Cultural terminology

Kerler asks about the regional term for Jews from the Carpathians and about the term used in Debrecen. Rezmovits answers with a Hungarian-language stretch, then describes the Máramaros origin of such Jews. He then talks about meeting a woman at an Israeli university who invited him in, how he read Yiddish books there, and how he studied Aramaic for a year to understand prayer.

Rezmovit tells stories his mother told about Froim the merciful, a trickster figure. In one he eats at a Jewish inn and escapes without paying by tying the landlady's eyes. In another he steals from a Catholic priest by getting the dogs drunk. Kerler asks about the word for the rising agent used in baking. Rezmovit then recalls his mother's patience and wisdom, and how in the deportation wagon she and other Jewish women dealt with pork fat packed in a bundle.

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

Rezmovits answers questions about Hungarian Yiddish speech, the vowel in 'Eloheinu' as pronounced by Polish and Hungarian Jews, and greetings such as good day and good year. He speaks of reading Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish only after the war, at a seminar, and of reading aloud in the Yiddish club in Budapest. He mentions Jews from Satmar and from the Budapest district where he lives.

Galambos answers Kerler's questions about his mother's Sabbath and holiday clothing: a white kerchief on the High Holidays and another cloth head covering on ordinary Sabbaths, whose name is unclear. He then speaks of the large unheated synagogue and the beit midrash in winter, and the seasons when services were held. Kerler ends by asking him to sing.

Smajovics recalls his grandmother's charity in giving shelter and food to the poor, and tells of a man who remembered her. He talks about a loan he and his wife made, collecting money, and Kerler asks about Yiddish and Hebrew terms for money and for non-Jews and a few other words. He describes the Miami building full of Jews where Carpathian relatives gather at Passover. He also recalls the expulsion from Spain, and visits to Israel.

Smajovics describes how cheder boys earned a little money before Passover by working at the communal matzo baking, as water, flour or wheel workers. He mentions matzo for poor large families and a communal collector. A word for secret deliveries of food is discussed, as is a term for a healer or miracle-worker.

Smajovics briefly says that he has not taken part in the Sabbath-end gatherings since the war, and Kerler asks about holiday songs and Hanukkah songs. He then sings a Yiddish song about a son and his mother's worries over money and love, in which the girl has a rich suitor. Kerler has him repeat the song line by line, and they discuss an unknown word in it, glossed as 'critique' or 'send away' (?). A second woman joins in the song.

Smajovics sings a Yiddish song about a couple on a stroll who talk about marriage, in which the man declines the proposal after the woman's teasing. Kerler has him repeat the text line by line and asks about words like 'speculate' and 'mock', and the second woman helps with the lines. He then sings the whole song through again.

Smajovics says he sang with his friends on Sabbath afternoons, learned Hungarian songs from his Hungarian master without knowing the words, and remembers little of them. He describes Purim in the village: baking 'kindlekh' with honey (a dough with honey cut into pieces), Purim plays by children and older boys, and collecting money for the poor with a sack. Kerler asks about words for these customs.

Smajovics speaks about Hanukkah doughnuts (pontshkes) both before the war in his village and in Israel, where he bought them at a bakery in Jerusalem. He says that latkes were not made in his village and that potatoes were called krumpirn there, with other words discussed for them.

Smajovics answers questions about the word for attic and for a bridge, and describes Passover food (matzo with milk, dumplings, kugel), before saying that a woman in a restaurant recognised him as a Carpathian Jew by his Yiddish for the seder. He says that few Yiddish speakers remain in the area and that his daughters can understand but do not speak it. He says that he taught his grandson in America bar mitzvah, and that the grandson is now religious and 31 and unmarried.

Smajovics answers a question about the word for 'sick' and then describes his time in Budapest, where before the war he worked for nine months in 1942 (?) and lodged with an old Carpathian Jew who spoke Yiddish. He says that he settled in Budapest in 1978, with his daughter having come earlier, that the move was difficult, and that he met a friend from cheder again.

Smajovics answers dialectological questions from Kerler. They cover greetings and replies, polite phrases (please, thank you, 'be so good'), expressions for luck or bad luck, and the words for house and for belly.

Smajovics answers dialectological questionnaire items put by Kerler. They cover words for foods and household objects (porridge, mouse, windowpane, wall), colours, adverbs of time and degree, sentences to translate, religious terms, parts of the body, kinship words and forms like 'this/that'. He also gives the words for apostasy and for a wealthy man, the comparative forms, and numerals. He says which words he knows from his town and which only from other speakers, Poles, Russians or Hungarians.

Kerler asks Herbst for the Yiddish expression for 'to meet' or 'come together'. Herbst gives forms of 'tsunemen' and 'trefn zikh', and Kerler notes that his own speech says 'tsam-'.

Gotlieb says she spoke Yiddish as a child and learned Hungarian in school, with some German. She mentions many Jewish children around her and that some non-Jewish children also knew Yiddish. She remembers her mother as clever and helpful, then describes the Sabbath food: soup, meat, compote and the baked Sabbath stew (cholent). She also talks about fish dishes and the difference between Hasidic and other tastes.

Gotlieb describes how her mother koshered meat by soaking and salting, removing the neck and checking the liver, and roasting it over a fire. Kerler asks whether any words were said while salting. She says her family bought bread on Sabbath, only taking challah when it was baked, and Kerler asks for her word for Sabbath bread.

Gotlieb says stories were told at Sabbath gatherings but she recalls none. Kerler asks about words such as dybbuk and golem and then about Hanukkah food; she names meat and soup and, with some difficulty, fried dough foods. She tries to give a recipe for flódni, partly in Hungarian, and Kerler discusses strudel and poppy-seed flodn.

Gotlieb describes the family sukkah with paper cut-outs and decorations, where her father slept. She says she knew of no non-Jews converting to Judaism, and of Jews who converted to Christianity she says her mother considered them worse than a cat or dog. She recalls non-Jewish servants who spoke Yiddish, including one who worked for a rabbi, and then answers Kerler's questions about Hebrew-derived words used to prevent non-Jews understanding.

Answering Kerler's questions, Gotlieb lists Jewish trades in town, including baker, shoemaker and carpenter. She discusses the words for the Sabbath bread (barkhes, challah, kalach) and for potatoes. She says there was no regular theatre, only children's plays at school and at Purim.

Gotlieb recalls prewar Jewish weddings as beautiful, with singing but no instruments among the Orthodox and men and women separate; she says the rebbe danced a mitzvah dance with his followers. She describes sermons in the synagogue given in Yiddish or Hungarian and Hasidic life of study and singing. The passage ends with a discussion of the difference between rov and rebbe and their plurals, with Neolog and Orthodox rabbis.

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.

Rezmovits talks about prewar Debrecen and his Jewish community, including an episode of his mother and the ritual slaughterer. He describes his mother's humor and patience, and how she managed six children while his father was in forced labor. The family lived in a long courtyard on a street in Debrecen. He and Kerler discuss the word for a snack (a Hungarian-Yiddish word, "yaznt").

Rezmovits recalls poverty in childhood: bread spread with lard and paprika as a snack. He describes his father's attitude toward self-important people in the community, and the nickname "karpn-kop" (carp head) his father used for them. He and Kerler compare the fish word in Hungarian and in other Yiddish dialects.

Rezmovits and Kerler discuss who ate the carp's head with gefilte fish and how customs differed regionally. They then turn to Yiddish dialects: Hungarian-born speakers in Debrecen, the Carpathian region near Beregszász, Munkács and Nyíregyháza, and Budapest speakers' pronunciation. He recalls being annoyed by a Budapest pronunciation of a holiday name.

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

Rezmovits and Kerler discuss Yiddish words with Hungarian and Slavic elements, such as the word for a notebook, a word for brandy and 'flask', and their etymology. Rezmovits then mentions an earlier interview by a woman who came from Israel and sent him a video cassette, and Kerler suggests ways to view it. He ends with a story of a Romanian-Jewish woman who asked where his family came from (Sighet).

Kerler asks about a local Yiddish word for 'together' and about a term connected with bundles of beans (?). Rezmovits confirms the first as used in Debrecen and discusses the second; he then says he has songs he heard from his mother.

Herbst answers questions on what Yiddish speakers called forest workers and peasants, and on how the word 'goy' was used. He then describes childhood games, including sledding and a ball game with homemade equipment. He recalls how one big loaf of bread, baked by his mother, had to last a week, and what he took to work. He mentions wild berries and fruit picked in the woods. Towards the end Herbst turns to his plot in the cemetery and the stone on which he wrote his ancestors' names. Kerler discusses function words such as 'oder' and 'ober' and mentions a scholarship at Bloomington.

Herbst says he worked at the sawmill with Russians, Ukrainians and Romanians and heard no Yiddish there, and that after the war he met few Yiddish speakers outside the hospital. He and Kerler talk about his Yiddish, which resembles that of Hungarian-Jewish Debrecen, and about the words 'Litvak' and 'pani' (thief) as Yiddish usage. Kerler asks about photographs, and Herbst describes postwar friends, including musicians, a pianist he met in hospital, and professors. He mentions a painter friend (name unclear, perhaps Anton Revis) who painted his parents.

Deutsch describes himself as a teacher of Torah to children, following the weekly portion. He discusses Hebrew pronunciation in different Hungarian regions, naming Ungvár, Mezőkövesd(?), Munkács and Budapest, and compares how a holiday is named in each place. Kerler's questions about the Sukkot term prompt part of the discussion.

Pearl says his family spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. His father, a shopkeeper, was born in Tállya in 1883 and his father's family came from Sighet. His grandfather and great-grandfather are named, and Pearl says he was named for his mother's father and has a son Shlomo in Syracuse. Because of the antisemitic laws of 1938 shops had to close, and the family kept animals and raised rabbits for wool. He sold the wool and fur goods, which his mother and sister made, in Budapest. Kerler and S2 try to find the Yiddish word for rabbit. Pearl gives his mother as Berta Rosenberg, born in Tállya, says he visits the family graves each year and describes how the Jewish community sold the synagogue, mikveh and rabbi's house.

Pearl describes the mikveh in Tállya: a spring with water from the hillside, heated with an iron vessel and wood. He answers Kerler's terminology questions about it and says the pious men went there daily and that it was fully heated on Fridays. He names Rabbi Mordechai Rosenberg and three young men, Teitelbaum and Markovitsh among them, who went with him to Dachau on the march and were shot. Pearl also speaks of the death march at Bor and says he can show the photographs from the book.

Pearl names his father's sister, who died in Auschwitz, and then answers questions about strong drinks. His family made its own kosher wine, enough for Sabbath, holidays and Passover, and he explains the custom of buying grapes and pressing them. He then discusses brandy at services and at Passover, and Kerler asks the Yiddish word for it.

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

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

Doman says that in Hungarian Yiddish the dreidel was called a trendele and describes it as having four sides. Kerler asks about a comic parody for Passover and Doman recalls something similar. Kerler then goes back to Moscow and the Jewish holidays there.

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

Gotlieb names the dreidel as the Hanukkah game of her childhood (in the form 'trendele'). Kerler looks at a booklet about the Yismach Moshe, and Gotlieb mentions her son, who died at forty-eight. The name of her hometown is garbled, and Kerler asks what she remembers of it and its childhood years.

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 answers questions about holiday food: Passover dishes such as potato dishes, matzo-meal dumplings and eggs, and wine, with an expensive wine for some. For Hanukkah they ate soup and meat and latkes made from potatoes, not sweet. For celebrations they ate simple pastries with nuts, poppy seed and apple, and Kerler asks for a song her mother or grandmother sang.

Asked what was done on Sukkot, Gotlieb lists baked goods: kolach, strudel with chocolate, cabbage or poppy seed, and a pastry with jam, some named in Hungarian. Kerler and S2 help with the terms. Gotlieb then says she cannot think what more to say.

Blobshteyn lists his siblings and their names and fates: seven children in the family, five of whom came home, two died in Auschwitz. Besides Feige (alive in America) there are brothers Wolf (Willy, died in America) and Naftali (died in Israel), and a sister Tsipre, who died in Mukacheve. The youngest brother was Berl, and another brother's Yiddish name he cannot recall. Kerler and Blobshteyn also discuss his own Hungarian and Hebrew names and double names.

Blobshteyn compares postwar and present-day religious life (difficulty of getting a minyan) with the prewar cheder in Mukacheve, taught by a melamed named Fridman, with daily cheder and school hours and Hanukkah and Passover customs at cheder. Kerler asks about the languages of schooling; Blobshteyn says he attended a Russian school. Terms for the non-Jewish Christmas and New Year are also discussed.

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

Blobshteyn and Kerler discuss the old Jewish cemetery in Mukacheve, whose gravestones were destroyed or stolen after the war. Blobshteyn says the rebbe spoke only Yiddish and had a friendship with Czech president Masaryk. He tells of non-Jews who preferred to go to a rabbi (and not a non-Jewish authority) to settle disputes. The terms for a hasidic tsadik and an honest Jew are also discussed.

Blobshteyn says he rarely left Mukacheve as a young man, but went by train or bus for football matches, to Uzhhorod and Berehove (Beregszász). Kerler and he discuss bus fares, kreuzers and the Czech crown, and Kerler asks about the Yiddish of Jews from smaller places who came to Mukacheve.

Blobshteyn discusses Jews in surrounding villages (including the paternal village Siltse). His mother baked bread and cake for Sabbath and made plum pastries on Friday; the family ate meat in the week thanks to the father's trade and their own hens and cows. Kerler asks about dairy food, sour cream (smeyte), fish and herring, and Blobshteyn describes live carp from tanks and gefilte pike, and a Friday fish seller.

Blobshteyn explains the name of a bread, apparently of Hungarian origin, and a dish eaten with it, with milk or fried onion, as food of the poor. Kerler asks about Hanukkah foods, and Blobshteyn names fried doughnut-like pancakes with jam, calling them by a name he says is Hungarian and Russian rather than Yiddish. They discuss whether the word has a k or a g. He says that turkey was eaten only at Purim.

Blobshteyn explains wedding customs: rich families held the wedding on Sunday, with a separate table for the poor and a jester (badkhn, 'gramer'). Two Roma musicians played at the chuppah. He then describes preparing for Passover: sewing and cleaning, making beet borscht in a large barrel, the matzo baking and cooking, and eggs. He mentions egg dishes, pickles and the Yiddish word for them.

Blobshteyn lists Sabbath foods, such as cholent with stuffed stomach kugel, and explains where cholent was kept at the baker's. He describes the Jewish street where he lived and typical foods, including fish, cholent, kugel, a dish called refenik (?) and plain dumplings. He tells how the religious tutor ate with his family on certain days of the week, and discusses brandy and a Passover drink called slivovitz and its kashrut. He mentions wine at Passover.

Smajovics answers questions about Hanukkah and Purim food. He says fried doughnuts were not a Hanukkah custom at home, though his mother baked at home, and he first met them on arrival in Israel in the 1980s. He talks about latkes and Passover foods. For Purim he describes baked shalakhmones sent to the poor and acquaintances, and children's pastries. He mentions a man named Leizerovich, born in Erdőd (?) in Transylvania, who still lives in Budapest.

Smajovics sings two Yiddish love songs. In the first a young man leaves home for his girlfriend; the second is about a couple walking and quarrelling. Kerler asks him to sing slowly and then asks about the meanings of words such as 'sakurn' and 'freiles'. He asks for further songs, about the Messiah and Passover, which Smajovics does not know.

Smajovics sings an ironic Yiddish song about being a good Hasidic follower, once sung by older boys before the war, when Hashomer Hatzair pioneers were already active in Transcarpathia. He also sings a song about where a girl slept and what she covered herself with. Kerler asks about the Hungarian words used, such as 'paplan' and 'abrik', and they discuss featherbed and hayloft terms.

Smajovics recites and half-sings a song of the kind a wedding jester (marshalik/gramer) would perform, a rhymed address to the guests. He remembers only parts of it. Kerler asks about the terms for the jester, and Smajovics says the word used in Sevlush.

Herbst speaks about weddings and food customs before the war, recalling his sister's wedding with a fiddler. He describes dishes such as bundlekh (a dumpling-like dish) and the simple meals eaten when he worked in the forest. Kerler asks about the word takan (?), which Herbst explains as a flour dish.

Herbst describes a visit to the Bronx in America, where he was pressed to lead the morning service in a synagogue. Kerler then asks about Yiddish words and expressions, such as the Russian-derived word for 'right away', the meaning of 'apakn' and related words, and the word for 'now'. Herbst then answers questions about his family in America and Israel, and about a friend who became a rabbi. Kerler asks about a song on the coming of the Messiah.

Reti recalls that the village's non-Jews could speak Yiddish and that only about twenty Jewish families lived in Rohod, mostly with many children. He mentions his brothers, all learned, and his father as a Kosoner hasid whose home hosted the rebbe, including the divan the rebbe slept on. He says that he later travelled to Debrecen to have psalms said for the rebbe's memory. He talks about his brother Shloyme Yoysef, who is now seriously ill, and answers Kerler's terminology questions about a word for non-Jews and a word for a Torah scroll. He recalls the Torah scrolls of the village being made into shoes.

Reti begins a Passover song and does not recall "Khad gadyo" being sung. He says that as the youngest he asked the four questions, and discusses Passover customs: his father's hasidic avoidance of stuffed goose, avoidance of matzo flour in dishes, krimpl (?) dumplings, and the matzo baked under special supervision. The "mitzve matzos" baked on the eve of Passover were given to the poor or the community.

Kerler asks for a story about a rebbe or wonder-worker; Reti recalls none. He recites again part of the Purim Yosef play, then Kerler asks about weddings. Reti says there was a feast and music after the chuppah, played by Gypsy musicians ("shkhorim"). He says the word "klezmer" was not used in his village, only "muzik".

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

Reti 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.

Asked about visits before the war, Reti names nearby towns, including Kisvárda, a Hasidic town; he says it now has a minyan only on Friday night and Sabbath and that Yiddish speakers have died. Kerler then asks about baked sweets and other foods: Reti names cheese-filled pastries (delkerlekh) and cheese or cocoa pastries, then Passover and Hanukkah dishes made from potato, and does not know several terms Kerler asks about. Kerler also asks about tomatoes, apples, mushrooms and the word dybbuk, none of which Reti recognises.

Reti sings a Hungarian song about the coming of the messiah, and Kerler asks him to sing it again. Kerler then asks about Purim play-acting and holiday games. Reti says the play-acting was only for Purim and he does not remember any at Hanukkah. He describes a Sukkot nut game and the card games played at Hanukkah, with the children's game using a dreidel (?) and the grown-ups' cards called by a local word. Kerler also asks how a winning turn of the dreidel is named.

After a brief Hungarian aside about a film and talk of a nearby trip, Kerler asks what a 'khazer bokher' was in the yeshiva. Samadi recalls leaving the cheder and studying in a yeshiva in a village whose name is unclear (Tisa Bertsl?) with about twenty-eight boys, alongside a relative. Kerler explains the stages: khazer bokher, shiur geyer, khaver bokher, and what a boy could become afterwards.

Samadi sings a Yiddish potato song he knows from his father, with Sunday-to-Friday potatoes and a potato kugel for Sabbath. Kerler asks him to repeat it slowly to learn the words, and they discuss the Yiddish word for potatoes and a word in the song that Kerler explains. Samadi then tells and sings the song of two brothers, one rich and one poor, and the angel who comes for each of them. Kerler finally asks about a song on the Messiah, and Samadi says he sang that one in Hungarian.

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.

Galambos mentions praying and reciting Kiddush in the small community of Vaja today, which has no rabbi. Kerler and Galambos then discuss the Yiddish names of Hungarian towns, such as Klausenburg for Kolozsvár and a town with a large Jewish community whose name is unclear in the transcript.

Galambos says Vaja's Jews were craftsmen and merchants, with a shochet, a shamash, a gabbai and a rabbi who died in the early 1930s (?). He describes a nearby village with a beautiful synagogue where kosher wine was made. Kerler then asks about Shavuot dairy foods such as cheese pancakes and kreplach, and about goose fat, cholent, kugel, beans and Passover-style dishes, and the two compare Yiddish and Hungarian words for them.

Galambos talks about making kosher Kiddush in the synagogue and about keeping separate Passover dishes in the attic before the war. He describes Passover foods such as stuffed goose, matzo balls and potato kugel, and says that in Vaja the Orthodox did not eat soaked matzo (brak) except on the last day. Kerler then asks him to recite Purim plays again.

Faiershtein answers questionnaire items on words for being ill, sleepy and sick, and on the word for a Jew who converted. She compares which words are Yiddish and which are German-like. She also says she has almost no one to speak Yiddish with today.

Faiershtein talks about her life today as a poet: five books with 1,017 poems, and she explains their Russian titles. She mentions her sons, daughter-in-law and granddaughters, who have Jewish names. She speaks about a local teacher who builds Holocaust memorials, Holocaust denial, relations with non-Jews, and pensions, prices and Hesed help. She also talks about her late husband, a school director in Cupcini.

Faiershtein answers questions about a Yiddish word for "ahead" and a sentence using it, and about the order of words in a sentence. She switches to Russian to say she has had several operations, clinical deaths and strokes, which affect her memory. She offers to read Russian poems, including one about her husband, and Katz blesses her.

Altman answers a long dialectological questionnaire. Kerler gives Russian words and sentences, and she supplies the Yiddish. Items include greetings and replies, the polite 'please' and 'thank you', household words such as house, room, window and wall, body parts, adverbs of time and speed, and sentences with 'also' and 'later'. Kerler notes that her speech is hard to hear. Russian interruptions about water glasses intrude.

Altman talks about postwar religious life, saying that Jews who tried to pray in a house were driven out, with prayer books burned. She then answers a long series of questions about Yiddish vocabulary and usage, including words for honest, pious, Hasid, convert, sick, 'please', street, river, well, bucket, vodka and flowers. In between she comments on non-Jews and prayer and expresses distress at news of violence in Moscow. She says people may speak Yiddish differently from her.

Bukshpun answers questions on Sabbath preparation, saying his mother cooked on Friday and a Christian came to light the candles. Kerler asks about the term for a Shabbes goy, which Bukshpun does not know. He recalls Sabbath food, gefilte fish, the shoykhet in Kurzhevits (?), Jewish tailors, Passover matzo, Sukkot, Purim and fasting. His uncle's tailor shop and its sewing machines are mentioned. He notes the Yiddish was spoken at home and he now has little chance to speak it.

Bukshpun answers dialect questions on words for ill and weak, flee, converts, rose, people and 'the four of us'. He reflects that life was good before the war, with bread and milk, and that after losing his parents at fourteen he suffered hardship. He talks about butter, cheese and goose fat, stuffed ducks and onions, no mamaliga, a Romanian school director, bees and sheep, songs, and his brother's bar mitzvah at the uncle's house, not his own.

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.

Reizman answers a long Yiddish dialect questionnaire from Lemster, who gives Russian words and phrases and asks for the Yiddish. Items include greetings, thanks and requests, household and building words, taste, comparatives and adverbs of time and speed, illness, flowers, trees, body parts, numbers and pronouns of address, and some religious terms. She frequently says she has forgotten the Yiddish and answers partly in Russian, with a second person occasionally prompting her. The passage also touches briefly on her family and on the Germans.

Furman discusses prewar occupations, Jewish organizations and non-Jews who knew Yiddish. He describes learning the hat-making trade from his father and the parts of a cap with ear flaps. He recalls Yiddish entertainment, Hasidim, and travel to see a rebbe, including the Ștefănești rebbe by coachman. He visited the Rîbnița rebbe after the war.

Tsipora recites a wedding verse she remembers, and Lemster asks about other songs. They discuss matchmakers, the writing of betrothal contracts and wedding customs. Then they turn to food terms such as kugel, stuffed dishes, sweet and sour dishes, horseradish and rye bread, and whether Jews drank brandy.

Furman explains how she prepares gefilte fish: the stuffing, the cooking with potatoes, and the care she takes over the skins. She recalls helping her grandmother with this work. She is then asked for a favorite family recipe and describes beef cutlets with the ingredients and quantities. The passage is mostly fish and cutlets rather than tzimmes.

Furman recalls evacuation to the Rostov region and then Kazakhstan, and the return after the war. The family lived four years in her grandmother's house in the village. She and her sister worked for non-Jewish neighbors for pay and food; the family had had eleven hectares before the war, but took only two afterwards. Lemster asks for the Yiddish and Romanian words for vineyard and grapes. She says the father did not return. She also mentions relatives and a pharmacist in Capresti, and that they moved to Bălți in 1949 to her mother's brother, staying three months before buying and extending a small house.

Dialectological questionnaire with the couple, led by Lemster with Russian prompts. The items include greetings, 'please', 'thank you', congratulations and 'good luck', and words such as book, window and house. They also cover sour, cold, deaf, kiss, later, faster, near, believer, cross, peasant and mountain, plus short sentences to translate, such as 'he came today', 'in the beginning' and 'my head hurts'. The two informants often answer in turn, and Lemster checks whether both use the same word; the passage ends on where the couple come from.

Tatyana explains how she prepares gefilte fish, from skinning to grinding the flesh, adding salt, pepper and sweet water, and baking or boiling it; the questions go on to fish skin stuffed with pieces and fish broth. Lemster asks about further details.

Katerberg gives a recipe for flodn (a layered pastry with filling), from walnuts, honey and jam, baked in the oven and cut into pieces. They also discuss what Yiddish called the ingredients.

The Katerbergs discuss the bride's and the groom's guests at weddings and where the groom's guests sat. They say that after the wedding they lived with the wife's parents in Lipcani until 1959, when he left for a kolkhoz.

Katerberg says she spent the war in evacuation with her mother, while her father was in the army. She and Katerberg then talk about the few Jewish families in the village and its tradesmen, including a tailor and a furrier, and the terms for a stream and river. Kerler asks about folktales.

Katerberg gives recipes for kamish bread and esikfleysh, the Jewish meat dish in sweet and sour sauce. She also describes filled goose neck and giblets, stuffed fish, kishke and potato latkes made for Passover. Kerler and Lemster ask which dishes were Jewish and what they were called.

Kerler and Lemster put questionnaire items to the Katerbergs: the words for 'earlier' and 'once', how to say them in Yiddish, and a song for Passover. They also ask about serenades before the wedding canopy.

Kalussky talks about his grandfather, who gave him treats as a child. He answers questions about kishke (stuffed intestine), kugel and potato dishes.

Goldberg answers questions on how her mother prepared gefilte fish, which was salted rather than sweet, and on how she makes it herself, with pepper. They then discuss baked goods, such as Purim shalakhmones sent as gifts and what was put in the pastries.

Roif answers Kerler's questions about prewar weddings in Bessarabia. He stresses that Bessarabian Jews were strictly observant and ate only kosher food at weddings. He talks about wedding music, the master of ceremonies (a kind of guide), matchmakers and their fees, the engagement contract, and the difficulty poor girls had in marrying.

Kerler puts questions on words Roif used, including some Moldovan-influenced words, and on terms for 'tied up' and 'rough', and some dialectological items. Roif says he is not confident speaking Yiddish, and they discuss Yiddish speakers in the area, Ukrainian Jews, the Hebrew and German components of Yiddish, and Ladino. Roif also mentions a Soviet dictionary from Birobidzhan. Lemster joins briefly to say that he and Roif came from neighboring villages.

Roif and Lemster discuss a Jewish girl who converted to Christianity, the Yiddish song about her, and the terms for a convert. Roif says his wife cannot sing it and instead retells it: the mother pleads with her daughter to come home. Kerler then asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, and Roif recalls a Christian servant named Natasha who did. The talk turns to Jews as farm workers and to the humane side of relations with neighbors.

Zelda recalls weddings in Edineț, including Israel's wedding at a house of someone named Luka, and Lemster and Kerler discuss a Romanian and a Russian term for the best man (?). She then tells about a relative in America who studied at a Jewish university, married a Belarusian-born man who is now a rabbi, and went through immigration paperwork. The woman is observant. Kerler adds his own airport baggage-search experience, and Lemster explains a word for the evening search.

Lemster and Kerler ask about words, such as a measure, a coin name and mazl, before the talk turns to Passover before the war: storing and kashering vessels, and an attic chest. Lemster recalls his grandmother dyeing wool to fund his bar mitzvah. Zelda and Lemster then sort out relatives in Edineț, including a sexton and tailor, Abraham Gendelman, Malke, Shlomo and Grisha, some now in Israel.

Roif and Zelda are teased by Lemster about how they met and why she chose him; Roif had served five years in the fleet. They go on to acquaintances and relatives, including people in Israel, a Rîșcani book in Yiddish by someone named Yozik (?) and a relative who left as a halutz in the 1930s. At the end Lemster and Kerler elicit a word of Moldovan origin (written as skapet) for something dropped or lost.

Roif and Lemster talk about Passover food: fattening geese, using goose fat, and potato dishes. Roif recalls his father making basturma and a visiting official who came to his kolkhoz to eat geese and fish. Roif was a kolkhoz chairman for many years. Lemster and Kerler ask how the geese were marinated and smoked, and Kerler asks for the Yiddish term for what is left after rendering fat, with griven and an unclear word offered.

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

Roif and a woman present describe the rooms of houses in their prewar home. Kerler continues the questionnaire with items such as numbers, vodka, tenses, and words for grandmother or midwife. Roif also says he used to visit a monastery or church and explains how Christian worship differs from Jewish prayer. He answers items on the street, lake and river, potato, flowers, and a family of seven.

Shmid answers the Yiddish dialectological questionnaire, with S2 putting items in Russian. Items include greetings such as good day and good evening, 'please', 'thank you', 'luck' and 'house'. Further items are colour, adjective and adverb comparisons, building words, a ladder, honest versus pious, a convert and a peasant, and numbers.

Shmid answers questionnaire items from Kerler and Lemster, with other voices repeating them. The items are sentences to translate and single words: street, road, river, water, shoulder, flower, potato and expressions like 'one and a half years' and 'various things'. They discuss variants such as plural forms and the word for 'mistake'. At the end she is invited to speak freely about her life and mentions her daughter and grandson.

Mester talks about childhood hide-and-seek, which she says was played in Yiddish, and gives the Yiddish name for the game. She names her melamed and says he came from a village near hers whose name is unclear. She recalls Hebrew phrases such as asking permission to go out and the form of address for the teacher. Lemster begins a question about a wedding.

Mester describes Hanukkah in the village: candles made from half a potato with oil and a wick, the father's blessing, and gifts of money. She says her mother could remove the evil eye by an incantation in Moldovan, learned from a Christian woman. She also explains how coals were kept in a covered box and used for a samovar.

Mester answers a few word questions from the questionnaire, then talks about her family. Her father Moyshe was a tailor; he died in Edineț after being taken there from Stolniceni. Her mother kept house for a family of six or seven. A girl in the village sang, and Mester recalls a few words of a song about emigrants to America.

Answers Kerler's questions about his Yiddish school, which is called Vaysman after its director. Instruction was in Yiddish apart from one lesson in Romanian. The school and the talmud torah gave meals, kosher and paid by rich people. He explains the Romanian-derived word for money and its Hebrew equivalent, and cannot recall the poems studied.

Lipovetskiy answers questions about Purim and Hanukkah-time performances, saying he remembers little and mostly saw actors in a theatre. He recalls attending a kindergarten, called by a Romanian name, where Jewish children were fed and played with balls. Kerler elicits the Yiddish and Romanian words for 'ball', and Lipovetskiy says he is unwell. Kerler then asks him to recall prewar life in Chișinău.

Questionnaire session: a Russian prompt is read out for each item and the interviewee gives the Yiddish. Items include greetings, the time from which a greeting may be used, thanks, body parts, house and animal words, adjectives and adverbs with comparatives (cold, high, fast, near), and 'earlier' and 'later'. There are also short sentences to translate (he came today, he knows everything, he fled from the Germans) and words for 'honest' and 'pious'. Katz asks follow-up questions about usage.

Roif answers dialectological questions on everyday words, with Russian prompts and help from a second person. She gives greetings for morning, day and evening, and the words for please, thank you, book and the sense of mazl (luck, or in her usage a mouse).

Roif continues the dialect questionnaire, with Russian prompts from S2 and Katz. Items include 'I have no luck', belly, house, groats, skin, mouse, window, to build, and the stone building, as well as ear, deaf and kiss. Words for mouse and mazl are discussed again.

Roif answers dialectological questions, with a second woman prompting in Russian and Ukrainian-sounding forms and Katz asking in Yiddish. The items cover adverbs and comparatives, words for 'very', 'barely' and 'pious', a Christian and a convert, a farmer, the stairs/ladder and the like. She also gives the word for 'bed', other household words and the numbers. Further items cover 'where are you from?', the midwife, taste, 'on the street', water and the river, the shoulder, potatoes and roses, 'room', 'suddenly' and 'various', plus several sentences to translate. At the end Katz thanks her and invites a message for the archive.

Gordin talks about his years at a mirror factory and explains how mirrors are made. He describes the chemical silvering method and the later vacuum method with electrodes, aluminum and varnish, often in Russian, and Katz asks him to tell it in Yiddish. He mentions that he traveled to factories in other cities.

Kerler puts questionnaire items, with Russian prompts, for Sherman to render in Yiddish: greetings and their times of day, requests and thanks, house, skin, mouse, color, pigeon, hill, tired, poor people, and to have a book. Lemster adds Romanian prompts. Sherman distinguishes Yiddish from learned vocabulary, and mentions reading Sholem Aleichem and Ansky as a child.

Sherman speaks about the Yiddish books and translations he read as a child, including translated American writers such as Jack London. Kerler and a second voice put questions on translated authors and on funeral and condolence formulas. Sherman ends with a joke about a man's death.

Kerler and Lemster continue the dialectological questionnaire: words for being ill, dying, liking and disliking, walking with difficulty, an honest or religious person, cross and Christian, peasant, a headache, bed, threshing and breathing. Sherman translates from Russian and Romanian prompts and says when he does not recall a word from Telenești.

After a question on the word for flowers in Telenești, Sherman describes the hard prewar life of Jewish shopkeepers and traders, who waited a season for peasants to buy. He explains how people went to Chişinău and Iași, with a Christian coachman and horses, to buy goods, and mentions his father traveling this way. Kerler then returns to the questionnaire.

Questionnaire items on grammar and vocabulary: plural forms, such words as such, a ceiling, the floor, window panes, whose, perhaps, a man and woman, and wagons. Sherman also answers on the prewar prayer service, in which the cantor stands at the front, and says people disliked a bad cantor. Lemster asks about the Hanukkah dreidel.

Sherman says there were few wealthy Jews in prewar Telenești, naming one man with a cash register and cashier. The questionnaire continues with words for tailoring, attic and other household items.

Lemster asks about Tisha B'Av, and Sherman recalls children's customs of throwing burs. Kerler then puts more questionnaire items: face, appearance, return, suddenly, various, good head and enemy. Kerler thanks Sherman at the end and asks for a song.

Diner recalls a Jewish schoolmate from the third year of gymnasium who volunteered for the Soviet army in 1941 and died near Smolensk, and says many boys perished. Asked for another song, she says she has forgotten the Yiddish ones. She answers questions about her mother's preparations in winter, such as meat salting and preserves, and says Yiddish is hardly spoken today. Kerler asks about expressions and the discussion moves to local customs and eccentrics.

Diner describes her mother's cooking at home, including baking and mamaliga with various toppings such as sour cream and cheese. Kerler and Lemster discuss the Yiddish word for cheese curd. She then talks about her older sister, who lived in Bucharest, met a man there and married him; the sister was later in a ghetto in Transnistria with her husband and his parents. She also says her father, a Zionist, worked all day and had little time for the children.

Mitlaeva answers Kerler's questions about prewar holiday food at home: Hanukkah gelt, latkes made from buckwheat flour, potato pancakes and Passover dishes such as matzo kugel. They discuss tsimes and its varieties, fruit compote and the plum-based drinks. She says children were not given brandy except for a taste of wine at Passover.

Mitlaeva's sister is expected to visit in summer, and she says her son, a painter, lives in the same flat. The talk turns to the Yiddish and German words for 'artist' and to Yiddish words with two origins. Kerler asks her to speak Yiddish, and she mentions two Yiddish professional schools, her work years and not having studied Russian formally. She also recalls Yiddish words in English and a few Yiddish phrases.

Goldman answers Kerler's Yiddish dialectological questionnaire. The items include words for the rich man and the dead (a blessing for the deceased), man and boy, table, plug/fire extinguishing, vehicle terms (wagon and plural forms), 'on the road' and 'on this road', and everyday phrases and greetings (good day, pleased to meet you). They also cover Hanukkah dreidels, Tisha b'Av and the burrs thrown then, verbs like leave/abandon, ill and sleepy, and 'back'. Further items are room, suddenly, the difference between 'honest' and 'pious', enemy, the cross, plural nouns such as shoykhet and matchmaker, and what to say at different times of day.

Benderskij recalls Passover in the 1990s, when they received three kilos of matzo from the Hesed. Benderskaia then discusses her father and kosher meat, with Kerler asking about meat terms such as brisket. She tells of a stay in Iași, where doctors prescribed non-kosher meat when she was ill as a child.

Kerler asks about Nisporeni's bathhouse and mikveh, about the custom of throwing crumbs into water before the New Year (tashlikh), and about the pond or lake there. The couple and Kerler then discuss the Yiddish words for a pond, a river and a stream. The passage ends with Kerler turning to the subject of evacuation.

The couple discuss prewar drinking customs, saying that Jews did not get drunk, and a mad Jew in town. They go on to trades in the town such as tailors, shoemakers, smiths and harness makers, and winter and summer clothing. Dishes and their names follow (gefilte fish, kishke, potato pancakes, Passover potato dishes), with Kerler and Lemster comparing local terms.

They talk about non-Jews in Nisporeni who spoke Yiddish, some well and others only imitating it. Lemster and Kerler then ask about the song "Tumbalalaika", sung at weddings, and about foods such as mamaliga and lemishke. The passage ends with Kerler remarking on the project.

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.

Dajch answers a long series of dialectological questions, with Lemster and Kerler prompting in Russian and Romanian: greetings, 'please', luck, house and room, colours, deaf, cold, ill and sleep, believer, apostate, peasant, and others. Around 29:40 she talks about Jews in Nisporeni working the land: only one did, and a Jewish field worker is recalled. Further items include 'from where', midwife, 'on this street', river, well, potatoes, flowers, everyone, 'only Jews', attic, hazan's place, rich men, and enemy.

Rotner talks about the synagogue in Chiperceni, a converted house that held about four hundred Jewish residents only partly. She says her father prayed at home and with her grandfather and that she was not taught to pray. She answers questions on terms for common or simple people and on Romanian equivalents, and recalls collecting charity with her sister for a poor family before holidays. Kerler and Lemster also ask about Romanian songs.

Rotner says her father and grandfather read Yiddish books, including Sholem Aleichem, at home, and her father received Romanian newspapers. Rotner says only one grandmother was known to the children, named Pava like her; her maternal grandparents came from Rybnitsa and she never knew them because the border closed. She also answers a question about the term for ancestral graves.

Questionnaire work: Rotner is asked how certain words and phrases are said in Yiddish, including forms of politeness and thanks, luck, and entering the house. Kerler and Lemster prompt with Russian words and she often cannot recall the Yiddish equivalent. She discusses which forms sounded more homey in the village.

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.

Asked for childhood memories, Rojtman says she liked sliding on ice and climbing trees like the boys, and she was afraid of water. She describes a childhood accident with ice and a school winter story. Kerler asks about the name of ice skates, and she describes skates of iron with a strap and recalls playing on the ice. She says she is not afraid of cold now.

Rojtman answers Kerler's dialectological questions: greeting formulas, thanking, the word for 'please', and how Litvaks and Polish or Galician Jews spoke compared with her own Yiddish. Single words are elicited as well: names for a cat or kitten, luck, God, house, a plate or table, and a woman's name (Tobe/Tabl). Toward the end she and Kerler discuss the word 'maver' for a strong or stone wall, and she says another woman in the community would know much Yiddish.

Yaruskaya says she remembers Yiddish songs from childhood, including one about paper children, but not their words. She describes a traditional Jewish wedding before the war outside the synagogue, with candles and fireworks and a fiddler. She mentions the huppah at her son's wedding at home, then answers a question about the term for gefilte fish.

Yaruskaya talks about her visits to America and Israel, preferring Israel and its Sabbath observance. She recalls prewar holidays: Sukkot, with the sukkah and decorations, and Purim, when her father played an instrument. She also describes Yom Kippur fasting at home and going to the water. At the end Kerler asks for the Russian words for water, river and lake.

At Kerler's request Shmid describes how she makes gefilte fish: cleaning, boning and chopping the fish, adding many onions, eggs and matzo meal, with only a little pepper, salt or sugar. She says sweet fish was the custom at weddings. Lemster asks about stuffed derma, which she never made, and about stories of Hershele Ostropolyer, which she has heard of but hardly read.

Shmid recites a spoken charm against the evil eye, in which a woman going to the field meets Elijah the prophet. Kerler has her repeat it, notes the three spittings, and tries to get her to recall who meets Elijah. Others in the room help prompt, and she complains that she forgets with age. Lemster asks about a word and about quenching coals, and she explains the coal-heated iron and how the coals were put out.

Gordin begins his interview. He says his mother died in 1947 and that two of his brothers went to Eretz Yisrael. A cousin and an aunt helped him, and he explains how relatives from Bălți (?) and Florești sent Purim gifts. He recalls carrying Purim gifts as a small child with his father and being given money, then Passover customs: kosher dishes, matzo latkes, potato dishes and poppy-seed latkes. Kerler asks about the name of Purim.

Kerler and Lemster put the AHEYM dialect questionnaire to Leibelman: Russian words and short phrases to translate into Yiddish, among them 'please', 'thank you', 'luck', house and houses, colors, adverbs, numbers, kinship and household words, and the words for honest and pious. Between items she tells a long joke in Yiddish and Russian about a doctor and a policeman, the saying that seven is a lie, and a few anecdotes.

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.

Kerler and Katz run the dialectological questionnaire. Kerler gives items in Russian and Kleyman translates into Yiddish. Items include household objects, animals and body parts, adjectives and adverbs, sentences, numerals and months, and religious and moral terms. Also covered are praying and a convert, rivers and place names, potatoes and flowers, and a few forms of 'we' and 'you'. Katz adds terms for fields and a fence, a face, and the Hebrew-derived words for gehenna and wealthy man.

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.

A long run of dialectological questions follows. Kerler and Lemster ask Shvartzman for words and sentences, including terms for body parts, animals (cat, mouse), colours, the house and its parts, and verbs like to flee, to pray and to cry. They also ask for words for sick and healthy, honest and devout, peasant, river, sea, grandmother, midwife and vodka. A sentence to translate is also posed. Her answers are frequently mixed with Russian and with talk about her stay in Israel, and phone calls interrupt in Russian.

The Shvartzmans answer dialectological questions from the questionnaire. Items include words for 'flowers', 'roses', 'face', 'attic', 'rafter', 'wealthy man', 'wagons', the form of 'whose', 'maybe', 'back', 'enemy' and a few sentences to translate. Kerler and Lemster ask whether the speakers have heard variant forms such as the words for flowers, and there is also talk of the prayer leader at the amud and of buying a seat in the synagogue.

Akkerman answers Kerler's questions from the dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian words and phrases into Yiddish, with Lemster joining in. Items include greetings, thanks, body and animal words, colours, adverbs of place and time, sickness, honesty and piety, church words, and kinship words. She often answers in Russian and says she does not remember or does not know some words. She says that in Edineț one said 'krank' for sick. At about 17:27 she tells how her husband, mobilized in Uzbekistan, became an accountant in a military factory after he impressed the chief accountant with his handwriting. She had worked in the casting shop of the factory. She also remarks on being asked such questions of Jews.

Mundrian talks about her grandmother's life after the war. The grandmother was reluctant to speak of her hardships, but in her last years was respected and lived with Mundrian's family. Lemster asks about the grandparents' wedding, which took place in Susleny with a chuppah. The passage ends with Mundrian giving a term for carrying the bride's dress, which Lemster asked about.

Kigel briefly mentions a Jewish wedding, which had a chuppah but no music. Kerler asks about food terms and baked goods: sweet stew, plum compote, fruit, honey cake, strudel and pastries filled with raisins and almonds. Kigel starts a lullaby about raisins and almonds.

Grinshpun describes evacuation at age five in a Don Cossack settlement and Kazakh area. The family suffered hunger, ate flour found in sacks, lived among Cossacks and described their food. Her father arrived from Stalingrad to Nilovka (?) and took them out as the Germans approached. Her grandfather died on the way.

Kotliar says Jewish weddings in her time were mainly Soviet-style, without a huppah. She recalls a Sukkot sukkah at home and her mother's food, especially stuffed fish, stuffed fowl, and holiday dishes. Lemster and Kerler ask about stuffed fish, stuffed poultry necks and intestines, and the names of dishes. She mentions her mother's baking, borscht and other dishes.

Kotliar answers Kerler's dialect questions, asked in Yiddish, about words for a sleepyhead, a sick person, and falling ill or falling asleep, and repeats a short sentence about speaking with her mother. Kerler thanks her and hopes she will recall a song, and she says her father sang.

Boiarskaia describes how an older Jewish woman in the village cured the evil eye, with coals from the oven and onion peel, and how her husband did something with the onion peel. The interviewers say where they were born (Moscow; Edineţ in Bessarabia) and ask the word for cemetery in Yiddish, Romanian and Russian. She describes her grandfather's grave and says her mother, as a kohenet, did not go to the cemetery. She worries that nobody remembers anything any more.

Boiarskaia describes how her mother prepared cholent: the oven heated on Friday, the dishes sealed in, and the noodle kugel everyone waited for. Lemster asks about Passover dishes such as kezl, malakekh or pletselekh from potatoes, stuffed derma and goose fat, and she names some terms from Bessarabia. She goes on to the braided challah, her mother's chopped fish with matzo meal and onion, and horseradish, beet borscht and its uses on Passover and Shavuot.

Boiarskaia describes how Hanukkah was observed in the village, with a small cut piece of wick or rag lit in oil because there were no candles. Kerler then asks for the Yiddish word for Christmas, which she does not know; the interviewers continue to the next questions.

Boiarskaia first says her father drank little wine in old age, only a little brandy for the Sabbath. Most of the passage is Kerler's questionnaire, in which he gives Russian words and short sentences for her to put into Yiddish. Items include greetings, thanks, house/houses, mouse, belly, colours, adjectives (old, healthy, deaf, mute), time and place adverbs, pronouns, numbers and years, and verbs of speaking, hearing, seeing and coming. Also asked are terms for Christians, convert and field worker, Sabbath-day words, and religious terms such as 'light of paradise' for the dead and cantor and rich man in the synagogue. She says the few Jews in the village lived on good terms with their neighbours, who did not call them 'zhid'. Lemster joins with some suggested forms.

Magetman recalls traditional Jewish weddings she attended with her parents, the last one in 1936. She describes waiting for the bride and groom, the chuppah and the procession, and the klezmer band from Rashkov. She does not remember a badkhn well and does not know the dances Katz asks about.

Magetman says life today is hard, and then answers the dialectological questionnaire, with Russian prompts read out by S2 and help from S3 and Katz. Items include greetings and good wishes, household words, adjectives and adverbs of time and degree, words for illness, believer and pious person, a convert and a non-Jew, peasant, body parts, flowers and potatoes, and sample sentences to translate.

Magetman answers dialectological questionnaire items. These cover sentences to translate and the words for attic, vagon and plural forms, dreydl, 'a good person' and the cantor's lectern. She also gives words for a fence, 'face', suddenly and 'enemy'. Katz repeats items and checks her forms, and S3 prompts in Russian.

Plotnik answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire, with a second voice giving Russian prompts and Katz asking for explanations. The items include words for sick and sleepy, to run away, honest, a believer and a pious person, to convert or apostasize, headache, and 'from where'. Others are bed, oil, small tree, ten, thousand and twenty, street and road, river, potato, flowers (roses), and the sound of speech.

Plotnik sings a short comic song about an ugly, unpleasant girl. Katz then asks about love songs, which she no longer remembers, and puts questionnaire items to her (words for 'to arrange', 'attic', the cantor praying, 'dreidel', 'at that time', 'suddenly', 'back', 'room', and a sentence to translate). S3 prompts her with Russian and Romanian equivalents.

Rolshut answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian prompts into Yiddish, with S2, S3 and Kerler helping. Items include greetings and times of day, "please", "excuse me", wedding congratulations, "mouse", sick versus sleeping, honest, pious, cross and apostates. Further items include a sentence about sitting, "before me", the synagogue, "grandmother" and a sentence on three people arriving. She repeatedly says she has forgotten much Yiddish. She also mentions a convert acquaintance and a relative who married a Russian and converted.

Lemster puts items from the dialectological questionnaire to the Furmans, often prompting in Russian. Items include bed, garden and small tree, vodka, 'in three days they will come', numerals, names for family and relatives, street and river words, parts of the body and clothing, flowers, the shop, a few adverbs and sentence constructions, and a request for proverbs. The Furmans answer in turn; the husband mostly answers and the wife adds corrections.

Mirenburg answers questions about Sabbath in her parents' home: her mother's blessing over the candles, the non-Jewish 'Shabbes goy' who came to heat the stove, and her mother's baking of challah and salting of meat. She recalls her grandfather, who knew Yiddish and Hebrew and acted as a peacemaker. She remembers beginning to fast on Yom Kippur at age nine (and fasting in the camp/ghetto), and recounts a childhood incident when she told her mother that her sister sewed a sack on Sabbath. She then describes the Passover seder led by her grandfather, the afikoman gift, the four questions, and Passover foods such as matzo pancakes, potato cakes and 'Pesach bagels'.

Mirenburg describes religious life in Sguritzy: sending questions to the rabbi about whether meat was kosher, and trips to the Ştefăneşti rebbe (Shtefaneshter rebbe), about which she knows little. She answers questions about terms for a holy man and a holy place and about prayer at graves. She also answers questions about drinking, the blessing 'azgile'(?) and folk remedies for the evil eye.

Mirenburg answers Kerler's short dialect questions: words for 'frozen', 'sick', 'pious' and 'honest', and the phrase 'give me'. She comments on mixing Russian with Yiddish. Kerler thanks her and the formal part ends.

Plotnik attended a Romanian school for six years. The rabbi came to teach there, and she recalls a Yiddish scolding term and a few words for money. Many local Christians spoke Yiddish. She talks about her sisters Yente (Yenta) and Rachel, the latter a half-sister who later left for Israel. Her grandmother in Lublin, a Jewish village near Vertiujeni (?), was shot by a soldier. Her grandfather had two watermills, and her grandparents' marriage was arranged by a matchmaker.

She describes the deportation: being driven through villages and along roads, with the mother and sister taken to forced labor. They were held in a ghetto in a village in the Bershad' area, passed through Yampil, and spent two weeks working in the woods. She recalls hunger, a collective march, sleeping in crowded rooms, and gleaning wheat. Kerler asks the meaning of the word for huts.

Describes prewar Jewish wedding customs as she remembers them from childhood: the breaking of a plate, the huppah, and a ritual of a 'malekhs breytl' (angel's board, ?) and a wedding game with bread after the huppah. Kerler asks about the badkhn, the wedding dances and her mother's songs. She says she cannot recall songs or dances, because of the war years.

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.

Nusbrokh answers Lemster's questions on Yiddish terms for an honest man and for a cross, and says that only two people at the synagogue speak Yiddish today. He says that at home the family spoke Yiddish, not Romanian.

Kerler asks Dunaevskij how various Russian words and phrases are said in Yiddish: greetings, please, thank you, a small mouse, luck, and a few other everyday words including Romanian loanwords. Dunaevskij gives his Yiddish equivalents.

Dunaevskij answers Kerler's dialectological questions in Yiddish. The items include words for a thick-haired person, skin and building a house, and terms for illness and being very sick. They also cover words for devout, honest and believing Jews, and for peasants and non-Jews. Further items are household and garden words (bed, flower bed, room, attic, well, lake and river), numbers and dates, and forms of address such as 'you are right'. He also translates sentences with pronouns, tenses and prepositions, such as 'I see her badly', 'on the street' and 'in three days they will come'. There are also questions on the word for a family of seven, on 'enemy' (shoyne, singular and plural) and on the verb 'to leave'. He often says he does not remember or does not know a word. The session closes with thanks and a farewell blessing.

Klichinskaia names her father Nakhum, a cooper who was born in western Ukraine, and says the town is not clear to her. The talk turns to the Yiddish and Russian word for his trade. Her mother Brane kept house, and there were five children. She names her grandfathers Berl and Gersh and her grandmothers Khaye and Khane, and says her father and grandfather were observant, laying tefillin.

Kerler asks how roses or flowers were said in Bender Yiddish, and the discussion goes back and forth between rozes and blumen. Kerler asks which organizations besides Sidi Tal performed, and she mentions the Jewish sports club Maccabi.

Klichinskaia and Kerler discuss the dialect word for "such" or "such kind of" (a mine / takiye) in the phrase "such eyes". Kerler then asks her to sing again the love song about Sorele and the other songs of the medley, which she does.

Luminskaia describes in detail how she makes gefilte fish as her mother did, with fish cut and chopped with onion, egg and a little sugar, and cooked in the skins for two hours. Her grandfather koshered meat by soaking and salting it. Goldshteyn adds how meat was koshered in his family.

Goldshteyn and Luminskaia answer the dialectological questionnaire, with Lemster often prompting in Russian and Kerler occasionally adding. Items include greetings, thanks and 'please', 'mouse', 'belly', house, window and glass, groats and colors, building and adjectives, and sentences with 'also' and 'everything'. Further items cover time and comparatives, 'to love', 'to flee from the Germans', 'honest', 'cross', 'convert', 'apostate', 'grandmother', headscarf and flowers.

Butorski says his childhood friends were Jewish children and that he was in a Soviet school, not a Yiddish one. He recalls Sabbath at home with candle-lighting and the food his mother cooked, including gefilte fish and chopped herring. He gives her gefilte fish recipe in detail, then speaks of other dishes such as cholent, kugel and kishke, and compares her cooking with his wife's.

Butorski says he cannot remember what his parents told him, and asks Lemster not to press him about the years before 1941. Lemster then asks dialectological questions about words such as the Yiddish for 'winter', 'field' and 'holy place', and about 'cemetery'.

Elizaveta describes Jewish dishes she remembers, including fish, kneydlekh, stuffed items, a sweet dish with nuts, honey and lemon, and Passover dishes. She says she learned gefilte fish after her mother's death and talks about tsimes and beans. Lemster asks about the custom of throwing things at Jewish beards and about converts; she says she does not remember them.

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.

Meir describes Jewish funeral and mourning customs: carrying the body by hand to the cemetery, the washing (tahara), the shrouding, kaddish and the seven days of mourning. He describes the yahrzeit with brandy and cake in the synagogue, and visiting graves. Lemster asks for the terms for the cemetery and what is said at the grave; Meir mentions prayers for health and well-being.

Questionnaire session with Meir, with Lemster asking for Yiddish equivalents of Romanian words and phrases. Items include greetings, thanks and please, colors, building terms, a house and window, adverbs such as early, late, near and far, and some religious-institution words. Also covered: words for the wealthy, a cart, 'whose', and a few sentences to translate. Romanian and Russian are mixed in.

David describes Purim customs in his childhood home, especially the Purim treats his mother made and sent with him to relatives, and discusses the terms for them (shalakhmones, Purim sweets) with Kerler. He recalls bringing Friday food through snow and past dogs to his grandparents for Sabbath. He also mentions Hanukkah money for children and that Yiddish is now less spoken than Romanian.

David answers Kerler's questions about Jewish weddings after the war, klezmer musicians who knew Jewish pieces, and the intellectual level of the Jewish musicians. Lemster asks for Yiddish words for colours and for vodka. David says Jews drank a little wine or brandy with fish, that vodka came from Russians, and that he himself does not drink or smoke.

David answers a long dialectological questionnaire, mostly posed by Lemster with Kerler. The items cover verbs of liking and fleeing, adjectives (sick, honest, simple, tasty, cold), body parts, everyday phrases and greetings (good morning, good day), words for street, shop, bridge, ceiling and attic, comparatives and time words, and prepositional constructions (at my father's, at table). The recording is poor and many answers are unclear.

Finkel says Sulita had a Jewish bath and perhaps a mikveh and was near a river or pond with fish. The interviewers ask for the Yiddish words for the water and the stream, and whether her father fished. They then ask where the Jews of Sulita went afterwards.

Finkel says the Jews of Sulita went to Israel and no one lives there now. She describes visiting the Jewish cemetery about two years earlier with the president of the community and her son. It is fenced with many stones and neglected. She asks who would work there. Lemster asks for the Yiddish word for the fence, and she says her father is in Israel.

Brief says he worked as a dental technician for forty-five years. He says he dislikes Romanian-style dancing at weddings. His father sang well, Russian songs among them, and Brief recalls a Yiddish saying about children. He tells how he avoided drinking in Botoșani and discusses vodka and brandy.

Grinberg recites a Romanian poem and part of its Yiddish version, about a young woman waiting for her husband from the war and a son at his mother's door. She then answers questions on words she used as a code so non-Jews could not understand, naming a few such words.

Cohn answers a question about the word for a windowpane. He then explains he fell in love with his wife and met her in Botoșani. He describes the wedding, with a rhymester-entertainer named Finyele (?) and a badkhn. The musicians were a klezmer band, including some Christians, led by a Jew and playing modern and Yiddish songs.

Cohn answers questions about postwar Jewish life in Botoșani. There were many Jewish doctors, who spoke Romanian and Yiddish at home. He names synagogues, including the High Synagogue, a Passover (?) synagogue and a carpet-makers' synagogue. Kerler then asks about the words 'parves' and similar terms, with an unclear exchange.

Burg speaks about being forgotten after he is gone. He mentions a series about Joseph and says the new generation will not know about Yosef Burg, though his writing is tied to Bukovina and the Carpathians, and mentions an article about him by Mishe Lev. He complains that he can no longer walk or write. Kerler then asks about the word pares for money. Burg knows it from his father and neighbours in Vizhnitsa (?) and thinks it may be Bessarabian but does not know its origin.

Grunfeld says he was born in Zău and attended school in Cluj and Bucharest before the war, and that after the war he settled in Cluj for good. Answering Lemster, he names his father, born in Ileanda (?), a merchant who later lived in Petah Tikva in Israel, and his mother Gitl, a housewife. He names his grandparents — a paternal grandfather who was a tailor, a paternal grandmother Gitl and a maternal grandfather named Rosenberg — and explains why the name Gitl occurs on both sides. A cousin in London is mentioned in connection with a family document, and Lemster and the others discuss the Yiddish term for such a relative.

Grunfeld recalls the Passover seder at home, led by his grandfather, with the four questions asked by the child and his younger sister stealing the afikoman. He answers Lemster's questions about special Passover dishes and utensils, stuffed goose and potato foods, and recites parts of Khad Gadyo. He describes the cup for Elijah and the opened door, and mentions playing with nuts at Sukkot with Jewish and non-Jewish children.

Grunfeld says that in Zău non-Jews did not speak Yiddish but that in Maramureș they did, and recalls a Romanian policeman in Tighina who spoke excellent Yiddish. He describes how Romanian peasant women sat outside the Jewish shops on Friday night waiting to count three stars so that the shops could open, and Lemster asks about the term for the peasants. He also mentions the Sabbath goy who lit the fire.

Grunfeld describes playing dreydl at Hanukkah and recites a children's parody of the letters on the dreydl. Lemster asks about holiday foods, such as baked goods and potato latkes, and Grunfeld gives local terms and explains that Transylvania is called Zimbergn (Siebenbürgen). He begins to speak about Shavuot.

Grunfeld recalls learning a Shavuot poem as a child, then describes Tisha B'Av customs, when worshippers sat on the floor without shoes in the synagogue. He answers a question about a children's custom with a Romanian word. Asked what else he remembers, he says childhood years are the best and speaks of his failing eyesight and difficulty reading prayers.

Grunfeld describes Sabbath eve in his grandparents' home, with a grandfather reminding his wife to light the candles, the fish from the local river, gefilte fish, soup and meat with noodles. He recalls the family singing Sabbath songs at the table and kugel on Sabbath day, and says Yiddish was spoken there although he did not study it in school. He also speaks of Yiddish speakers he met in Israel (?).

Grunfeld names the occupations of the Jews in Zău: timber merchants, a butcher shop, a tailor and a shoemaker, and none in hard manual labor. Lemster asks the term for peasants, and the term for mother tongue. He says Yiddish was his mother tongue until the age of ten and he also knows Romanian and Hungarian, but now speaks only those at home.

Grunfeld answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire, often explaining the Transylvanian variants in comparison with Moldavian and Bessarabian forms. Items include greetings, thanks and the word for Sabbath, animals, household and body words, colours, comparatives, verbs and sentences, the words for 'erlekh' and 'frum', 'tselem', 'goy' and 'davenen', terms such as house, room, attic, ladder, bridge, enemy and 'need' (darf, broykh). Romanian is used for many explanations, and the transcript is garbled throughout.

Opens with a question about the Yiddish word for turkey meat, which Hershkovich says was called 'kurke fleysh' at home. Hershkovich then gives personal information: his name Solomon, his Yiddish name, and his birth on 27 June 1922 in Bogata de Sus. He says he grew up in Dej and discusses the village's name and its two parts (upper and lower).

Hershkovich names his mother Blime and his siblings: sisters Rachel and Sheindl and brothers David and Yisroel, with himself named after his grandfather; he explains his home name and his Torah-call name. He talks about Friday baking of challah and a cheese pastry called dalke (?), and about kolach. He describes his paternal grandfather Chaim Hershkovich, a shopkeeper and landowner in Bogata, who was deported in 1944.

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

Hershkovich tells of a family from America who came about three years earlier to find their roots in his native village, and how he helped them with a translator in finding graves. He recounts the story of the Rozman family and their sons who emigrated. They speak about the term for relatives and Yad Vashem, and Kerler asks whether there were other wedding jesters in the region.

Hershkovich says he studied at the yeshiva until 1938, and explains how he was fed, with daily meals at different homes, and where he lodged, using the word 'kvartir'. Kerler asks about other yeshivas nearby; Hershkovich mentions one with a trade school teaching carpentry between Dej and Cluj, and talks about visiting his sister in Cluj and praying there on the High Holidays.

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.

Hershkovich answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. The items include greetings, requests, words for the cat and mouse, war and battle, teeth, minyan and the well, and prepositions meaning 'at the father's'. They also cover plurals, the Hanukkah dreidel and regional names (the Regat). Further items are Jewish and non-Jewish terms, the word for face, house, room, and several sentences to translate.

Kerler puts dialectological questionnaire items to Hershkovich. They cover particles and adverbs (perhaps, maybe, but, or, also, 'in three days'), phrases for liking a person, a sentence to translate, and words for farmer, illness and war. Hershkovich answers and mentions Maramureș Jews who all spoke Yiddish. Kerler then invites a song or joke.

He answers questions about gefilte fish and its taste, then calls Cluj a beautiful town where he lives and speaks of a street in town. Kerler asks which words he used for war (milkhome, krig, shlakht), and he explains them.

Kraus describes prewar Passover: matzo baked at home from flour milled on stones, soup, meat, kneidlach (?), potato dishes and "ibergetsoygene matsos" coated with eggs and goose fat. He recalls his mother force-feeding geese for the fat, and a Christian who lit the fire for the family on Sabbath, whom he says was called a shabes goy (?) by the Jews in the village. Kerler also asks about turkey and a food term.

Kraus says that Yiddish theater in Bucharest is rare today, and mentions a rabbi from France who visited. He says that before the war there were about seventeen thousand Jews in Cluj, with a number of synagogues and associations, and that Christians there spoke Yiddish. He says he first saw Hasidim at the yeshiva in Cîmpia Turzii. Kerler and Kraus then discuss the word shofer/sofer (the scribe).

Kraus answers questions about Yiddish dialects: he says Yiddish in Maramureș, Bukovina and Iași is much like his own. Questionnaire items follow on food terms (gefilte fish, onion with egg, oysters (?), vinegar meat), the words for the hand, apple, water, milk and money, and for the dreidel; Grunfeld disputes whether the word "tenderl" is from Maramureș.

Answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire on the word for the spinning top (tenderl, drenderl, dreidel, dreiderl) and on the nut game played at Sukkot. Kerler then asks about a comic named Zaldi/Zeldik (?) and the word for 'green'. This leads to a discussion of colour words, red and fair hair, and the surname Grunfeld.

Long dialectological questionnaire session in which Lemster, often prompting with Romanian words, and Kerler ask for Yiddish equivalents. Items include greetings and thanks, small and belly, house and room words, window glass, floor, attic and beam, building and wall, ear and deaf, earlier and later, quick, sick and weak, to run away, pious, reliable, cross and convert, bridge, potatoes, shop and clothes. They also ask for prepositions ('in' or 'on' the street) and for translation sentences such as 'he said to him/her', and compare usage in Maramureș (?) and Moldova.

Kerler and Lemster thank the two men for sharing their Yiddish, and the men say how much they value hearing it. Lemster then asks for sayings; they give drinking toasts and wishes for the sick, including one about a cloudburst. They mention Bessarabian Jews whom the second man knew from the army or work, and he compares words such as pocket (kesene and tash). A woman in the town who also knows Yiddish is mentioned, and the second man begins to recall a Havdalah song learned from Bessarabians.

Talk of a traditional Jewish wedding held in the town a few years earlier, involving a woman with ties to America and a required chuppah. This is followed by an exchange about the word for pouring (anshitn) a little wine and an offer of food. Kerler and the men then discuss a woman from Satu Mare (Satmar), about eighty, who speaks good Yiddish but not English, and the second man gives his business address and telephone. The details of the wedding story are unclear.

Freundlich explains that she learned Yiddish songs from a nanny of Maramureș background in Satu Mare, and a second voice sings a lullaby about longing for a lover. The nanny was illiterate, and the rebbe had said Jewish families should hire orphans. Kerler asks about the word for a nanny and requests more songs.

Hershkovich describes the strict daily schedule of the yeshiva and of a young child's learning, with no free time, and then recalls children's games in Bogata, such as a homemade ball of rags. Kerler asks about the word for it and about the word for money, then begins a question on how holidays were celebrated.

Hershkovich talks about how Passover was prepared at home before the war: bringing down the dishes, scalding, and selling the chametz. Kerler then asks for words for stream or brook in Hungarian, Romanian and Yiddish, and Hershkovich gives a few terms.

Hershkovich answers questions on the kapores custom before Yom Kippur, on food at the meal before the fast, and on Sabbath food, including false fish made of meat, which was eaten on Friday night. He describes a sweet dish made of flour, nuts and honey. Kerler also asks about Purim songs, which Hershkovich recalls only a little.

Hershkovich answers questionnaire items from Kerler: how to say to pour, 'I need something', and 'pour me a little water', and how such expressions were said in Bogata and in Romanian-influenced Yiddish.

Hershkovich names a childhood ball game, which Kerler notes is a Hungarian word for a ball, and describes how it was played. Kerler thanks him for his account and wishes him good health. The interview ends with Kerler's closing remarks, including a reference to a rabbi.

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

Kerler asks 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 describes the seder at home before the war, which lasted until morning, with counting of the omer the next night, and the Passover foods. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for 'to try' (prombirn). The rest of the passage is Hungarian talk about photographs and her grandchildren's musical careers, with Kerler asking to copy them on camera.

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.

Kerler asks about women's prayer. Freundlich explains that women read the techines at home and the tsenerene in Yiddish, and that the techines were in Hebrew with translation. She says that women sat in a women's section at the synagogue and listened to the cantor. She then talks, in Hungarian, about a CD of her radio interview in Hungarian.

Freundlich tells jokes: two Jews and a baker and a tailor, and a competition among forest animals. Kerler asks the Yiddish word for a monument. She says she was at a memorial and a Jewish monument in Dej (?) and visited the site of a mass killing of Jews, and a pilgrimage with a Swiss visitor. The place is partly unclear in the transcript.

Kerler elicits how to say 'pour a glass of wine', after which he asks about older women's remedy against the evil eye. Freundlich explains the cure with bread crumbs or coals counted into a glass of water, with salt and a formula, and the water poured at the door.

Freundlich recalls the census question about mother tongue: nobody answered Yiddish, though some did later, and she could not deny being Jewish. Kerler then asks about a name, Avraham Yankl, which Freundlich says was a Wallachian nobleman. The passage ends with Hungarian talk about visitors from Indiana University.

They talk about the Sabbath goy who lit the stove for religious families. Grunfeld recalls a story told by his grandfather about a visitor and exile. Kerler asks about the meanings of 'erlekh' versus 'frum', words for gypsies and Roma, and the term for lacking money.

Meir says there were many prayer houses in Dorohoi before the war. He married in 1951 a woman from Dorohoi, a tailor, whose parents died after returning from Transnistria. They have two sons, one in Israel and one in Iași. The sons had bar mitzvahs. Kerler asks about Jewish life after the war and Meir gives population figures for Dorohoi before and after. His brothers left for Israel in 1947. Kerler asks about a word meaning 'died', and Meir explains that it is Yiddish.

Chirilau talks about pensions and the hard lives of the poor today. She answers Kerler and Lemster's questions on how Yiddish speakers named Romanian towns and places, such as Rădăuți, Dorohoi, Siret, Hârlău, Botoșani, Iași and Seghet. She also mentions Hungarians and Poles in some of them. The team chats about sending photographs, a daughter who also speaks with the team, and the last Jew in Siret. The interview ends with farewells.

Grimberg answers Kerler's questions about holiday customs, saying she does not recall Hanukkah food but mentions latkes and other Passover dishes of matzo meal and potatoes. She describes her Purim baking today and her mother's custom, and recalls children with masks going from house to house singing greetings. She talks about the Tishah b'Av customs and about visiting graves, and she is asked about postwar Purim celebrations in the 1950s.

Grimberg says she read a booklet of Hershele Ostropoler stories and recalls Yiddish papers and the books kept in each synagogue. The rest is questionnaire work: sentences to translate, Yiddish greetings and wishes, a word about stars, and what Yiddish calls a few other everyday things. She says she did not hear one of the greeting forms Kerler asks about. A question about what is laid on the ground when someone dies leads into the next passage.

Grimberg describes Jewish burial customs: potsherds placed on the dead person's eyes, small sticks in the hands, and earth under the head. She then describes a Jewish wedding: the bride seated and veiled, the chuppah, circling seven times, the breaking of a glass, the shouting of mazel tov and the throwing of sweets. Kerler and Lemster ask about a wedding jester (badkhn) and about the Purim noisemaker. Kerler ends by asking whether she remembers any songs.

Grimberg cannot recall any songs. She says her mother was from Ripiceni and her father from Dorohoi, and that her grandfather was a shoykhet in Ripiceni. She compares Yiddish in Sighet and other Romanian regions with the Dorohoi dialect. She then answers questionnaire items on the expression "a good goy", words for a farmer, breathing, cemetery, buying a plot, running away, being ill versus bedridden, and potatoes.

Lipovici explains how cheese and brinza are made from milk and rennet from lambs, and how Passover milk and cheese were obtained under supervision. Lemster and Kerler ask about foods allowed on Passover (potatoes, cornmeal). They ask whether he ate lamb, and whether Jewish robbers also existed in the area.

Kerler asks Isidor a few dialectological questions, such as how a particular word is said and what a certain thing is called. The answers are mixed with talk about a telephone and arrangements for filming, in which others also speak.

Kerler and Hirsch discuss Jewish cemeteries and what they were called in Luduș (beys-oylem, beys-khayim, or euphemisms such as a 'good place'). They also discuss the sharp decline in the town's Jewish population and the Jewish graves left behind. Kerler then asks whether Hirsch remembers any Yiddish songs from Luduș.

Hirsch talks about food customs around Yom Kippur, especially the large meal on Erev Yom Kippur and the children's fear of eating. Kerler asks about the family's dishes, and they discuss a dough dish and what it was called. The passage ends as Kerler turns to gefilte fish.

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.

Chajim recalls the seder at home before the war, where his father presided and he asked the four questions, and mentions wine and bitter herbs. He tells how he shlogn kapores. Kerler and Lemster then ask whether he knows the words gramer and badkhn at weddings, and he answers uncertainly.

Abramovich says the synagogue was built with money sent by American Jews and later repainted; as a boy he watched the painter at work and was chased away. The painter was a Romanian Jew from elsewhere. Lemster and Kerler then ask Yiddish terms such as pious Jew, honest Jew and serious Jew, and about removing the evil eye with quenched coals and water; Abramovich does not remember the details.

Kerler greets Chajim, who says he is almost a hundred (a few months short). He sets up the interview with talk of his operation and memory, and compares prices and shopping now with long ago. Chajim says he was born in Podu Iloaiei and learns Kerler is from Israel, born in Moscow. He recalls helping a Jewish friend (Shmuel, whose parents were sent to Auschwitz) and mentions a cemetery near Bat Yam; Kerler asks the Yiddish word for cemetery, and Chajim recalls being shut in train wagons.

Grinberg says schools in Romania, perhaps in Bucharest, teach Yiddish to children. She recalls that in the fifth class at her Romanian school there were mother-tongue Yiddish lessons with a teacher called Mara (?), but she learned little because the school had taught her a different Yiddish from the one she spoke at home. She and Kerler compare Yiddish terms for family members and mention the schoolteacher and the community.

Chat in the synagogue about the painted decoration and the painters, a name such as Steigman, and names of fathers and sons, with some dates. Grinberg and Kerler discuss whether the Yiddish word means painter or is a surname, and she refers to texts in Hebrew and English. Some of the content is unclear.

Grinberg points out things that were damaged or removed in the synagogue. She and Kerler discuss the Yiddish word for the little objects, and she mentions a meeting where the area's officials came. Kerler asks about a Star of David that has to be glued back on. She explains that the benches come from another synagogue and carry names of former worshippers.

After the date and his name are confirmed, Finkelshteyn gives his birth date and says he never left Iași. He recalls his childhood and his large family (three sisters and six brothers, whose Jewish names he lists) and his father David, a carpenter born in Pașcani (?) who lived in Iași. His mother was also from Iași. He describes his grandfather Aharon, a stove builder who made tile stoves for wealthy households and ate only kosher food, and Kerler checks the word for the stove with him.

Finkelshteyn describes Sabbath preparations and kosher meat in the family: the Jewish butchers, how his mother salted meat, and the foods she cooked for Sabbath, especially stuffed pike. Kerler elicits terms such as the word for a butcher, for the Danube and for a large river or sea, and the Romanian words for these.

Finkelshteyn describes the Iași market and the trades before the war, many of them Jewish: tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths and builders, including how houses were built. His master was a Jewish carpenter named Moshe. He adds that his own home had no running water, electricity or heating until after the war.

Finkelshteyn answers questions about a custom of throwing coins into the water by the ritual bath, and about the matzo factory and the straw sacks in which matzo was kept for Passover. He talks about foods eaten at Passover, Hanukkah and Shavuot, including potato dishes, dried-fruit compote, fried dumplings and dairy-only meals on Shavuot. He cannot say why Shavuot food is dairy.

Karuel answers questions about Hasidism in Iași: consulting rebbes, a Ștefănești rebbe, and the Hasidic expression for a good Jew. He is asked about other sayings and about Jews from Lithuania, and says he has not heard them. He also answers about Jewish drinking.

Karuel mentions that his son is an engineer in Iași. He then answers questionnaire items on how words were said in Iași Yiddish, such as congratulate, thank you, book, window and tree, with some Romanian interference.

Karuel talks about a meat dish his mother prepared and then answers further questionnaire items on Yiddish vocabulary, such as foods, birds and adverbs. The transcript is garbled and includes Russian and other noise.

Pnina gives her maiden name Albrecht, her father Haim's and mother's names and her brother Baruch, and says her father was a Zionist from Frumușica who taught them Hebrew. She is a pediatrician. When she was in her fourth year at the faculty her father was arrested, and she was expelled from the faculty. Ruti and Iakob explain their Hebrew and Yiddish names (Rukhl-Leye, Yankl Shimshn), the names of their parents and grandparents and the added name Alter. The talk moves to religious and civil weddings and mixed marriages in Israel.

Resh recalls Polish Jewish refugees who arrived in Chernivtsi in 1939, including a lodger in his family's home. In answer to Lemster's questions he discusses the terms Litvak and Galitsianer, the Austrian background of Bukovina and Galicia, and the dialects of Yiddish in Romania, saying that the children and grandchildren in Israel no longer speak mame-loshn.

Resh answers Lemster's questions about weddings: the chuppah, matchmakers and klezmer musicians, which he knows from his childhood, and says he did not know a badkhn. He recites a few lines of a Yiddish song and recalls his mother's lullaby, but says he can hardly remember them.

Resh and Lemster talk about Jewish food and its terms: falshe fish made from meat, potato latkes, mamaliga from cornmeal, kugel, lekekh, flodn with raisins and sweets for Purim, beans with tsimes, Jewish sausages and pastrami, and the names of plums and cucumbers. He says he is no specialist in baking, and kvass was not known in his home.

Resh recalls a Yiddish saying, and a woman says she has one daughter. Lemster then puts the AHEYM questionnaire in Yiddish: greetings, request and thanks formulas, 'mazl tov', words for house, room, apartment, colors and adjectives, pickled cucumbers, body words, short sentences with tenses, comparatives, pronouns and 'barely'. Resh answers with his own forms, often not knowing the form.

Resh answers dialectological questions from Lemster. The items include words for a Christian, a garden, a tree, ten, a thousand and brandy, along with street, river, potato and flower terms. They also include the basement and attic, the word for "suddenly", sentence forms with verbs and pronouns, and the choice between competing variants. S2 and S3 sometimes offer answers, and some prompts are given in Romanian or Russian.

Shtaigman, helped by S2, answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire: greetings and thank-you forms, animal and body words, colors, adjectives and adverbs of time, speed and distance, kinds of illness, verbs of liking and running away, words for non-Jews, and a sentence to translate, with forms heard in Rădăuți. They compare Yiddish and German forms and note that he speaks more Yiddish since working at the community.

Opens with a brief remark that many Jews came from Poland during the war and that the Russians came. Shtaigman then answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire, with some prompts from Lemster. Items include kinship words (grandmother, midwife), shop and store, house and room, attic, hell, a rich man, enemy, face, spectacles, and numerals and measures such as one and a half. He also gives words for ceiling and floor, with some discussion of German versus Yiddish forms. He says which words he knows or has heard and which he has not.

Shvartz answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire: greetings, thanks, wishes at weddings and circumcisions, words for house, rooms and window, building, body parts, adverbs, verbs (come, run away, sleep) and short sentences. Other people in the room often add their own versions, and Shvartz often says he has forgotten or does not know the Yiddish word. The transcript is heavily garbled, with some Romanian asides.

Shvartz tells about two brothers from Bîrlad who converted to Christianity, and about a Christian who converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish bride and had a Jewish wedding. The questionnaire then continues, with words for convert and mountain, verbs, short sentences and numbers.

Shvartz answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire put by Lemster. The items cover kinship and everyday words, such as a word for grandmother, the street, water, the attic, a bridge and a room. They also cover adverbs and verbs such as 'suddenly', 'often', 'back', 'to leave' and 'to use', and a sentence to translate about sitting at the table. Shvartz often gives Romanian or Russian equivalents and says which words were or were not used in his Yiddish. He mentions that only Jews lived on his street and complains of poor eyesight and hearing.

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

Kaizerman talks about kosher butchers, Sabbath morning breakfast with a little wine or brandy, and his mother's healing of the evil eye with water and coals and spoken words. He answers questions about the word for a cemetery and describes going to graves today, asking the dead to pray for the living and for Jewish soldiers. The passage ends with an invitation to eat.

Kaizerman answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire in Yiddish, with some Russian and Romanian. Items include wedding and congratulation phrases, words for 'luck', and everyday words such as 'cold', 'high', 'fast' and 'run'. Others are verbs of sickness and sleep, a cross, a convert, body parts, the attic, the garden and the fence, and words for 'room', 'suddenly' and 'enemy'. Kaizerman often says he does not know the item or asks for it to be repeated.

Chirilau talks about her father, an honest coachman who transported wine for Jewish tavern keepers, and about her mother, who worked the field and garden. She says few Jews worked the land, and names the Regenshtrayf pottery factory, with about sixty workers, and other rich Jewish families. She also mentions a workshop making kerchiefs and the word for them.

Chirilau names the local klezmer musicians, the Nadler brothers, Yoselekazak(?) on accordion and a drummer from Galati, who played in one orchestra at Jewish, Romanian and Ukrainian weddings. She says she will speak better the next day. She then describes the balls held for young Jews and Romanians, and on holidays, with fine clothes.

Chirilau recalls attending the synagogue and being asked to light Sabbath candles for a Jewish woman, and that some Jews were not observant. She lists Jewish foods and answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about how gefilte fish was made, with bread, egg and a little sugar, and meat dumplings of beef. A short exchange about firefighters and the synagogue fire closes the passage.

Chirilau answers questionnaire questions: greetings and farewells used in the street, whether she knows words from Hebrew and the holy language, and the names of holidays. She also says she does not remember a song she is asked about and mentions a grandson who reads English.

Chirilau talks about her grandson, who visited today, and about the songs he sang that she recognised. Kerler explains the researchers' backgrounds and that they work in an international group. She then recalls a Sabbath song sung after services that her mother mentioned, and answers questions about animal terms and about an unfaithful or dishonest woman.

Chirilau answers questions about words for enemy and about the singular and plural of shoykhet. She says the town had two slaughterers, one for poultry and one for cattle, and recalls a Jewish butcher named Moshe Kune (?). She describes matchmakers who arranged remarriages and says Jews and non-Jews lived in the area. She also gives the distance to the border, roughly two kilometres in a straight line, and Kerler promises to come again.

A long questionnaire stretch covers household words (attic, beams, garden, window pane), curses, colours, body parts, kinship and numbers, as well as sentence translations. Chirilau also answers questions about illness, verbs of motion, being pious or honest, a Jew who converted, prayer, the word for grandmother and street versus town. Toward the end she describes a Jewish street and a local pharmacist, Zakhachinski, and his wife, a doctor from Craiova (?).

Chirilau answers questions about foods that Jews cooked: fresh fish for memorial days, and Romanian dishes cooked by Jews, such as polenta and stuffed cabbage in several variants. She discusses terms for the stuffed cabbage in Romanian and Yiddish. She also mentions kosher meat, the slaughterhouse and that Romanians raised pigs but earlier Jews did not eat pork.

Leichtner describes the Sabbath meals of his childhood. His mother was a good housewife, and after the synagogue the family had brandy and cake. The meal included challah, fish with the head for the father, onion with egg and liver, jellied calf's foot, cholent, and compote. The Friday-night meal was fish, chicken soup with noodles and farfel. Lemster compares some dish names with Romanian ones.

Leichtner sings a Sabbath blessing and the interviewers praise his singing. He explains the Yiddish word for potato and gives a recipe for potato kugel, baked Friday in the oven and taken out Saturday. He describes gefilte fish, sweet and sour fish, and brandy, and says wine was not made at home. Then he is asked about Sukkot.

Leichtner recalls fragments of Sabbath table songs (zemirot), then Shavuot food: pastry (kipferlekh) with plum and walnut filling, and delkelekh with sweet cheese or brinze. The interviewers compare these with Romanian and other terms such as palatschinken and ask what the foods were made from. He then describes Purim hamantashen, filled with plum jam.

Leichtner lists winter preparations: pickled cucumbers, preserves, compotes, jams and barrels, and says no sausage was made at home. They killed a lamb or calf and ate meat, and made goose fat, cracklings and liver. He is asked about Romanian songs and mentions that he has a cassette.

Leichtner answers the dialectological questionnaire, with Lemster giving many Romanian prompts. Items include greetings and farewells, wishes, a glass and window panes, adverbs and comparatives, pronouns and number agreement, days counted up to twelve, praying versus monks' devotions, midwife, road and street, household words (storeroom, shop, put in order), and a wartime sentence about beating the enemy. Near the end he explains the Purim-play mask and some Yiddish phrases and curses.

Asked to tell a story or sing, Leichtner instead says he still works a little as a cattle dealer, sending cattle to Cluj (Kolozsvár) and another town (unclear), though business is weak and he has lost money. He then discusses imported meat, eggs and whether they are kosher, and Yiddish terms for the "unslaughtered" or not properly salted.

Freundlich describes his Sighet-area Yiddish and the differences in pronouncing prayers compared with Hasidic and Hungarian Jews. Lemster then conducts the questionnaire with Romanian prompts, covering greetings, thanks, animal and body words, house and colour words, adverbs, and the terms for a pious versus honest person, a Christian and a convert. Freundlich also relates the story of a Jewish girl who converted, talks about words for peasants and Yiddish-speaking non-Jews, and Maramureș peasants who lived among Jews.

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 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.

Macarie completes the gefilte fish recipe and talks about bread. She describes the family house: three rooms (boys, girls, parents), a separate kitchen and a porch with steps and a threshold. Kerler elicits the porch word. She says on holidays they cooked, baked, ate and went to the temple.

Macarie says that on holidays families visited each other as guests. Pressed by Lemster to sing, she refuses but recalls climbing a fruit tree and singing while her father was at the temple, and a Hungarian bird-name endearment (?) addressed to a sweet child. She says her brothers studied in Sighet. Lemster then asks about the word for a mohel or painter (?), which she does not know.

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

Macarie describes a Jewish wedding, apparently a cousin's, with a chuppah set up (in the temple, though one word is garbled), and her own second marriage. She uses and explains a word for a decent, upright person, and describes her good relations with her son, grandchild and daughter-in-law.

Shwartz talks about his work in Oradea after 1966, saying he was the first workman there and received permission to travel to Canada, America and Israel in the 1970s (?). He worked for a priest and later a bishop, and says Jewish customers from America, Israel and elsewhere ordered tombstones. He says he made old stones new and worked in many kinds of stone, including marble and granite, with lettering and decoration, and says he lost count of how many he made, for Jews and Christians alike.

Mezei discusses prewar Sighet, where about half of the population was Jewish and few were rich, and the poor street where she grew up. She describes Sabbath customs in her home, including the cholent taken to the baker, Sabbath foods, and her grandmother's strict kashrut. She then tells of her husband's labor service, his survival in Budapest under a Hungarian name, his work at a stone factory, and his walking home to Sighet in January 1945.

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

Answers questions from Kerler about prewar holidays: Passover with two seders, new clothes for children, and the father conducting the seder. She mentions Hanukkah games with the dreidel and gelt for the children, and dressing up on Purim to visit grandmothers and bring gifts of food. She discusses baked goods for Purim and Hanukkah and Passover dishes, and recalls young men bringing large baskets of matzo and an uncle who ate only shmurah matzo.

Kerler asks Freundlich how pickles (cucumbers) were made in his home area, and the two discuss the method, containers, brine and the local word for the jar. Freundlich also discusses the present state of the Jewish community in Oradea and Cluj, assimilation and intermarriage, and the links between the communities. The passage also includes a long, hard-to-follow stretch about an earlier interview and a communal office.

Grinberg gives her father's name (Borukh) and his shop, where he sold cloth. She and S2 distinguish the Yiddish, German and Romanian words for a shop. She names her mother (Brokhe) and says she herself was an only child, since a baby brother died after a few weeks. She names her maternal grandfather, Khayim, from Lespezi, and recalls a grandmother who died when her mother was young.

Grinberg says visitors from Eretz Yisrael were rare but her father welcomed them, and mentions a cousin in America (Cleveland). Kerler asks how her mother made gefilte fish, and she describes the chopped fish stuffed into the skin and boiled with onion and a sweetish broth. They discuss terms for the fish broth. She also says that her family ate turkey on Passover rather than goose.

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

Grinberg first answers Lemster about God and what one must observe. She mentions dreams, and the belief that those who do not keep His commandments go to hell. The rest is dialectological elicitation, with Romanian and Russian prompts. Items include words for the bridge, attic, window, colours, animals, the dove, near and far, the cold, greetings, mazel tov, a wealthy man, a pious or honest Jew, parts of the body, numbers, and words such as 'such' and 'sudden'. Kerler and her daughter, who speaks Romanian, contribute at times.

Cojocaru says she travelled every year with family and a hired car to the rebbe's grave at Ștefănești. She explains how they prayed there for health and livelihood and that the visitors spoke Yiddish. Kerler and Lemster ask about the term "mame-loshn"; she does not give much of an answer. The talk also touches on her children's language shift to Romanian.

Cojocaru explains how she prepares Sabbath food, including baked rolls and sweet-and-sour meat with onion and bouillon. She mentions that people here use borscht for souring. She says she does not make gefilte fish, but cooks plain fish with pepper and sugar. She describes making fruit layer cake (flodn) for Purim, with fillings of nuts, preserves and sugar.

Cojocaru speaks about Purim masquerading in the old days and says her father was a synagogue warden for fifteen years. She talks about Simchat Torah, and a dish called einhakts (?) of eggs and potatoes. She compares Yiddish and Romanian terms and notes she once spoke Russian with a sister-in-law. She names red borscht with vareniki for Hanukkah and the Passover potato dishes.

Cojocaru describes Simchat Torah celebration in the synagogues, with singing and drinking, and what people drank. She answers questions on stuffed goose neck and Passover goose fat. She lists the towns she travelled to, including Botoșani, Bucharest and Ștefănești, and towns with many Jews. She talks about the Yiddish names for Mihăileni. Kerler asks about her husband's Yiddish and about stories.

Cojocaru is asked about Hanukkah food and mentions vareniki with red borscht and doughnuts fried in oil. Kerler and Lemster then put questionnaire items to her: greetings such as good evening and good night, thanks, the words for big and small, comparative forms, 'late' and 'close', and 'come closer'. She gives Romanian equivalents, and ends by giving her own Yiddish name.

Kerler elicits how Yiddish speakers say 'house' (shtub versus hoyz) for a Romanian word, while Salamon sits down, learns the interviewers' backgrounds, and says she spoke Romanian and Hungarian with earlier visitors. She agrees to speak Yiddish as at home. The catalogue's remarks on Auschwitz and her father's yeshiva do not appear in this stretch.

Salamon describes weekday meals before the war, such as milk, coffee and cornmeal porridge, and says meat was eaten only on Friday and Sabbath. The family kept four cows, and she tells how she learned to milk and to feed a calf after her marriage. She explains how she made gefilte fish and "false fish" from chicken, and answers Lemster's questions about the recipe and cooking time.

Salamon describes Sabbath food before the war: cholent carried to the baker's oven in a clay pot, kugel and a stuffed derma, and fruit compote. She and Kerler discuss the dialect words for these dishes and for stuffed cabbage, and she describes who sat where at the Friday table. She recalls her mother's challah baking and the separation of challah, and explains how meat is salted to make it kosher.

Kurtsberg talks about prayer in small groups and matzo baked in the Bershad ghetto, made kosher with the little flour obtained. He discusses relations with Ukrainians, some of whom helped Jews while others denounced them. Kerler asks about the word for fruit. Kurtsberg comments that he is forgetting Yiddish since he has no one to speak it with.

Kurtsberg lists occupations in the Bershad ghetto (carpentry, a barber, a blacksmith, doctors who made medical cabinets, dentists). Answering Lemster's questions, he describes Sabbath preparations at home, his mother's Friday cooking and the food of Sabbath and Shavuot. He also describes how chickens were slaughtered and salted at the kosher butcher.

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.

Kurtsberg describes how his mother cured the evil eye by extinguishing coals in a glass of water, and a similar cure used by his wife. He explains the term 'geshterkt' (starched) in an anecdote about a person with a strong will, and tells a story from his father about a melamed in Strazhynits (?) who cooked his food all mixed together.

Cojocaru answers dialectological questions. The items include phrases for 'very sick', words for 'honest' and 'ladder', the Yiddish for a peasant, and the question 'where are you from'. They also cover 'come here' and 'go there', numerals, and a paradigm of 'to be right' with the pronouns.

Cojocaru addresses the evil eye, saying she does not believe in it but remembers that children were treated for it and that old women knew how to charm it away. Kerler and Lemster then continue the questionnaire with words for potatoes and flowers, the word 'anderthalb' (one and a half), 'other' and 'three persons', and the answers 'yes' and 'no'. She also says that only Jews lived on the street.

Kerler asks about prewar newspapers. Galambos recalls a Jewish paper in Hungarian and no Yiddish one. He says cheder taught reading without translation and yeshiva taught Gemara. He lists towns he visited, including Debrecen and Munkács, and the group discusses travel to Košice. They also touch on the river and the word for ritual bath.

Weinberger describes Jewish life in Stropkov, where about half the Jews were pious and the rest less so. During the war he lived on false papers as a coachman for a Slovak employer. When transports resumed and he was due to be taken to a labor camp (Sered'), he fled across the Hungarian border in winter via Snina and Stakčín. He describes a night in a military cemetery, a night hidden among chickens in a poor man's shed, going on foot to Bereznyi and on to Uzhhorod, where he stayed in the Jewish community. He then tells of the train to Budapest and a stranger who shared food and gave him money. Kerler asks about words such as kuchtsher and the Slovak for Yom Kippur.

Weinberger talks about life in Budapest, where he spoke Yiddish mainly with Polish Jews and kept apart from the Hungarian Jews. He tells of the German occupation in March 1944, when the Polish Committee was seized and Poles were persecuted. Under a new name, Yosef Panko, he used false papers as a Subcarpathian Rusyn. He recalls going back to Slovakia, being arrested by the Gestapo with a group but released because of his Russian name, jumping on a train in Levice, and a second border crossing. Kerler asks about words such as advent and about money. He also mentions Polish Jews who had surgery to restore the foreskin.

Weinberger tells of his liberation by the Red Army in April 1945 near Hlohovec in Slovakia. He recalls working in a brick factory, being injured, being assigned to guard apple trees and then to work with oxen. After the Slovak uprising of September 1944 he fled when Germans surrounded the village and spent months hiding in cellars and barns, begging for food. Kerler asks about words such as stodola and a word for wandering. He ends with the first meeting with Soviet soldiers.

Weinberger compares Stropkov with Košice, where Jews studied at universities and became professionals, and says which languages Jews spoke in Stropkov and in the Spiš area. He then answers Kerler's questions about the Yiddish and Slovak words used at home for vegetables, wall and floor, and 'dove'. Kerler tries to draw him back to the songs he sang earlier.

Weinberger speaks about his father's observance and a Polish Jew from Kurtshin (?) who fled to Slovakia in the First World War and settled there. Kerler then asks questions about farewell formulas and a verb 'pour', and Weinberger answers. The passage ends with Kerler thanking him.

Chaimovic describes the Sabbath at home before the war: his mother baked three challahs, kiddush, and zemirot, and he gives details of cholent and other Sabbath dishes. He sings a little of the table songs and talks about his mother's workload and the fourth meal. His mother made fish on Sabbath, including false fish, and he answers Kerler's questions about terms for the dishes. He also mentions the fasts and the nine days without meat.

Chaimovic says his mother would travel to the Spinka rebbe in Mukachevo with kvitlekh, requests for health or exemption from military service. He answers Kerler's questions about folk healing: pouring out coals, cupping, leeches, and the Slovak currency used in the cupping rite. Kerler also asks how long he stayed in Prešov.

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

Chaimovic 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 describes Hanukkah customs before the war: the menorah, the dreidel made of wood, and the letters on it with their meanings, which S2 helps with. He says only Maoz Tsur was sung, and he knows no Yiddish songs but names Ernest Klein, a Yiddish speaker in Košice aged 93, and offers to phone him.

Chaimovic describes Jewish inns with Gypsy musicians where people drank and danced. He tells of Passover preparations: home baking of matzo in household ovens two weeks before the holiday, shmura matzo and matzo for the pious, Passover foods and cakes, borscht from beets, and chremslach, with a recipe. Kerler asks for the names of terms and dishes, and the passage ends with a question about who spoke Yiddish in Prešov.

Chaimovic tells the legend of the Golem of Prague, who was made from clay, protected the Jews and lies in the synagogue attic, as he heard it long ago. Kerler then puts dialectological questions about words for attic, ceiling and floor; Chaimovic gives Slovak equivalents.

Kerler asks about baked goods and sweets. Chaimovic names bread, challah, cakes, egg kichel and kugel, and offers honey cake.

Milchenko talks about Jewish holiday food that her mother made, such as strudel and potato dishes, and what she herself makes for Passover. Kerler and Lemster ask about foods and their Yiddish names, such as pancakes and tatshiklekh (?).

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.

Lokteva and her sister show a family photograph from the house and name the people in it: grandfather Khayim and grandmother Leye (?) Dorfman and their children. She says her grandfather supported many children by his work. Kerler and Lemster explain the project and discuss a ceiling and other household words, and Dorfman relatives abroad. Asked where her wedding took place, she says at her aunt Etl's house two doors away. She says her grandfather died before the war and her grandmother in 1945.

Pivnik describes her sister's prewar wedding ceremony under the huppah, with the rabbi and customs such as seating the bride on a bench and circling her. Discussion of the custom of giving 'makes' (?) to the in-laws, with Kerler asking where the term comes from and what it means. The talk moves to folk beliefs: the evil eye and its remedies, and extinguishing coals. She then recalls childhood: Jewish children in her courtyard, games of acting and dancing, and her Yiddish school.

Khotenko describes the famine in which her sister died and the years of hunger, then says she heard Anna Guzik in postwar concerts. She recites part of a song about a girl with geese in the woods and discusses prewar Jewish weddings, with a canopy and big halls, and the custom of carrying a 'makeh' cake. She also answers questions on Sukkot and Purim before the war.

Gorberg talks about her mother's cooking for weddings and holidays and gives her own method for gefilte fish and fish cutlets. She also speaks of Purim foods and a Purim play at the kolkhoz, Yiddish songs, and winemaking at her dacha. She talks about her husband's family and her thirty years in her mother-in-law's household. Her husband was a vulcanizer who drank, and he died in 1990s (?). Lemster and Kerler ask about food terms such as potato pancakes and the Yiddish word for grapes.

Epelman recalls the Yiddish-speaking Jewish carters he worked beside at the coal depot in the 1960s, and tells a joke about two of them and their wives. Kerler and Lemster ask about Yiddish words for horse feed, covered carriages, watchmakers and water carriers.

Kerler asks about each sibling: they live in Israel (Beersheba), America and Kryvyi Rih, and most do not speak Yiddish. Epelman says his wife is Russian and they have lived together about fifty years. He then answers questions about Jewish trades and tells what he heard of a violin maker whose hands were beaten when Germans rounded up Jews. Kerler and Lemster also ask about Slavic-derived words and expressions.

Kerler puts a long questionnaire of Russian words and short sentences to Zhovtis, asking him to translate them into Yiddish. Items include a book, house, hole, cat and mouse, window pane, colours, hearing and deafness, 'later' and 'earlier', being ill, 'where are you from', bed and 'please', numbers, thanks, midwife, taste, street and road, potatoes, Hanukkah pancakes, and 'we were seven'.

Kerler and Katz ask Marmalevskaia about weddings and food customs. She recalls klezmer music and the huppah but not the badkhn or songs, and she names her husband as the singer. Questions follow on food: gefilte fish, chicken broth with almonds, tsimmes made with dried fruit or carrots, and latkes for Hanukkah made from various flours, as well as the words for vodka.

Kerler asks Marmalevskaia about folk healing and beliefs. She does not remember old-women's remedies but recalls the term for an evil eye and its removal by incantation, and Kerler asks about the dybbuk and the golem.

Marmalevskaia answers questions about Jewish funerals and the cemetery in Bila Tserkva, which has an old and a new Jewish cemetery. Kerler asks for the Yiddish words for the cemetery and for burial, and for the expression used when remembering the dead.

Kerler asks Marmalevskaia about Yiddish after the war: she says she and her husband spoke Russian at home, spoke Yiddish only in the theater, and that her children understand but do not speak it. Kerler then asks, in Russian, for Yiddish equivalents of everyday phrases such as greetings and 'please', and she translates some and cannot recall others.

Marmalevskaia answers a long dialectological questionnaire, prompted by Russian or Ukrainian words and short sentences. The items include animal and body words (mouse, belly, skin), house and building terms, window glass, the colour blue, pigeon and dove, and words for sick and sleepy. Other items are comparatives and adverbs of time, religious terms (icon, cross, convert, peasant, non-Jew, honest, believer), kitchen and household words, numbers, and the word for 'then'. A few Russian-sentence translations are included, and she sometimes says she does not remember a word or that it is not Yiddish.

Bublitskaia describes Jewish weddings in Chisinau, with a chuppah, dancing and a fiddle and drum. She answers questions about food terms (gefilte fish, corn mush, cornmeal dishes, tsimes, meat dishes) and about drink: wine was drunk locally, and vodka came with the Soviets. She does not recognize several of the terms Kerler asks about.

Kerler works through a questionnaire of Russian prompts with Bublitskaia, who gives the Yiddish she remembers or says she does not know it. The items include a greeting, give me the book, thank you, a mouse, a woman, quiet, gray, the sky and other everyday words.

Berman speaks about religious life in Bila Tserkva, where there were Hasidim of the Skvyra rebbe, whose carriage with six horses was met by Jewish men dressed as Cossacks. Katz and Kerler then ask about the Yiddish nickname 'shvartsetime' (?) for the town and how ordinary Jews said the town's name, with discussion of the word for a church or cloister and a Hebrew form 'sadeh lavan' (white field), and of the town's name in old documents.

Kerler asks the meaning of the word 'papshoi' (maize/corn), and Shor explains that it is maize, from which mamaliga is made. They discuss mamaliga and the lack of maize flour where they are now.

Kerler asks about Jewish holidays, and Shor and a woman name some, such as Rosh Hashanah and Purim. Shor recalls that the community paid a lot to bring a top cantor from Chişinău or Bucharest for the High Holidays. Kerler asks the Yiddish word for a person with a good voice, and the answer is not clear.

Shor says he spoke good Yiddish at home. Kerler asks a few questionnaire items, such as the Yiddish for the prophet Elijah and the drinking at the seder. Shor cannot recall them, and others in the room chip in.

Kerler puts a long series of dialect questionnaire items, including attic, sun, son, tooth, book, deaf, bluish, 'a lot of Jews' and Purim pastries. Shor answers some and says he has forgotten others. In the middle Shor says that after the war he went to Orhei when his mother's sister died aged 85, and describes the Jewish cemetery, where the dead are laid on boards, not in a coffin. He also gives the meaning of 'golem' and answers questions on Purim food.

The Vaismans talk about prewar Berdychiv as a Jewish town, saying there were around 60,000 Jews among 80,000 inhabitants, that Yiddish was spoken openly on the street and that some non-Jews spoke it. They discuss the Yiddish newspaper Shtern (?), Yiddish reading, Sholem Aleichem and a street named for him. Beyle Vaisman mentions letters in Yiddish from her parents in Kharkiv.

The Vaismans answer questionnaire items from Kerler. These include a Russian word for 'forbidden' or 'gloomy', words for ear, attic and the Passover afikoman, and a Hanukkah song. Toward the end Kerler asks what latkes were made from; buckwheat is suggested and not confirmed.

They talk about latkes made from potatoes, with Kerler asking about prewar practice. The questionnaire then continues with words for blue, grey and colours of hair and eyes, window panes, groats, deaf, a mouse, and a small bird. Several questions are met with 'I don't know', and a Russian passage is heard briefly.

The interviewee says her father was an honest man who was a refugee in the First World War, apparently from Poland, and was from a German-origin family. She mentions that Jewish learning was no longer given at home in her day and speaks of a rebbe. Elicitation follows on words for quick, Kremenets, blue, sun and sons, 'whose child is this', a thing in school, and a word for face.

The questionnaire continues with words for a man or male, the expression for 'we sit near', the past form of 'to be', crying and a verb 'to cry', and 'pathology'. The informants disagree over words such as 'on the bridge' and 'someone told us', and a participant remarks on the Lithuanian speaker among them. A wedding song is not clearly identifiable in the transcript.

Answers questions about the words for a peasant and a peasant woman, a non-Jewish woman, and what Jews meant by saying someone 'speaks gentile'. Then recalls the Passover seder at home, including the closing song Khad gadyo, the four cups, the plagues, stealing the afikomen, and the burrs thrown at people. The questions come from Kerler and Katz.

Skobilitskii says he was an officer, having finished ten classes of school. He describes his early education: cheder from age eight, mornings from nine to twelve, then Yiddish school number four in the building of a rich man named Magazanik. He says what he learned in cheder, namely two chumashim and prayers, and recites some prayers from memory. Katz and Kerler ask about the chumash portions and he looks for glasses and a prayer book.

Skobilitskii answers Kerler's questionnaire items, including words for a head or tumour and for a Jewish versus non-Jewish cemetery, and an illness name he links to Bila Tserkva. Katz and Kerler then ask him to recite from the prayer book. He recalls that in cheder they washed their hands and said Modeh ani.

Skobilitskii answers questionnaire items on words for 'to make', street, washing and a ball. He explains words in loshn-koydesh that his parents used so the children would not understand, such as one for apples, for a watchman and for a non-Jewish woman. Kerler asks for the Yiddish for the cup of Elijah and for the afikoymen, and mentions a break.

Skobilitskii answers many questionnaire items: words for a Jewish street, 'to count', pulse, to knock, to ask or request, and a board. He tells of his mother's brother, a cantor in a Moscow synagogue, and of his grandfather Nakhmen, a rabbi with eight children, including his mother Khane and her siblings. The grandfather's family kept shops and sold goods in villages. Katz notes words he recalls from Skobilitskii's mother.

Skobilitskii shows a book by a writer (the catalogue names Korzhuk) that mentions him as a battery commander. He also says that he bought copies and sent them abroad. Kerler and Katz then return to questionnaire items, such as words for a child's loud crying and for a non-Jew who converts to Judaism, as well as 'a good name'.

Skobilitskii mentions a book by Y. L. Peretz that ought to be in the synagogue, then answers Kerler's questionnaire questions with the second voice joining in. The items include the word for a deaf person, the name for the one who recites the closing blessing, a Torah reader, and the blessing said after recovering from illness or danger, with a story about a man who escaped a machine; the word for galoshes is also asked.

Skobilitskii talks about a Yiddish literary work, apparently Sholem Aleichem's story "Motl Peysi the Cantor's Son", which he describes as an allegory narrated by a child. Kerler then continues the questionnaire: wagon and wagons, a ship's cargo, "each thing", the word for "near", cotton wool and padded garments, and "probably".

Skobilitskii answers more questionnaire items from Kerler, with the second voice contributing: ceiling, floor and a clay floor, how his mother's and father's speech differed, and how the town name Berdychiv was pronounced by old Jews. Further items are "put away", "back", "suddenly" and an expression for someone not thinking clearly. At the end the talk turns to the books the team bought and some thanks.

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.

Chukh answers dialectological questions put by Kerler: Yiddish equivalents for Russian words and short sentences to translate. Items include words for 'honest', 'believer' and 'cross', vodka, numbers, bed, 'where from', 'shop', 'flowers', 'each' and 'three persons', and pronunciation variants such as 'fun vanen'. He also asks about the word 'mame' and the older word for a midwife, 'bobe'.

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.

Skobilitskii says that good teachers of physics and history helped him become an artilleryman, and is asked the Yiddish word for north, east and so on. There are elicitation items such as 'a good place' for a grave, a Galitsianer and a Litvak, and the word misnaged. He then recalls Jewish weddings with a badkhn.

Questionnaire on Yiddish words and expressions: golem, 'a clay goat', phrases about the dead praying for the living, greetings and good-day phrases, thanks, mouse, luck and schlemazl, book, house, window pane, colours, and words for building and living. At the end Kerler asks about the yeshiva in Berdychiv.

A long dialectological word-list: stones, ear, cold, high, late, near, sleep and sick, and the difference between 'honest' and 'religious'. There are discussions of Belaya Tserkov in Yiddish, converts, mixed marriages and Yiddish expressions for 'I ask', 'young' and 'right'. Other items include the midwife, 'to pray', the word for a shop and its wares, potatoes and flowers, and sentence-translation items. Berdychiv usage is compared with Litvak usage, and a Haifa anecdote is mentioned. The passage includes a few Russian prompts.

Short elicitation in which Kerler and Lemster ask for the Yiddish word for the cross and what is done when seeing it, such as spitting three times. They then ask Furman about his childhood.

Kerler elicits Yiddish words from Soyfer, such as 'sick', 'pious' and 'honest', and he explains how his old grandmother used them. He says his wife is blind and bedridden and mentions the Joint's help and the loss of savings. Lemster asks about theater after the war, and Soyfer recalls a Jewish troupe from Moscow.

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.

Soyfer says his mother died in a Zhytomyr hospital when he was eight and the family grew very poor. He is asked about the Yiddish word for hospital and talks about the grave, his brother, and family members who do not look after the graves.

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

Kerler and Shveibish discuss the word for a holiday, with Shveibish describing how they say it, and then consider potential interviewees, one a Pechora survivor from Bratslav. They exchange family names, and Shveibish says she can't read Russian well and explains the choice of Tulchyn for lodging.

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 varenyky were filled with. Vainshelboim names cheese, meat and kasha. The visitors from America are mentioned again.

Burmenko says that her father died when she was four, that her mother was a widow, and that she had a stepfather. Kerler provides the Yiddish word for it, shtiftate. A phone call comes in. She says she lives alone, and that her daughter urges her to move to Israel but she does not want to.

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.

Answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian words and descriptions into Yiddish: greetings, please, crying, hunger, cold and warm, the verb 'to do', mountain, bed, numbers of people, luck, high, late, later, gravestone, thanks, and a non-Jew. The interviewer also explains why he wants everyday speech rather than literary Yiddish.

Kerler works through the dialectological questionnaire with Kozak: Russian prompts to render in Yiddish (illness, bed, crying, 'good day', 'thank you', cold, gentile, peasant, vineyard), words for non-Jews, and Lithuanian Jews. She also talks about Passover dishes (kezelekh, fish with horseradish) and about separating dishes for Passover. The recording captures many uncertain items.

Kozak shows Kerler a vessel from the old synagogue that she took home for safekeeping so that it would not be stolen, and discusses what it is made of and its name, 'kurt'(?). Kerler then asks the Russian terms for it (kruzhka, kvarta) and moves on to the questionnaire.

Kerler continues the questionnaire with Kozak: verbs for plastering or decorating a house, a grand house (moyer or tsimer), words for a rich man (gvir), breathing, 'came from another town', 'book', mouse/mice, groats, dove and bouillon with kneydlekh.

Kozak briefly describes making mandlekh (soup nuts), baked in the oven and served in soup, before questionnaire items on the word for a deaf person continue.

Kozak speaks about folk and healing customs: going to a female healer, cupping glasses (bankes), and a spell against illness. Kerler asks whether she remembers an incantation (the three-women rhyme), which she does not. Questionnaire items on time and place words follow.

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

Leiderman answers dialectological questions from Kerler. Items include body and household words, a child's crying, verb forms, adjectives and comparatives, words for people and for luck, time adverbs, and the pronunciation of 'thousand'. She says she does not recall some words and is asked what her mother said. At the end Kerler asks whether she lived in Bershad' until the war.

Leiderman says she was evacuated to the Urals, to a place whose name is unclear (Izhevsk?), and returned to Bershad' after the war. She was about seventeen when the war began. She then answers many more questionnaire items: words for non-Jews, a gravestone, Hanukkah latkes and the dreidel, Purim pastry, Sabbath bread, 'rabbi' and plurals, tefillin, and other words and phrases. She says her parents were from Bershad'. She recalls her father laying tefillin only vaguely.

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.

Bershadskaya answers questions about Jewish weddings in the village: dancing, a Jewish band playing freylekhs, and an outdoor shelter in summer. She cannot recall the chuppah or the entertainer's title. Kerler suggests words for the wedding jester (marshalek, badkhn).

Bershadskaya answers the dialectological questionnaire: Kerler gives Russian or Ukrainian words and sentences for her to render into Yiddish. They cover household and bodily words, weather and comparatives, pronouns, numbers, greetings, words for non-Jews, and short sentences to translate. She often says she has forgotten the word.

Kerler asks about Sabbath food: the fish the mother prepared (gefilte fish) and how it was seasoned. The passage then moves to dialectological questions on words such as outsider/from another town, attic, bouillon, a rich man, tsadik and plural forms; the informant often cannot recall a word.

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

Asked how his mother kept the Sabbath, Shor lists Sabbath food: fish, meat, bean dishes and cold jellied dishes. The fish was carp (?), and he and Kerler discuss the names for gefilte fish and chopped fish. The end is interrupted by Russian and side remarks.

Brief exchange about cooking utensils that Shor has shown. Kerler asks whether a frying pan is called by a certain Russian-Ukrainian name in Shor's Yiddish and asks about the words for a chopping knife and a pan.

Kerler asks Shor about Hanukkah foods, latkes (tatshiklekh), and what they were made from. He then asks questionnaire items: how to say a Russian phrase meaning "there is no money", "my head hurts", "tasty", "I am going on the road", and the words for sour, sweet and building a house.

Opens with a remark that the first seder in Bershad' after Soviet rule took place in 1991 (?). Kerler then runs through dialectological questionnaire items, asking how words and phrases are said in Yiddish. These include words for hunger and tiredness, forms of address and politeness, kinds of vessels, flour, colours, a deaf person, a healthy person, the verb 'to breathe', and 'from another town'. Answers come mainly from a second voice, with Russian words used as prompts.

Kerler recalls a pastry Gvinter once gave the team and she gives the recipe for strudel (the Bershad' kind): a dough made with many eggs, a sugar syrup, nuts and raisins. The participants then discuss the words for raisins in Yiddish and Russian, and what grows in Bershad' (a tree).

Gvinter explains how she makes a baked pastry, with details of the dough, the filling and the oven. She then answers Kerler's questions about what was eaten at Hanukkah, including latkes made from potatoes, and about dishes made for Shavuot with cheese and potatoes. The talk then moves to salads, pickled vegetables (sauerkraut) and other food, with S2 and S3 chiming in.

Gvinter answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire: greetings and polite phrases, words for house, window, colors and household objects. It also covers words for adverbs of time and comparison, verbs, and grammatical forms with pronouns and prepositions, with sentences to translate. S2 and S3 sometimes help. Briefly she speaks about an American interview and videocassettes of her daughter's wedding. Kerler also asks about words for Jewish religious and everyday life, such as the cemetery, a convert, a midwife, a shop and the prayer leader.

Gvinter talks with Kerler and Lemster about the song of going to Palestine, which was sung in secret in the ghetto and more openly after the war, and comments on politics and the Israel–Palestinian conflict today. He mentions his own illness and a daughter's family. He answers terminology questions about Bila Tserkva, about words for non-Jews and for a foolish or wicked person, and about a convert. He recalls the Bershad' ghetto, people from Chernivtsi held and shot at the stadium, and non-Jews who learned a few Yiddish words. He then speaks about his own life: neighbours and the shoe workshop, the sale of a building he was asked to sell, his marriage in 1958, his children, and his siblings. Finally he explains why one synagogue in Bershad' stayed open after the war while others were closed, and mentions the building turned into a cinema.

Lemster explains that the interviewers want history, not the present, and Kerler then begins the dialectological questionnaire. Feldman is asked how to say thank you, please, ceiling, mouse, window glass, potatoes, colors, a house of one's own, cold, mountain, grandmother or midwife, cross, believe, honest and other items, some with Russian prompts. She often answers with Russian or Ukrainian-influenced forms and the interviewers correct her.

Feldman recalls the hunger of her childhood after the war. She describes how she and her mother cooked and ate flour, potato and berry dishes, black bread and cornmeal. She and Lemster discuss the Yiddish word for maize and the Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian words for it. She then describes a semolina porridge and mamaliga with milk.

Loyf describes how her mother made gefilte fish, stuffing the fish skin, and other dishes, answering Lemster's questions about terms such as meat in vinegar and potato pancakes. She gives a recipe for onion and potato dishes, and one for semolina dumplings in bouillon that she learned from a butcher in Boryslav. Some questions on Yiddish names for dishes are also raised.

Loyf discusses postwar Jewish life in Dzegovka: there was Jewish life but few Jews remained, many Jewish women married non-Jews, and the synagogue in Drohobych was repeatedly looted. She says kugel (made of matzo or potatoes) and other dishes such as potato kugel and tsimes were made. Lemster also asks about her mother's cooking and her stay with her sister in Mohyliv-Podilskyy.

Loyf answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire. Lemster prompts, often with Russian words and sentences, and she gives her Yiddish equivalents or says she does not remember or has not heard them. Items include animals, colours, building and household words, adverbs of time and place, adjectives, and sentences to translate. Also covered are words for a convert, a person who marries out, a Jewish collective farm, and praying in the synagogue. Later items are words for an enemy, case and pronoun forms, and parts of a house. At times she remarks that people forget Yiddish and other languages.

Lemster takes Berkovich through a short word list: thank you, belly, window, glass, sour, cold, high, quick, near, goes, honest and believing, tooth, vodka and brandy. Berkovich often gives Yiddish or German forms and sometimes says he has forgotten them. Kerler and a second man speak at the end.

Answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire, with Kerler and, later, Lemster. Items include greetings and farewells, a sentence about whether someone will come, breathing, being ill, missing someone, running away, and terms for honest, believer, Christian and peasant. Near the end Lemster asks about a river and the Dniester (?), and she mentions that her trip to Israel was arranged through her role in an association of former child prisoners.

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

Kerler and Lemster put questions from the dialectological questionnaire, asking for Yiddish equivalents of phrases and words such as greetings, honest person, peasant, to run away, quickly, tall, a well and a spring. She answers and mentions that her mother did not send her to a Yiddish school, so she was never taught to read Yiddish letters.

Kupershmidt and Rakhil answer Kerler's dialectological questionnaire, with Katz asking for repetitions. Items include water, a later hour, near and nearer, cold, to run away, luck, and the words for a non-Jew and for breathing. Others include a book, a ship, a deaf person, fast, back, and a face. Kupershmidt also gives the local phrase for a stingy person (from Nemyriv rather than Haivoron).

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

Kerler returns to Sabbath at home and asks about a Sabbath dish. The interviewee does not know the term, and they try to establish what was cooked, with beans mentioned. She also speaks briefly about her late husband.

The interviewee mentions a childhood friend who later went to America and visited her. Kerler asks what games they played and what the word for a doll is in Yiddish; she says the Russian word is not Yiddish and discusses other terms.

Asked for a Yiddish word for a gravestone, she gives it and says her grandfather's stone in Dzhurin has Yiddish writing. After the war the family brought a rabbi to read it, but no one in Dzhurin now can.

Kerler asks about Sabbath food. Sofia and David speak of the Sabbath cholent, which was cooked in the baker's oven. They compare chopped fish with gefilte fish, and the Yom Kippur kreplekh. Sofia explains how her own strudel and honey-baked sweets differ from the version of Kerler's mother, who was from Kremenets. They also discuss the Yiddish word for oil.

Sofia Geller describes the special small cakes baked before the war for the night before a bris, when the children came to a Krishme-leyenen (Kriyat Shema) gathering. Kerler asks how they looked and when they were baked. The passage ends with toasts and a joke about drinking, in which Kerler says he drinks only symbolically.

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

Kerler asks about the circumcision custom in prewar Bratslav. Kupershmidt says it was done by a shoykhet, and Kerler corrects this to mohel. He describes the evening reading of Shema with sweet cakes handed out to neighbours' children, nothing special for a girl but a name given in the synagogue, and mentions that he has two children.

Kerler and Yatskova discuss the Yiddish term for a cemetery. In Russian she says she visits the cemetery often and lays flowers or stones, and that Hasidim who come from Israel know her. She gives directions to the Polish and Jewish cemeteries on the road to Vinnytsia.

Kelmenson talks about her father, who was in Vorkuta for sixteen years and questioned God though he was a pious man, and about her grandfathers, one of whom lost his plantation and died in the Crimea. Kerler then asks dialect questions about words such as magazine, bucket, sick, come, pious and honest. Kerler explains his own origins, and they discuss relatives in Israel, Bratslav surnames and a woman who gave a short interview, before thanks.

Kerler and Lemster thank Kelmenson and say that the visit was worthwhile. They discuss the pronunciation of the town name Bratslav and how she says father and mother, with Kelmenson commenting on the language she uses.

After Katz's opening statement of the date and place, Khavin gives the name of the town and discusses how Jews called it. He describes the three rabbis in prewar Chernihiv and the four synagogues (the great synagogue, now a theater, the Naye Mark shul, the misnagdishe shul and the Liskovitse shul). Katz asks about the meaning of the names and of misnaged.

Katz and Kerler ask a few words from the dialectological questionnaire, among them a word for belly, and Khavin answers; they say they need the Chernihiv Yiddish and not that of Mohyliv. Khavin then reflects on his Yiddish, his grandfather the melamed and his commitment to Jewishness, and says he has survived the war years and goes to the synagogue.

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.

At Katz's request, Khavin remembers the holidays at his parents' home, beginning with Rosh Hashanah: the big challah, the festive table with fish and a fish head, apples with honey, and why his father did not eat gefilte fish. He recalls the candles his mother made for the Ten Days, and Yom Kippur eve with the chicken meal and the shoykhet. He says his father made his own wine and never bought it, and begins a story about his grandmother's wine.

Khavin describes his father inviting many friends at holidays, then the building of the sukkah after Yom Kippur with boards from the woods, tables and the holiday meal there, including fried meat and noodle dishes. He says Shavuot was considered the best holiday and discusses Sukkot and sleeping in the sukkah. He ends with Simchat Torah, when children played games with nuts and received gifts.

Khavin recalls Hanukkah before the war: his grandmother gave each grandchild five kopeks of Hanukkah money, and his father fattened geese that were slaughtered by the shoykhet for the holiday. Kerler asks about force-feeding geese, which his father avoided, and about the goose cracklings and fat. His mother made buckwheat pancakes fried in goose fat, and Khavin and Kerler discuss the terms for pancakes and latkes. Katz asks about Hanukkah and Purim games and noisemakers.

Kerler and Katz put dialectological questions to Khavin. The items include words for ceiling, beam, back, suddenly, and 'very ill', along with sentences to translate. The sentences include 'Jews live on this street', 'you were at our place', 'they are Jews', and 'I don't know whether he knows me or not'. Khavin often says he does not remember a word; there are also expressions of pleasure and of a bad face.

Katz and Kerler continue the dialectological questionnaire, asking how Khavin says words such as well, potato, shop, merchant, attic, rich man, and cross. They also ask for flowers, tomorrow, evening, and various sentences to translate. Khavin often answers with Russian glosses or says he does not know the word.

Katz and Kerler ask Lifshitz Yiddish words, for example belly, skin and a word for ear, the last of which he does not recognize. Kerler ends by turning to Birobidzhan.

Katz asks Bielaia a few Yiddish words: mouse, book (?), and the color blue.

Katz asks Bielaia Yiddish words for back, room, attic, well, a well-sweep (?) and potato, and a store. He also asks if she knows the Hasidim.

Katz asks Bielaia for Yiddish forms (you are, honest, a cross, headache, to hurt, to tell). She also asks him where he comes from. Her answers are mostly in Yiddish.

Kerler asks Bielaia Yiddish words for flower, well, to climb into the attic, vodka, thousand, and sentences with prepositions, such as going on the street and being near. Her age is also mentioned.

Bielaia answers dialectological questions: words for coming closer, being asleep or tired, pious and honest, seeing poorly, and the plural of a noun for rows or beds (?). Kerler asks how a word was said in Nizhyn. She then says she was one of eight children and that her father and grandmother perished in the war. Her husband did not return. She came back to Chernihiv with no flat or belongings, spent three days in a wagon, and began life alone. Kerler confirms her surname, Bielaia.

Khavin gives names of towns and villages around Chernihiv, and Katz asks how each was said in Yiddish. These include Rybka (?), Horodnia, Berezna, Sosnytsia, Novhorod-Siverskyi, Brahin, Pryluky and Krasylivka. Khavin says Jews in the twelfth century could not live in towns and lived in villages, and that Chernihiv, Nizhyn and Berdychiv were exceptions. A tsar later barred them from villages (this part is garbled).

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

Burg answers Kerler's questions about holiday foods: potato cheese-pancakes (kayzlekh) for Passover and latkes for Hanukkah, with the word barbolyes (?) for potatoes and tatshn baked potato dishes. He discusses Shavuot greenery, Tisha B'Av customs, reading the Song of Songs on Passover and the haggadah at home. He recites part of the Four Questions in Hebrew and Yiddish. Kerler also asks how long he attended cheder.

Burg answers dialectological questions from Kerler, about words for 'back' and 'ten people at the table' and the use of terms for Hebrew and the holy tongue. He answers that Bund and Zionists in Chernivtsi were not hostile and that much of the Jewish youth was communist; his brother fell in Spain. They look at a photograph of his daughter and discuss his granddaughter, who writes in Russian. Kerler then asks him to read another short story.

Geinik answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian and Ukrainian prompts into Yiddish. Items include body parts, animals and colours, house and building words, adverbs of time, speed and nearness, thousand and twenty, potatoes and onions, food terms, flowers, and sentences to translate. She says she has forgotten much Yiddish, and the sentence translations give her difficulty.

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.

Kleiman answers Kerler's dialectological questions on how words are said in Vadrashkov Yiddish. Items include a dybbuk and being stubborn, body and household words (belly, house, hide, mouse, window pane, blue), adverbs of time and nearness, the verbs for being ill, escaping, breathing and building, and a sentence-based question on 'from where'. They also discuss variants such as alle and eyle.

Kleiman answers Kerler's dialectological questions: words for thousand and vodka, forms for grandmother and parents, the word for roof, some Ukrainian loans (well, rag, flower) and Hebrew-derived words. He also gives sentence and grammar items, including number expressions, phrases for please, and plurals. At the start Kerler says that people he interviews remember little, and Kleiman briefly talks about the history and language of Bessarabian Jews, who came from Ukrainian territory, and about Bukovina and Romanian influence.

Gimelbrandt recalls her prewar childhood: Purim with dancing, collecting money and wooden noisemakers, Hanukkah, and Passover seders at which her father had her brother ask the four questions. She finished one year at a Yiddish school; her brother attended cheder. Non-Jewish friends who spoke Yiddish joined the holidays. She describes Sabbath, Shavuot, Hanukkah and Passover food (challah, kugel, tatsh, cheese pastries, latkes). She names the street where her family lived, with a synagogue next door where her father led prayers.

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.

Gimelbrandt answers Kerler's questionnaire. He gives words and sentences in Russian and she translates them into Yiddish. Items include terms for a dybbuk and a convert, greetings and politeness, body parts, colours, adjectives, adverbs and numbers. They also cover cholent and kugel types, pronoun and case forms, the midwife, and several short sentences. She compares Chernivtsi usage with the Bessarabians'.

Shternberg answers Kerler's questions about Jewish weddings in Khotyn. She recalls the chuppah, dancing, and the badkhn, who sang for guests and the musicians' pay. She mentions a custom of a song for the in-laws and the music played for the wedding. Kerler asks about the word for the pay, and about non-Jews in Khotyn who spoke Yiddish; she says many of them were servants of Jews.

Kerler and Lemster run a Russian-to-Yiddish vocabulary questionnaire with Shames. Items include greetings, animals (mouse), body parts, kinship, adjectives, the words for pious and honest, enemy, and the rich man. She often does not recall the word, and sometimes answers in Ukrainian or Russian-influenced forms. Sample sentences are translated and the interviewers thank her.

Gammer talks about a Jewish wedding in Khmil'nyk after the war. The bride was local and the groom from Chernivtsi, and the huppah was held in the park by the sanatorium. Klezmers came from Vinnytsia, and she attended five or six weddings. Lemster and Kerler ask about the wedding-cake custom and its name and about who led the wedding. Her answers are partly unclear.

Gammer answers dialectological questions: the meanings of dybbuk, a clay golem and meshumed. She says she remembers little and cannot recall Yiddish proverbs. She notes that nowadays everyone speaks Ukrainian or Russian and that her old neighbor remembers Yiddish. Lemster praises her memory.

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.

Gammer talks about Passover matzo: how it was baked before Passover, the smell of matzo in the street, and how today's matzo compares with it. She recalls the coarse "shmire" matzo her grandfather's generation ate, and Kerler and Lemster ask about matzo from Israel and steamed matzo. Kerler explains the "poor bread" of the Exodus. The talk then turns to Shavuot dishes made with kasha and cheese, with Kerler asking about the term for them, then to Tisha b'Av and Yom Kippur customs.

A discussion of a baked item (?) and food names with Gammer and a second voice, then questions on the word for a Lithuanian Jew and on Lithuanian Yiddish. Gammer recalls a Lithuanian man who lived in Belarus. Kerler and Lemster ask about a few Yiddish words, kosher meat preparation, the mother's blessings over baking, and the Yiddish word for vodka. The passage ends with a question about Yiddish-speakers' villages and Jews in the area before the ghetto.

A long dialectological questionnaire in which Kerler and Lemster give Russian and Ukrainian words and Gammer supplies Yiddish ones, with her daughter commenting. Items include greetings and times of day, mouse, house and building, window pane, deaf, near and far, early and late, cold, honest, pious and ordinary words for family and body. Gammer also talks about how she learned Yiddish, why it matters, and a Khmil'nyk inn. She then identifies men in a photograph (a partisan among them) and a doctor, and Kerler asks about visiting the killing site.

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

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.

Leibel answers dialectological questionnaire items from Kerler. Items include Yiddish words for a cemetery, a ghost or dybbuk, house, belly and groats, the word for window panes, colours, and a mouse. The questions also cover building words such as wall, brick and stone, and adverbs and adjectives such as late, early, cold, high, fast and near. They go on to kinship words, pronouns, numerals, short sentences to translate, the words for honest and enemy, and the word for room.

Kerler puts questionnaire items on words such as 'quick', 'blood', 'house', 'to crawl', 'mouse', 'window pane', 'attic', 'ceiling', 'candle' and 'face'. Shekhovich often gives Slavic words and says some are not Yiddish. She says she mostly lived in a Polish and then a Ukrainian environment and now speaks mainly Ukrainian, speaking Yiddish rarely. They compare Polish and Ukrainian and discuss language and culture. Between questions they cover religious customs: kissing the mezuzah, morning prayer, her own prayers in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, and the religious leader of the local community. Kerler thanks her at the end.

Shekhovich answers questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire: greetings and farewells, thanks and please, book, window and glass, and other everyday words such as temperature and height. She says that in her family the language was Polish and Moldovan-influenced speech. Lemster explains that the recordings are for students and the archive.

Shekhter talks about Jewish books and his regret at not studying, his pension and work in a clothing combine, where there were few Jewish cobblers but many tailors. He answers questions about words for a cemetery and for a pious or honest man, and about Kaddish, the Shema and morning prayers. He names his best years (Sverdlovsk and Zolotonosha) and says he believes in God, who saved him from the war.

Shekhter answers Kerler's questions from the dialectological questionnaire. Kerler prompts with Russian and Ukrainian words and phrases, and Shekhter supplies the Yiddish forms. Items include adjectives such as sour, early and late, cold, near and nearer, and pronoun sentences about 'he' and 'she'. They also cover religious and moral terms such as a believer, a baptised convert and a pious or honest person. Further items cover household and everyday words (bed, tree and tree/oil, the number ten, vodka, thousand), street, road and well, sitting at the table, the attic, and midwife and grandparents. Shekhter tells a short joke about a man going to an office, and recalls how Jewish children made dreidls at Hanukkah, from a spool with a stick, as well as the Tishah be-Av burrs thrown into beards. The passage ends with more questions on face, 'back' and similar words.

Khasidovich says that Jews who came to the bread shop spoke Yiddish with her. Kerler and Lemster ask whether challah was sold there and what kinds of bread and rolls were baked. They also ask about circumcision after the war, which was done secretly, and about her wedding: she says there was a huppah led by a rabbi, with her parents present, and describes the food at the wedding, including pastries and fish. The passage ends with questions on dialect vocabulary, for example the word for sunflower seeds, and on songs, dances and musicians.

Dialect questions covering words such as the one for a convert (meshumed), a Christian, the name for Stalin and a place name; also the local convent. Khasidovich says she has always lived in Fastiv except for one year in Israel with her daughter, where she says life was better than here. Kerler asks about life before the war and about the famine of 1932–33, and she says that she and her children did not suffer hunger. The passage ends with Kerler asking when her eldest daughter was born.

Murovanaia answers Kerler's dialectological questions: how particular Yiddish words are said, including words for a pigeon, a mouse, stuffed cabbage, breathing and a deaf person. She also describes baking matzo and a spinning toy, and begins to speak about Hanukkah.

Murovanaia recites or sings the Hanukkah song she learned from her aunts. She recalls Hanukkah money, the latkes, and Hanukkah with children and neighbours. Kerler then continues the questionnaire with words such as tsadik, hell, face, and a few others.

Burshtein talks about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at his grandfather's house, and his father not praying. Questions from a second voice and Kerler cover the Passover seder and its foods, gefilte fish and how it was made, and Hanukkah money and food. Also covered are tashlikh on Yom Kippur and the Ninth of Av.

Kerler puts questionnaire items for Burshtein to translate from Russian into Yiddish: greetings and times of day, requests and thanks, crying, weather, kinship and everyday words, and late. Burshtein also explains what is baked for Passover, and what a Jewish or non-Jewish head or luck means. The passage ends with some sayings and rhymes.

Beigel answers questions about food customs. She makes gefilte fish herself as her mother did, with a little sugar, and she makes matzo kugels and potato latkes. Kerler and Lemster ask about the dish names and what the latkes were eaten with. She says she has already told them what she lived through.

Beigel and Kerler discuss a Yiddish blessing about long years and when it is said. She talks about studying at a technical college in Vinnytsya to be a medical assistant, and about a Jewish school in Tyvriv that she attended for a year before it closed, naming two teachers. She also mentions a fire brigade, a Georgian one (?), and the word for cotton wool, and does not remember non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.

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

Beigel talks about Romanian words and the Romanian presence in her war memory. Kerler asks the Yiddish word for cemetery, which she calls a field. She says her parents went to a cemetery in Vinnytsya on anniversaries, and that she prays there in her own words. She says her father and mother prayed but she attended a Ukrainian school, and she describes herself as half Jewish. The passage ends with a question about the importance of Yiddish.

Long dialectological questionnaire in which Beigel gives Yiddish equivalents, often mixed with Russian or Ukrainian words. Items include words for the senses, greetings and wishes such as congratulations and thanks, everyday and household words, pronouns and verb forms, and religious terms such as praying, honest or pious Jew, and Christian. In the middle she tells at length about her youth and marriage. She mentions a Bukovina acquaintance who left for Israel, her husband's wartime imprisonment and later head illness, and her 46 years caring for him. She remarks on her failing memory and that the questioning tires her.

Further dialectological questions put by Kerler, with Lemster joining in. Items cover grammatical forms (case endings, "on the road", plurals), a Hebrew-derived word for "probably", and words for orphan, wagon, face and proper form of verbs. Kerler also asks about customs vocabulary such as the bridegroom's praying and Hanukkah games, but she says she does not remember them.

Bukshtein gives his parents' names and background: his father, a saddler (harness maker), was born in the 1880s in the Novoselitsa region and lived in Edinet and Lipcani. A paternal aunt left for America in 1937. He tells how, in the war, he was kept out of the army and trained as a mechanic at a clothing factory, with courses in Moscow. After the war he went back to tailoring and became a cutter, and Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for cutter.

Bukshtein names his mother Khaye, a tailor from Edinet, and his maternal grandfather, who had twelve children. Most of the family were killed in the war. He discusses how important it is to keep Yiddish alive and compares dialects with Transcarpathian and Lithuanian Yiddish. He names his four siblings and recounts what his mother told him of his brother Shloyme's time in the Bershad ghetto, where the boy's feet froze after he fell through ice while going to get food from a non-Jewish villager. Kerler asks about a Yiddish word for Christmas.

Bukshtein describes a Jewish funeral from his youth: the cortege stops at each synagogue, the burial society carries the bier on shoulders, and the cry of charity saving from death is heard. He mentions the charity box for buying cemetery land. Kerler asks about how the dead are invoked and then announces that he will put questions in Russian for translation into Yiddish.

Kerler puts Russian words and sentences to Bukshtein for translation into Yiddish: greetings, everyday words, adjectives and comparatives, words for house, mouse, window, sour and deaf. He also asks about sickness, piety, dialect words for bridge, brook and potato, and the sense of his answers. Bukshtein sings a short Zionist song and mentions a Yiddish poet's booklet. He says Jews at home would not drink and recalls drinking songs.

Katz describes Sabbath and holidays at home. His father worked at the landowner's distillery on Sabbath, supervising the animals, and Katz sometimes helped with the production figures. His father prayed with tefillin and did not eat before praying. Katz names Sabbath and holiday foods: bread, challah, cholent and potato dishes. Kerler questions him about the potato dish called mandeburchenik, and about fish, which was expensive. The owner's lake was fished out once a year, giving a festive occasion and gefilte fish. Katz also mentions Hanukkah money, the dreidel and latkes. For Purim he describes beggars going from house to house and recites their begging rhyme twice.

Answers questions from the AHEYM Yiddish dialectological questionnaire. Kerler gives Russian words or sentences, and Katz translates them into Yiddish. Items include: everyday objects (book, glass, skin, pigeon, building, ear), colours, comparatives and adverbs (quicker, nearer), weather words, verb forms and prepositions (the dative and accusative), and sentences on health and travel. They also test words such as well, flowers, potato, and baba.

Katz answers Kerler's questionnaire items. They cover Yiddish equivalents of Russian words and phrases (use or exploit, once, sometimes, suddenly, probably, a mistake, male) and a few Hebrew-derived words. Kerler explains differences in meaning, for example exploiting a person versus using a thing, and corrects Katz's reading of a Hebrew vowel sign. At the end Kerler thanks him for the help.

Kerler and Lemster ask Fishman a few dialect items, such as the words for mother, father, tallis and bread. He says his mother died in 1972 and his father in 1984, and that the family spoke Yiddish at home. He says there was a Jewish school and possibly two synagogues before the war, and does not know about a ritual slaughterer.

Fishman and the interviewers go through dialect items such as attic, cross, sick, sleep and tree. He says his father was born in Chudniv and his mother in a village nearby. He recalls that many Jews lived in Chudniv and then emigrated, and mentions his sister in America. His father held several posts, including chairman of an artisans' cooperative and factory director, and then retired on a small pension.

Kerler and Lemster ask dialectological questions, including the word for grandmother and the word for 'thanks'. Geller answers with reference to Poland and the Czech border. He tells an anecdote about a girl from Pyatka arriving in Zhytomyr with sacks. Lemster and Kerler also comment on the use of the letter alef in Yiddish newspapers.

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.

Vertman answers questions on holiday customs and food: kiddush on Sabbath, Passover dishes, Sukkot with the opened roof of the building, Hanukkah candles and potato latkes, Purim gifts and hamantashn, and Simchat Torah. He also describes Shavuot, when greenery was brought from the river to cover the floor, and what was eaten then (meat, fish, blintzes).

Vertman answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire in Yiddish: words (dybbuk, golem), greetings, adverbs of time and comparison, translations of Russian phrases and sentences, and the pronunciation of plurals. Other voices help with the answers. It also covers food and household words such as potato, dove, pigeon, groats, a window pane, and the question of where Lithuanian Jews and their speech were found.

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

Lys offers to show his mother's old baking dishes used for Passover kugel. A woman, possibly his wife (?), explains how the matzo kugel is made, with soaked matzo, eggs and salt baked in the oven, while Kerler asks what the dishes were called. Lys then begins on a letter about the Lys family name.

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.

Kerler asks about Hanukkah and Purim foods and customs. Geller recalls Hanukkah money for children and potato latkes, poppy-seed pastries and Purim gifts (shlekhmones), and Passover matzo, noting the use of matzo meal in baking at a memorial meal.

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