and his grandfather, a kohen. He also recalls his father, who read Yiddish and Russian books and Sovetish Heymland, the seder with the four questions in Yiddish, and that he holds a seder himself now.

Asked about Sabbath at home, Geller says his mother observed it but his father did not, and describes what she cooked for Sabbath, such as soup and roast meat. They discuss the term for roast meat and gefilte fish. Geller recalls the Sluch river at Kuzmin, where fish were plentiful, and the mildly sweet taste of his mother's fish, which was eaten with horseradish; he adds that his wife later made good gefilte fish.

Gelman gives his Yiddish name and birth date in 1921 and says he lived in Kam''yanets' until the war. He describes his parents and grandparents, including a maternal grandfather who traded in Kitaygorod (Ketaret), and names his three siblings. He then recalls his childhood: leaving a Jewish school after four grades during the 1933 hunger, selling coal he gathered at the station, and his father's hospitalisation. He tells at length of his Red Army service, from the first bombing in 1941 through hospitals, a long march and tank-unit service, to the advance on Berlin in 1945, and mentions a decoration, work in Germany afterwards, and his later work buying cattle. Kerler's questions then turn to prewar Sabbath and holiday life in a poor household: meat versus challah, the mother's blessings, driving for others on Sabbath, the town's trades, the Jewish street, ritual slaughter, Passover preparation, Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbours, Hanukkah foods and the bathhouse and mikveh. These parts include terminology for shops, trades and foods.

Asked about Jewish holidays in the shtetl, Gaiviker mentions Yom Kippur fasting, Rosh Hashanah and Shavuot. He recalls his father keeping the Sabbath and visiting cantors on holidays. Kerler then proposes a break and a switch to interviewing his wife.

Sonya says her daughter and granddaughter both have Russian husbands, but the granddaughter kept some Sabbath observance and now lives in Israel. Gaiviker adds that people there go to synagogue and a rabbi is paid.

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.

Bivson describes the peaceful, Yiddish-speaking home she grew up in, with a good mother and a father who worked and handed over his earnings, and says this is why she is as she is. She recalls her mother's lighting of Sabbath candles and her own custom of lighting candles for a year after her mother's death. Lemster asks about prayers and songs she knew, and she says she does not remember them. She hopes that Lemster's students will be good people and will know Yiddish, and Lemster thanks her.

At Kerler's request, Vaisblai sings a Sabbath-eve song slowly so the words can be heard, and Kerler asks him to repeat another song. He says he copied songs into a notebook and that rabbis used to enjoy his singing. He says Yiddish is dying because no one knows it, and talks about Israel, its president and Shimon Peres as an artist, and what he sees of Israel on television.

Snook recites the prayer 'God of Abraham' for the end of the Sabbath at Kerler's request, and she remarks on Kerler's colleague as a young man who can write Yiddish. Kerler compares life in America and under the Soviets. They discuss whether the synagogue in Khust stayed open under communism and Sabbath observance. Kerler then asks about Purim performances after the war and Passover songs, and she mentions children noisemaking on Purim.

Zinger is asked what he remembers of prayer; he gives a few opening words of the Sabbath service and recites part of kaddish, which he said for a year for his wife. He then answers Kerler's questions about Purim, saying everyone including the rabbi is drunk nowadays. He recalls children going from house to house with a Purim play and gives a fragment of its rhyme. The passage ends with a short exchange on how "a bissl" was said and a question about Hasidim.

Zinger answers questions about cheder, recalling that the rebbe hit pupils with a small stick, and about the dozen-odd Jewish organizations. He mentions a payment from the rabbi for early prayer that he cannot take up because of illness. Kerler asks about the Bund and Jewish Communists; Zinger says many were communists and that a nephew went to Spain. He recalls Hashomer Hatzair and girls, cannot recall a song about the attic, and speaks briefly in Russian-flavoured chat. Katz asks about Sabbath songs and Zinger starts on a shoykhet.

Answers questions about Smila's synagogues and prayer houses, saying there were six or seven because Jews could not walk far on the Sabbath, and Kerler asks about the sabbath limit (tkhum shabes). He also says there were klezmer musicians, with violin, flute and drum, who played at weddings, and recalls the chuppah, and that the 1930s brought some pressure on religion. Kerler then begins a question about Jewish–non-Jewish relations.

S2 asks what was eaten and cooked in the town, and Smelanskii describes Sabbath food and everyday dishes such as homemade noodles, kasha and potatoes. His father was a shoykhet who slaughtered only fowl. Smelanskii himself learned shehitah, kept his father's knife after his death, and slaughtered for those who came to him. Knife sharpness is discussed, and the transcript is partly garbled.

A second informant answers questions about food at weddings. He explains how a knife was sharpened on a nail, and says every Jewish household made a noodle kugel for the Sabbath. He recalls a Sabbath visit to a synagogue in Israel, where the rabbi sent a kugel to his home. The interviewers thank him and the interview closes with wishes for a reunion.

Braverman recalls poor wandering artists who came to Solkhov in winter, hungry and frozen. Her family took them in for Sabbath meals. She places this in the early 1930s, when her older siblings studied away at technical schools.

Braverman recalls her Hasidic grandfather's household: bringing the lulav and etrog, the prayers she learned as a child, and Passover customs. She discusses Sabbath breads (kuletsh versus challah) and a favorite baked treat (name uncertain). She remembers her mother's heavy baking work, her grandmother preparing the fish head on Fridays, and her father bringing a carp from the villages. The segment ends with Kerler's question about how the fish was made.

Kipnis recalls early childhood with her grandparents in Sloveshne. Her grandfather, a moderately observant man, made her carry his prayer shawl to synagogue on Sabbaths, which embarrassed her as a Pioneer. She also mentions children's games and songs in the courtyard, and begins to speak of her father's centenary in 1996 (?).

Kipnis names foods her grandmother made, such as buckwheat latkes and a Sabbath kugel, and answers a few questions about words such as the grandmother's name, the word for a cross, and for nursing a baby. She is asked whether she recalls certain words, and says her Yiddish was praised as better than that of Polish Jews. The exchange is informal.

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.

Derbaremdiker explains the history of the synagogue. It was founded over a hundred years ago by a wealthy Jew, who built it beneath another building because synagogues could not be built openly, and it was renovated a few years ago. He mentions the yeshiva students who study there, how he travels there, and that he does not travel on the Sabbath. He then moves to the Sunday school, which starts in October.

Kerler asks what 'a good Jew' means; Vider explains that Orthodox Christians from Kosiv, Kolomyya and nearby villages come to him, knock on his window, and ask him to write down their names so that prayers are said for their troubles, such as illness, a failed love or a wedding. They pay him a few rubles, and he uses the money for the Sabbath kiddush after prayers in the synagogue. He tells several stories of such visitors, says he gives no guarantees, and mentions the rabbi who came to the synagogue.

Bileichuk describes the war in his family over his new faith: his mother observes Sunday, he cleans on Thursday for Sabbath, and he makes havdalah and prays alone at a small homemade bima facing Jerusalem, with a compass. He says the Christian Bible is distorted and wants the world to read the Torah. He dates his search to four or five years ago and recalls how a friend's New Testament and the Sabbatarians led him to the Torah. He says nobody may forbid his conversion, compares himself to Abraham, and mentions a woman partner and their wish to have a son. He criticizes conversion in Israel as a matter of money and bribery, and Kerler thanks him at the end.

In the restaurant one man tells a story about a worker who drank in a factory office to get hired and found two drunk directors, and another tells about repairs of the city streets paid by money from Americans from Kolomyya. S3 then tells a story about a Christian woodcutter who is invited to a Jewish Sabbath-eve table, eats the fish and kugel and asks the Jew why he studies the prayer book so much. Kerler comments on the answer.

Katsman names his parents, his father a worker, his mother a pious housewife, and his two brothers Dovid and Leybl. Leybl was a pilot killed in the war; Dovid died after it. Kerler and Katz ask what the town was called in Yiddish. He then describes his grandfather, a melamed who taught four future rabbis, and his grandfather Elye in Chopovychi, who died over a Sabbath reading, aged about eighty.

Katsman talks about his parents' home: the grandfather, who is named, and Sabbath customs, including his mother's gefilte fish and challah. Kerler stops to ask how to say a term and what the dish tasted like, and Katsman answers. He describes the Passover seder and Shavuot dairy food. He recalls sleeping in the family sukkah and sending Purim gifts of food to ten houses as a child. At the end he starts a story about a sanatorium in Kislovodsk.

Skop recalls early childhood: his parents were very observant and not rich. He talks about paying for kosher meat, Sabbath and the holidays, and strangers coming. He loved going to synagogue with his father and was carried there as a small child. He did not attend cheder but a Jewish school.

Asked about his childhood, Ocheretianyi recalls that the synagogue was closed before the war, and that after the war prayer was held in a house bought for the purpose. He describes his father, who was observant: he did not work on the Sabbath, wore a tallit and prayed, kept the holidays and had prayer books, which he later passed on to a friend. Ocheretianyi cannot read Yiddish, though his brothers could.

Kerler asks about a typical day at the Yiddish school. Kislinskaia says the Yiddish school building is now a Russian school, and that the youngest pupils received a warm meal. They discuss the word for synagogue, and she speaks of an observant postwar man and his family who kept the Sabbath. Kerler asks about the word for cemetery (the Jewish one) and the building by it where her grandfather washed the dead, and then asks about dybbuk and golem, which she did not know.

Obodovskii sings and recalls a Yiddish children's song that his uncle used to sing, and says he cannot recall more. They discuss voices and the memory of tunes, and Leiderman remembers her father's songs. He also remembers his grandfather's Yiddish and Hebrew books and her father's death. Leiderman tells of her father's later life in Bershad, where he met an old man, and of Sabbath gatherings there.

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

Kerler asks about clubs, social life and a Friday evening event, and Gershtein recalls going with his father to the synagogue for a Sabbath evening meal and prayers. He says he can read Hebrew prayers from the siddur, and Kerler asks him to read the Modeh ani and the Kiddush blessing.

Kerler asks about Hanukkah: the candles, Hanukkah money and the foods eaten on Hanukkah, especially potato latkes, as well as other holiday foods. He also asks about food before Yom Kippur. The informant answers briefly and often cannot remember.

Nisman describes Yom Kippur in prewar Rezina: the women's section of the synagogue, the pre-fast meal, and her father's challah-breaking. She goes on to the meat dish, to gefilte fish with her own recipe, and to a sweet-and-sour dish, with Kerler asking for the Yiddish word. She says the town stood outside the packed synagogue to hear the shofar, and she begins on Purim at the rebbe's.

Leibel talks about Rivne before the war: a small town, the streets, the large stores and a small bookshop that sold school texts and serial novels read by Jews, and his memory of Friday night. He names his mother Golda and recalls his father as a soldier in the First World War who told stories about Jews freed to attend synagogue on the High Holidays. His grandfathers, a carpenter and a tinsmith, are named. He grew up with two sisters, and his parents and grandparents were born in Rivne. Kerler also notes that his own great-grandfather came from Rivne.

Leibel recalls Jewish life in L'viv or Rivne in childhood: a well in the street, children sledding in winter, and gymnasium uniform caps. He discusses libraries, both the Polish and a Jewish one, and the Yiddish papers his father bought for Sabbath. He explains that he read in Polish at the gymnasium, and that Jewish shops were closed on Sabbath.

Leibel recalls Hoshana Rabbah in his home, with the synagogue attendant bringing the lulav and willow branches, and he answers Kerler's questions about it. They discuss Hanukkah food and his mother's Friday baking of challah in a big oven. They go over the shape of the challah (not braided), and the food eaten on Purim.

Leibel sings the Passover song "Echad Mi Yodea" and then the end of the Seder song about the kid (Chad Gadya), at Kerler's request. Kerler asks about the sense of a word in the song and about Yiddish words for prison, and Leibel answers. He then recalls singing zemirot on Friday night.

Leibel sings a Yiddish drinking song, in which a Jew enters a tavern and a non-Jew gets drunk. Talk of Sabbath challah follows. Kerler asks about a toilet, and a second voice asks whether the cheder was a good one. The rest is largely garbled.

She recalls her childhood in the shtetl, where the family had land, orchards and fields, and describes the Polish police and school, the Catholic church and the four synagogues. She talks about the weekly Friday visit to the bath house and the mikveh. Kerler asks about the synagogue buildings and colour words, and she recalls her mother's blessing over the Sabbath candles. She says she can speak and write Yiddish well after all these years.

She says a teacher, Fishl der Krimer, came to the house to teach her Yiddish and Hebrew for two or three years. She was also taught blessings and prayers, though she says she has forgotten most. She talks about her mother lighting the Sabbath candles, the Friday challah, and her father taking the children to the synagogue. Her mother and grandmothers could not read, and she says the teacher was later killed.

She says all non-Jews in Trokhinbrod understood Yiddish, since Jews outnumbered others, and tells of a Polish man's son who learned Hebrew. She lists Jewish occupations: shoemaker, tailor, miller, tanner, teacher, bakers (the Bas family), butchers. She describes the bathhouse and mikveh as separate buildings, going on Friday before Sabbath, the shoykhet, a Polish policeman and the post office as the only non-Jewish offices, and also mentions balagulas.

Vider and Kerler look at photographs of Fruma's wedding and of the rebbe, and Vider recalls the wedding in the courtyard, with dancing and Yiddish and Hungarian songs. He sings a song and sits with S3 singing along. He mentions his own wedding canopy and a circumcision he knows of, and says circumcisions are performed in Mukacheve today. He shows a book on the Holocaust in Transcarpathia and other volumes, and is asked about a Yiddish term for a non-Jewish church. After a discussion of food words, including challah and berches, he shows a video of a relative who is a musician.

Nayman describes prewar village life: a stone synagogue, work on the land with cows and horses, two or three shoemakers and some tailors, doctors available only in Mukachevo, and a book and religious-goods peddler from Mukachevo. He also covers Zionist and other political groups, non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, and how Jews from different countries spoke. Kerler asks about terms for Hanukkah and Sabbath foods, Hebrew letters, wells, the oven, cemeteries, and the shoykhet, and Nayman recalls foods for Passover, Shavuot and before Yom Kippur.

Pasik describes religious life on the kolkhoz before the war: one synagogue, a rabbi and a ritual slaughterer, the keeping of animals and fowl, and fattening geese. Kerler asks about holiday and Sabbath foods (Hanukkah potato latkes, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Sabbath dishes, carp). She talks about a mother and grandfather blessing candles, and does not remember the morning prayer.

Endelshtein describes his mother's Sabbath food (chicken soup with noodles, challah, chopped liver, peppered gefilte fish with horseradish) and fasting on Yom Kippur. He is asked about Kaddish pronunciation and the synagogue in Mykolayiv. Lemster asks where he was born and discusses Bolgrad's status, the writer Batashansky (?), and then asks about the war.

Tzentziper sings "Lomir zikh iberbetn". Lemster and Kerler then ask about the kolkhoz chairman, who was a Jew, and about other Jewish colonies, including Romanovka (?) and Berezhnovata (?), and Lemster asks the meaning of a colony name. Tzentziper says a shoykhet lived in Dobroye. He also discusses women working at home, making sukkot until the late 1930s, sabbath work in the kolkhoz, and that people left after the war.

Vaynshteyn recalls her childhood in Dzhurin, including Jewish classmates and a mezuzah on the door of the house. Non-Jews speaking Yiddish in Sharhorod are mentioned, and the brothers are discussed, one of them born during the war and the other in Israel. She describes the Sabbath at home, with no heating on Saturday, cooking in the oven on Friday, and her mother baking. Kerler asks the word for challah.

Kenin says he attended cheder until about the age of seven, with a melamed named Simen Ash, and spoke Hebrew well then but later forgot it. He remembers his father reciting the evening Shema and singing Sabbath songs. He is asked about Rosh Hashanah, which he does not recall, and about Sukkot and his grandfather's sukkah. Kenin and a man present ask what the recordings are for, and Kerler explains the project and mentions how the team found him via the Hesed in Chernihiv.

Answers questions about food customs in his childhood: Hanukkah and Purim, fried treats, challah baked on Sabbath (called 'boym bilke'), fish on Sabbath, and terms such as flodn and broth. He also describes salads, bread and raisins. He recalls the small amounts of money, in Romanian lei, that children got on Purim.

Medved talks about gefilte fish, made from pike for the Sabbath, and about how Russians in Odesa also make it. Kerler asks whether sugar was added, and she recalls her mother's cooking in Bershad'. She also describes a fish dish her mother made from her husband's catch, and Kerler asks for a Yiddish word for it.

Vainbrand answers questions about the Sabbath fish his mother made: gefilte fish, cooked in a pot over layers of onion, with potatoes on top. He says he adds no sugar, and Lemster asks about pepper and beets. He still makes it himself and the grandchildren like it. Kerler then asks about the rebbe and the tsadik, but he remembers nothing.

Vainbrand names towns he visited before the war, including Zhytomyr and Ovruch; he passed through Berdychiv once. He names Simchat Torah as his favourite holiday and describes the procession with the Torah scrolls round the bimah in the synagogue. Kerler asks about Sabbath songs at home, and Lemster asks who asked the Four Questions on Passover. Vainbrand, the youngest son, asked them each year at home in Valedniki.

Vainbrand talks about his daughter, who works in New York and has visited him twice, and about his grandchildren in Odesa. Kerler and Lemster ask about faith. He says God exists in his heart and speaks of lighting two Friday-evening candles and reciting the blessing from his prayer book.

Kipervaser describes prewar Berezdiv: everyone had a trade (shoemakers, tailors), people got along and knew each other, and the synagogue was near their home. She remembers a chuppah. Her parents kept a kosher home, and her grandmother lit Sabbath candles. Her husband, also from Berezdiv, went to cheder; they studied together at school. He was called up in 1940, served at the front and ended up in Germany, and learned German. They keep Yiddish books, observe holidays and light memorial candles. Their son speaks Yiddish and knows the holidays.

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 talks about holiday food in his childhood home: Rosh Hashanah, the pre–Yom Kippur meal, Shavuot dairy dishes, and the Sabbath cholent with kugel. The interviewers ask what went into the cholent. He mentions walking to a river for tashlikh and his father bringing a shoykhet from Volednyk. Kerler also asks about Kol Nidre, and Feldman begins to describe the one Jewish family in his village.

Feldman starts the Friday-night Kabbalat Shabbat prayers and says he remembers only a little. He is asked about grace after meals and Sabbath songs (zmires). He says that for about fifteen years there has been no minyan and he has forgotten it. Katz asks which Talmud tractate he studied.

Dialectological questionnaire put by Kerler and Katz. Feldman is asked for the Yiddish for words for animals, birds, body parts, household objects and food, as well as sentences with 'to live', 'to sit' and other verbs. The questions also test grammatical gender and diminutives of table, face, street, house and girl. He also describes what his mother cooked for Sabbath. He was asked Slavic words by the interviewers.

Stotland explains how as a child he ran from the orphanage to his poor aunt and uncle, a tailor with many children, for Sabbath and Passover. They gave him a piece of matzo. Katz moves on to the questions that follow.

Turovskaia talks about holiday observance and food. She did not eat bread on Passover even in Siberia, and she describes her mother's baking and foods for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath. Geese were fattened and their fat rendered for Passover, and matzo was bought in Opshtshina (?). Before the war the family kept their own cow, sold milk to the hospital and neighbors, churned butter, planted potatoes and made wine from currants and cherries.

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.

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

Turovskaia says she blesses candles and recites the blessings and holiday-candle prayers. Kerler asks about morning prayers and a Yiddish prayer after Sabbath. She says she prays in Yiddish, and that at home Yiddish was spoken, while her father knew Hebrew well. She married in 1949 (?).

Turovskaia recalls collecting money from Jewish houses to help people, and talks about holiday food: geese and ducks, challah baked every Friday, and the custom of throwing a piece of dough into the oven. She describes the seder, her father leading it, the kittel her mother sewed, wine, Elijah's cup and the afikoman, and mentions young yeshiva graduates.

Turovskaia talks about her prewar friends in Volednik, including Reyzl and Manya, and says they spoke Yiddish with Jewish friends and Russian or Ukrainian with Christian classmates. She describes her grandfather's family working a plot of land and how non-Jewish neighbors covered the hay when rain came on the Sabbath. Lemster then asks how she knows of her father's three encounters with bandits.

Fish describes the prewar Jewish bathhouse in Rivne, where there was no shower or bathtub room. Before the Sabbath the family heated and carried water for the bathhouse, and he went there with the hired non-Jewish attendant. He also covers the ritual bath and the separate women's section. In summer the children swam in the river and at a lake outside town, where they sunbathed and rested, but nobody bathed in winter.

Litvak describes Sabbath dishes at home: broth with beans, and potatoes with meat cooked in the Jewish oven, with buckwheat kasha. Her mother made gefilte fish, though not every week. Kerler asks how she made it.

Litvak gives a detailed recipe for gefilte fish, learned from her mother: carp, fried onions, matzo, pepper, sugar and salt, with the stuffing put back into the skins and boiled with the fish. Kerler asks about the taste, and she says it should be neither too sweet nor too salty.

Litvak describes her mother's Sabbath dishes: roasts, kasha with meat, and cholent with a stuffed intestine. Kerler asks about the Yiddish terms for these dishes, including the word for cholent and for roast meat.

Litvak describes the kosher butchers' shop by the market in her town before the war. Several men slaughtered all day, and everyone came before the Sabbath. Kerler then turns to his next group of questions, in which he gives Russian sentences to translate.

Shteingart describes the great synagogue of Kovel': women prayed in the gallery, the cantor stood at the lectern and cantors such as Kusevitzky visited. Kerler asks about his bar mitzvah, and the talk then turns to children's games and to cholent as a Sabbath dish.

Kerler discusses how Kovel' was pronounced in Yiddish and asks Shteingart to recite kiddush as it was said in the past. Shteingart recites a short fragment. Kerler asks whether he sang at the table before kiddush and whether he remembers the tune. Kerler then asks about the old holidays at his parents' home.

Answers Kerler's questions on her mother's gefilte fish for the Sabbath. She gives the ingredients, in part in Russian, including pepper, salt, garlic and a little sugar. She recalls how her mother taught her to knead bread and bake cakes, cookies and other baked goods.

She did not light Sabbath candles, since she had no opportunity: she worked on Sabbaths and holidays. She still says that a holiday is a holiday. Her mother baked with matzo meal for Passover, and her grandfather Alter used to say that whatever they are, they are Jews.

Describes her grandfather as a 'sheyner yid', a pious and observant Jew who would not take money on the Sabbath. She and the other children visited on the Sabbath, where her grandmother gave them treats, and childhood was happy. Kerler asks whether Friday-night songs were sung.

Shvartzbroit describes her family's life before the war: her father's sewing workshop with two non-Jewish servants, and her mother's weekly Sabbath help for old people whose wealthy relatives had been deported to Siberia by the Soviets. She also recalls taking in homeless people and giving her house for poor couples' weddings, and she mentions grandchildren in Germany and America.

Shvartzbroit names her father Kalmen and her paternal grandfather (Tsalik), and says her grandfather the rabbi played the violin. Her grandmother Etl kept a shop, and she herself is named after her. Another grandfather was a ritual slaughterer, and the family numbered about four hundred. Her father had a sewing workshop for fine garments. Kerler asks about a women's Sabbath headdress (shterntikhl), which she does not recognise, and she describes the Sabbath headscarf and the sealing of the cholent oven with clay.

Shvartzbroit says her mother worked with her father in the sewing workshop, which sent goods to Moscow and Leningrad until the late 1920s and 1930s. Her mother did not teach her to bless, lit Friday candles and worked on non-Jewish holidays. She lists the Jewish holidays and retells the story of Esther and Mordecai, offering Kerler a booklet. She says she had one sister and that both parents' fates and her sister's killing in Pechora are told here. She describes her father's death from an illness.

Vaisman says there was a ghetto in Sharhorod and recounts his sister's belief that Ukrainians helped the Jews. He names a Ukrainian woman, Ksenia Vasilovna Loyanich (spelling uncertain), who brought his family food and whom he wants recognised. He says he does not remember the war, and that the Romanians did not kill Jews in Sharhorod but brought their own Jews, thousands of whom starved and were buried in the local cemetery. He tells a Hershele Ostropolyer story about a poor guest at a Sabbath meal. He recalls the Passover seder, with his mother's matzo bagels and kugels and the bakery that needed official permission to bake matzo, and also Hanukkah, Purim and the Ninth of Av. Katz and Kerler ask many dialect questions on bird names (a dove, a small bird), the colour of the sky, words for ugly face, back, house, 'almost', Lithuanian Jews and converts to Christianity, the town as shtetl, and the word for life. Vaisman also recounts the case of a local Jewish man who converted. In the last part the daughter shows an album of Jewish childhood friends who spoke Yiddish and have mostly emigrated to Israel, America and Moscow. The talk turns to Yiddish and Jewish life in America and Israel, Vaisman's brother in Israel, and his father's relatives, who were killed during the war.

Kleiner says that prayer in prewar Soviet times was hidden: windows were covered and someone kept watch for the militia. She mentions the ritual slaughterers (Khayim and Nesi), a mohel, and the observance of all holidays and the Sabbath, including the cholent put into the oven on Friday, and Kerler asks about the word for it.

Kleiner answers questions on Sabbath, going to synagogue with his father, and the Sabbath and Sunday school days. He speaks about bar mitzvah, and Passover customs: removing and burning leaven and kashering. Kerler asks about holiday songs, and about Purim and Hanukkah. The terms for the river and for 'tehom' are asked. He says the Torah scrolls of Shepetivka were hidden and returned after liberation.

Kerler asks the meaning of several words (a non-Jewish holiday, the cemetery, 'good place'), and about the sukkah in Yampil', and the house where the family lived. Kleiner recalls his older brother Nute, a learned young man who died. He remembers Sabbath songs and kiddush. Kleiner then sings the memorial prayer for those killed, with a few words about Yampil', Lyakhovtsy and Karnitsa. Kerler praises it.

Liberzon recalls the old Sabbath before the revolution: the shamash warning against carrying, the fence round the town, and young people picking berries in the forest. A forest owner knew Yiddish and Hebrew. She says she was a representative for a holiday (?).

Liberzon says drinking brandy was forbidden in her father's synagogue after the war, though Jews gathered at the house on Sabbath for kugel; her father avoided drink apart from an occasional measure. Kerler brings up the Purim commandment to drink.

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

Kipervaser recalls a non-Jewish woman who came to light the Sabbath lamp, and what her mother said at the end of the Sabbath. Kerler asks about a prayer to the God of Abraham. She mentions men who worked in shops and prayed for a livelihood, but says her father did not.

Klein explains why the Yiddish schools were closed, then speaks about the Yiddish press she read, her mother's piety (candle blessing until death), and Sabbath cooking such as cholent and gefilte fish. She says there was a rabbi's absence today but a synagogue and Hesed, and that the shoykhet died years ago. She notes that her parents were both from villages, Hrybenynka and Sakhnovtsy.

Klein describes Olt-Konstantin as a Jewish town with a fortress and castle of the Ostrogski family. She recalls weddings she attended as a child, including customs involving the bride and a cake and the 'malke's broyt'. She also speaks about her mother lighting Sabbath candles until her death, going to the shoykhet, and her Yad Vashem testimony.

Klein describes how she prepares gefilte fish, which she learned from watching her mother, and says she adds no sugar. Other dishes come up, including borscht (with Russian explanation), pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, and noodle dough for Passover. Kerler also asks for the Yiddish word for tomato; Klein says it was not used and gives Russian/Ukrainian forms.

Bivson talks about Jewish religious life before the war. She mentions the shoykhet, kapores, several synagogues, a large synagogue with a poorhouse, a rabbi and a minyan, and women attending. She describes Sabbath preparation and kosher meat. She also recalls building the sukkah with neighbors' help and sleeping in it.

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

Tartinets, answering questions in Russian/Ukrainian, tells how Jews in her village were taken away on carts and how she ran barefoot after the cart with her friends. She names the family of a Jewish ironmonger (Haskl, ?) and friends such as Rivka and Hana. She recalls playing with Jewish children, lighting the stove for them on Sabbath, and praying with them; she speaks of her injuries and how she was a worker at a poultry plant after the war. Kerler asks whether the Jewish children spoke Yiddish with her.

Kerler puts questionnaire items to Tartinets, such as the Yiddish for body parts, Passover matzo and hametz, and beets cooked in the war; she answers partly in Yiddish and partly in Russian. She is asked about Sabbath food such as cholent, kugel and challah. She then returns to the wartime work on beets and maize, being sent from her village, and says she raised two children alone. Kerler asks whether she knows a Yiddish song.

Yakuta says her parents' house was taken apart after the war. Kerler asks her mother's gefilte fish recipe, and Yakuta describes boning, chopping, onion, pepper and matzo meal. They discuss sweet versus peppery fish, and the horseradish served with it. She then talks about borscht cooked in clay pots, meat cutlets, and kinds of kasha. The second woman asks about beans in soup.

Marinina describes how she makes gefilte fish: fish stuffing with onion, egg and pepper, boiled for two hours, with only a little sugar. Her daughter makes it a non-Jewish way, and she compares other ways of making it. She then explains the Passover seder in her parents' home, with her father reading from the Haggadah and not being religious. Her grandfather and his brothers emigrated to America in 1924 (?).

Palatnikova explains how she makes gefilte fish: skinning the fish, mincing with onions, eggs and matzo meal or crackers, and cooking it for hours. She contrasts her way with how non-Jews make fish cutlets. She also talks about her mother's holiday cooking for Hanukkah, Purim (poppy-seed hamantashen) and Passover, and about latkes and potato dishes. Kerler asks about the Yiddish names for these foods.

Liza Petrunenko joins and gives her name and Yiddish name. The talk covers her parents and grandfather, and the family's work in the kolkhoz. Reznik and Petrunenko recall prayer in private houses, the many prayer houses of the town, and Sabbath and Passover customs. Reznik names her siblings and recalls childhood games. They discuss non-Jews who spoke Yiddish before the war and today, and Reznik shows the old mezuzahs on doors and windows and her old house.

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

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

Formal interview with Sapozhnik, who says she is a native of Tomashpol' and speaks Yiddish with her brother in Israel. She talks about her parents Nusn and Rukhl and the kolkhoz, her siblings, the old synagogue and how women prayed, her father's siddur and her poor childhood. She recalls the war, with her brothers drafted and the killings and ghettos under Germans and Romanians. She also mentions the town's remaining Yiddish speakers, and answers Kerler's questions on Yiddish words and on fish, melay and Passover food. Katz adds a general question about the best years.

Interview with Dora Guzman, who is welcomed into her flat. Katz states the date as 28 June 2005 and asks about her earliest memories. She was born in Tomashpol', attended the Yiddish school up to the fourth class and then Ukrainian school in Pishchanka, where she stayed with her mother's brother. She names her father Benyamin/Bentsion Abramovich, who worked in the clothing trade, was pious and prayed in one of the three synagogues, and her mother Sara, from the Odessa region. Katz also asks about Yiddish songs, the rabbi, Passover seder, Purim pastries, Hanukkah, the Sabbath and fish dishes.

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

Gingold is greeted at her door, and Kerler explains the university project. She says she is alone, her parents and brother having died, with two cousins in Israel. She gives her names, birth year, and her father's and mother's names and occupations. She also names her grandparents. She attended three years of Yiddish school before moving to a Russian one, and says she never worked and has a small pension. She recalls Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot and Purim customs, and the Tomashpol' ghetto. The interviewers then put questionnaire items: greetings, kosher salting, foods, and Russian words rendered into Yiddish such as 'spasibo', 'mouse' and 'poceluj'.

Futiran gives his Yiddish name and age, and says he was born in Tomashpol' and comes from a long line of local people. He names his father, a coachman (balegole), and his mother, an orphan from Tomashpol', and says there were six children. Two brothers were killed at the front in 1944, and other brothers are named. Futiran says he later learned the hatmaker's trade from Jewish masters, and he worked for decades as a hatmaker. He mentions two marriages, the second to a non-Jewish woman, and two sons in Moscow and Israel. He recalls a poor childhood, four years in a Yiddish school before a Ukrainian one opened, and a Jewish library. He also recalls Yiddish songs, klezmer music, Jewish weddings with a huppah, and visiting Yiddish artists. He speaks of hunger in 1933, evacuation and work during the war, and eight synagogues in the town. Kerler and Lemster ask about coachmen's stories and songs, and the father's song is mentioned. The passage ends in his workshop with a Singer sewing machine and hats the visitors try on.

The interview with Guzman begins with her name, birth in Tomashpol' and her family: her father Bentsion, a shop worker beaten by the gendarmerie, her mother, and her brother. She recalls Yiddish and Ukrainian schooling, prewar holidays (Purim, Passover, Sukkot), food, the synagogues and the shoykhet, weddings and the library. She describes the ghetto, where non-Jewish villagers brought food, and forced labour in the fields. She mentions the famine and her stay with an aunt and uncle, as well as work after the war, photographs, relatives in Odessa, America and Israel, and Tul'chyn. Roughly the last quarter is word elicitation: greetings, colours, adverbs, 'pigeon', 'ear' and other items, which Guzman answers with difficulty.

Shveibish describes how the Joint and the Vinnytsya Hesed support the poor and camp survivors with parcels, medicine, firewood and coal, and pay people to clean and cook for the elderly. They repair the homes of the lonely, and children from a large family are sent to a summer camp near Pechera. She tells of Sabbath and holiday gatherings in the community's office, with children singing and tea and a simple table. She says the office is in the Potocki house and offers to show it. Kerler asks where the office is.

Asked about Jewish holidays she remembers, Shveibish recalls that her grandfather Yekhiel was a trader and that there were ten synagogues in Tul'chyn, none of which remains. Candles were blessed, Sabbath and Passover were kept, and food was kosher; today there is no shoykhet. She speaks of the community's modest help for the sick and poor, and of paying for burials of lonely people. Kerler asks what is meant by erecting a memorial, and he also asks about her father, whom people called Nyune.

Shveibish tells about her husband Itsik's family from Horyshkivka. His father came from Tul'chyn after the pogroms, he was a craftsman, and there were six children. She describes the Romanian-era ghetto in the village club, a sister who was shot at and traumatised, the siblings who emigrated or have died, and the parents' graves in Tomashpil. She talks about Horyshkivka as the model for Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish theatre troupe in which her husband's father acted, and pogroms in Tul'chyn and Khmelnytskyi's time. She then describes Jewish life in Tul'chyn today (the community's difficulties, no shoykhet, no minyan, a memorial, aged pensioners), and Jewish food and holiday customs, with a recipe for gefilte fish. The passage includes dialectological questions on words such as store, courtyard, well, potato dishes, thanks and please, and idioms.

Kerler asks a few questionnaire items, including the word for street, and Presler answers. She then shows the team her oven, naming its parts, explains cholent and cooking inside it, and says children warmed themselves on top. Kerler asks about Yiddish and Russian words for stove, kitchen and porch.

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.

Kerler asks whether people prayed after the war. The speakers describe prayer in private homes, hiding from the authorities, and a coachman or horse-driver named Avrom (?) who was hired to lead the prayers. They discuss when this took place, in the 1950s (?), and the weekly Sabbath minyan.

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

Motl, with Efim, explains how gefilte fish was made, from skinning and chopping the fish to stuffing the skin and cooking it with sauce, and discusses whether it was sweet or peppery. They also describe fish cooked in layers with beets, and also sweet meat dishes made with jam or sour salt. Kerler asks for Yiddish names for potato latkes, rugelach-like pastries with raisins and nuts, honey cake and kamishl, and for the braided breads kuletsh and challah baked for Sabbath. Some Russian and Ukrainian terms are named.

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.

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.

Waldman recalls that before the war Uman' had three Yiddish schools, and her mother's youngest brother was a school director. After the war Jews gathered in private homes because there was no synagogue, and Yiddish theater and drama circles existed. She tells of a woman who recalled a Yiddish play, apparently Goldfaden's Kolduniye, and of Sabbath eve as it was in her own home. She also mentions a Jewish cultural center that brought together Yiddish and Hebrew literature.

Katz recalls his grandparents and his childhood home: there was no washing machine and the work was hard. His mother could read on Sabbath from the tsene rene, while girls did not go to cheder and only boys did. The passage ends with a first attempt to find the tsene rene, which is heard partly garbled.

After 1936, Jews prayed in private homes and asked that the authorities not know. Liudmila recalls her mother gathering women on holidays and reading to them in Yiddish from a prayer book, and being sent out when they wept. The couple name the Jewish holidays, then recall matzo baking in the war years, with Liudmila's mother ill, and communal baking by several families after the sale of machine matzo stopped.

Katz asks about Hanukkah; Chirkova says people must prepare, pray and help the poor, and that there was no dreidel spinning. She recalls hemp work from earlier times, and describes preparing Sabbath food in the oven, a stew kept closed until guests arrived.

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 how her mother baked challah and bread in an oven at home and kept the Sabbath as required. A stretch of apparent laughter and joking follows.

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

Sobol says she has two sons and grandchildren. One son lives in Mohyliv, and the eldest lives in Belarus. One grandson is in America. She says she lights Sabbath candles and prays to God in a mix of Yiddish and other languages for health and a good week.

Tsodikovich answers Lemster's questions about Kopayhorod food customs, such as stuffed geese and cracklings, and says some things were not done in his family. He remembers his grandparents as very religious, with his grandfather praying morning and evening. They then discuss the town's tailors, barbers and shoemakers. Tsodikovich and Lemster try to recall local musicians and singers, a father and sons who played accordion and guitar, and Yiddish periodicals read in town.

Khazin sings a Russian song, then, at Lemster's request for more Yiddish songs, sings a Yiddish Sabbath song. Lemster asks whether he knows others, and he says he knows no more. He then remarks that in prewar Vinnytsya Jewish mothers boasted that their children did not understand Yiddish.

Asked about food at home, Yatskova names chicken broth, potatoes and other ordinary Jewish dishes, and for the Sabbath stuffed fish. She says she cannot translate the terms into Yiddish. Kerler suggests she come back with a translator, and she asks the visitors where they are from.

Opens briefly on holiday customs, with Kerler asking about Tisha b'Av. Poberevskii then talks about poor but gifted classmates, many of whom were killed in the war, and about her own studies in Kalinin. She says her father the rabbi did not take her or her mother to shul, and describes her brothers, one of whom studied Talmud and became a lawyer. She also answers questions about the meaning of 'a good Jew' and about her mother's brother. The rest is largely a dialectological questionnaire put by Kerler, with Katz commenting. Items include words for the cross and for converting or baptising (the difference between 'geshmad' and baptising a child), candle-blessing and Friday preparations, 'evening' and 'ear', and 'attic' and 'potatoes'. Further items cover latkes, foods for Shavuot and Hanukkah, Hanukkah games such as the dreidel, and household words. She also answers on kinship terms such as 'mekhutn', on rabbi/rebbe/rov terms and on 'almost' and 'exactly'. She says she hardly speaks Yiddish any more and describes seven years of Yiddish schooling. She speaks of severe poverty in her childhood home: her mother had eleven children and sold yeast at the market, with no pension even though three sons were in the army, and the house was cold in winter. She also says there is no rabbi or functioning synagogue in Zhmerynka now and that about 300 Jews live there.

Kerler interviews Goikhman, who gives his name and birth in Pervomaysk on 1 January 1927. He tells of the 1933 hunger, his father's move to Birobidzhan, Russian schooling, factory work and mobilisation to Blagoveshchensk, and his mother's death in 1947. He came to Zhmerynka in October 1947 to his father's brother. He then recalls Pervomaysk as a large town with many Jews, synagogues drawing visiting cantors, and Yiddish-speaking Jewish and non-Jewish friends. He also recalls Sabbath, his mother's gefilte fish with sugar and pepper, Hanukkah gifts, latkes and Purim foods, and the Zhmerynka shul on Sovetskaya Street, later a children's library.

Lebvol recalls Purim customs, children's masks and the reading of the megillah by her father, and then Hanukkah and the dreidel. She sings fragments of a Hanukkah song and of "Afn pripetshik", and recalls Sabbath songs sung at her father's table.

Opens with talk of a Jewish newspaper from Israel and a Yiddish paper in America, and of sending letters abroad. Geller says his mother taught him a little Yiddish reading and writing while he went to a Ukrainian school. Kerler asks about his mother and puts a few word questions. Geller also mentions the Sabbath kiddush and havdalah and the rabbis in town.

Geller recalls going to the bathhouse with his grandfather on Friday before the Sabbath, the Uman bathhouse, and going afterward to the synagogue and making kiddush. He also mentions the women's mikveh. Kerler asks where the word for the bathhouse comes from and how people say "thank you".

Antsis recalls the three synagogues of Lyubar, and a bathhouse with a mikveh. Her mother learned to pray from her own father, and Antsis recalls her reading aloud at Yom Kippur while the women wept around her. She remembers learning the Modeh ani prayer, her mother blessing the Sabbath candles, and being taken to kheyder for a few months at about three or four years old, led by a helper (a belfer). She also remembers her father working and Sabbath observance.

Antsis answers questions about Sabbath food in her parents' home, including kugel with a stuffing (a so-called mamzer), kishke, and fresh carp. She remembers her mother preparing gefilte fish, though she says she herself has not made it for a long time.

Asked about Yiddish writers and theater, Antsis says the family read Sholem Aleichem, and that on Sabbath neighbors gathered while her mother read aloud and people laughed. She recalls a Sholem Aleichem story about a poor wedding and a rich one. Young people put on plays at her grandfather's house, and the grandfather traded goods from Berdychiv. A gramophone in the house frightened her.

Skobilitskii shows the house on Kachenivka street where he lived and his younger brothers were born. It belonged to a rich man whose family name sounds like Krupnik (?), and tenants paid him rent. He remembers sledding in winter, and describes the large synagogue that stood nearby, with a mikveh and bath fed by the river. He mentions friends from Berdychiv now in Haifa and Netanya, the mostly Jewish surroundings, and walking to synagogue on Shabbat.

Geller recalls Sabbath in Pyatka. He discusses terms for tidying up and for taking the candles off the table, and a child's memory of carrying his grandfather's tallit and a neighbour's request on Shabbat. He also tells an anecdote about forgetfulness after a wedding held in a restaurant. Kerler asks about local words for these things.

Food customs and dialectological questions with the woman from Zvil. They cover the word for potato, her grandmother's honey cake used with the kiddush wine, gefilte fish and its sweetness, and Passover dishes made from matzo meal. Word questions follow: grandmother (bobeshke), a ladder, and a thing the transcript renders as tsulem (unclear).

Shraibman talks about religion in the family: the grandmothers were very pious, while his grandfather kept holidays but smoked on Sabbath. He tells how during the Civil War an armed band (Budyonny's men?) nearly shot his grandmother. Katz and Kerler then greet someone arriving and mention their song collecting.

A woman sings Yiddish songs about luck and happiness, and a Sabbath-eve song recalling a grandmother and a grandfather at the Friday-night table. Kerler and Katz ask whether she knows Hatikvah. She recalls that Hatikvah was sung in Poland before the war. She sings a Polish school song about passing youth, a song about the Messiah, and a lullaby-like song about longing for home and mother.

Answering Kerler's questions on holiday food, she names hamantaschen and pancakes. She says her mother made gefilte fish with raisins, and recalls her father going to synagogue on Sabbath and her mother on Rosh Hashanah.

Lemster describes a wedding custom of bringing a cake to the in-laws, who dance with it and pay money. Geller talks about weddings and about the advertising value of serving good food, giving a strudel recipe from his mother and a story about gefilte fish and taste. Lemster and Kerler ask about words heard elsewhere for the cake and about the "queen's bread" (challah) and Sabbath as a queen.

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 says that on Sabbath he carried his grandfather's tallis and tefillin to the synagogue as a child, and that he can read prayers only in a Russian-language siddur. Kerler mentions that he has copied the prayer in Hebrew letters from his dictation, and Nibulskiy offers to give his Toronto relatives' address.

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.

Nibulskaia discusses her mother's cooking: sweet-and-sour meat for Sabbath, with onions, sour and sweet flavoring, and no tomato; fried and ground gefilte fish, carp, and kugel. She did not attend cheder. She says her daughter in Kyiv lights Sabbath candles every Friday, while she herself does so only sometimes.

Nibulskiy recalls going to his grandmother for Hanukkah money, carried through the mud on a youth's shoulders. He speaks of the three small synagogues, attended daily only by the rabbi and the old believers, and of carrying his grandfather's prayer shawl to the Sabbath service. His father wanted him to learn some Yiddish, but there was no cheder in the Soviet period, and he recalls the older cheder.

Nibulskiy recalls songs of the cheder and a song his mother sang, about farewell to the sweet flowers and vanished years. Kerler asks where he knows it from and has him repeat the words. He then begins to speak of his grandfather's Sabbath hospitality.

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.

Shraibman describes how the family prepared gefilte fish. It was made from pike, since carp came into use only later, was slightly sweet and peppered, and was cooked for four hours or more. Kerler remarks on the sweetness as a Galician or Polish trait and turns the conversation to the military school.

Sandler talks about food and home life. His mother was a capable housewife with eight children, and meat was affordable only once a week, for the Sabbath. He lists breakfast foods such as kasha, rice, tea and rolls. Kerler asks whether he spoke Yiddish after the war.

Nibulskiy explains how cholent was made for the Sabbath, including its ingredients (potatoes, herring, etc.). The oven door was sealed with clay so the food stayed warm till the Sabbath. Kerler asks about the sealing.

Kerler asks about Yiddish poets and prose, including a work 'By the Dnieper' whose author is unclear in the transcript. Nibulskiy says he reads Yiddish periodicals every day at 83 and keeps tefillin. He recalls carrying his tailor grandfather's prayer shawl to the tailors' synagogue every Sabbath, and the few kopecks and sweets he earned. He remembers poverty, carrying Hanukkah gifts, and a childish prank in his grandfather's workshop that frightened the tailors. Kerler then asks which stories he still wants to tell.

Answers Kerler's questions about prewar food. Nibulskiy recalls poppy-seed rolls that his grandmother baked for the Sabbath and ate with milk, and a plum tsimes sprinkled with sugar. He explains that 'tsimes' was also a compliment for a nice, clever girl or woman.

Kerler asks about a word for floor and the wooden sidewalks on which people strolled on the Sabbath after cholent. Nibulskiy recalls non-Jewish neighbors who greeted Jews in Yiddish, including a woman, Marye Tchaikovsky, who always spoke Yiddish. Russian talk in the room ends the passage.

Mester says she remembers almost nothing of the prayers, though she recalls a blessing and that people said "Shabes". She remembers the Four Questions and the Passover seder led by her father and recites a Yiddish version. She also recalls how her mother said a prayer and how her father made kiddush on Friday night. She then mentions a Yiddish song about children in America, which she half-remembers.