The Story of Joseph

In an interview conducted in 2003 in Zhovkva, Ukraine, Polina Lebvol related the entire plot of the Yoysef-shpil, or Joseph Play, that she remembered from her youth. As you might recall from Izrail Gliazer's account in this post, such plays were often performed on the holiday of Purim. Polina, however, believes that in Zhovkva, where she grew up, the play was performed on Passover. Not only does she remember the plot in great detail, but she also is able to sing a few of the songs from the play, as can be seen in the clip below.

Polina was born in 1920. Her father worked as a butcher and glass-blower, and her mother raised eight children. Polina briefly attended a Beys Yankev (Bais Yaakov) religious girls' school and began working as a seamstress at age 13.

She remembers the Joseph play so well in part because she performed in it several times when she was young. Plays based on the Biblical story about the sale of Joseph by his brothers were very common throughout Europe for centuries, primarily as Purim plays (purim-shpiln). The introductory song that appears in the clip above is very typical of the introductory songs of other Purim plays, such as this one, called Golias-shpil (the story of David and Goliath), and recorded by Sh. An-ski's ethnographic expedition in Kremenets in 1913. Such plays later formed the foundation for Yiddish theater.

The informed listener might notice that the Yiddish in Polina's song is somewhat daytshmerish, or Germanized, as can be seen in words such as "layte" instead of "layt" (people), "fon" instead of "fun" (from), and "shpile" instead of "shpil" (play). This type of speech reflects the longevity of these plays in Ashkenkazic Jewish culture, as these Middle High German forms, more typical of Old Yiddish, have been retained to the present day. These variants are a marker of the plays' origins in German-speaking lands, where Yiddish-speaking Jews lived prior to their migration to Slavic lands.

-- Asya Vaisman

Who Knows One?, Take Two

Many of our readers have probably heard the traditional Passover song, "Ekhod Mi Yoydeyo" (Who Knows One?). In this clip, Semyon Krotsh (born 1922 in Stefanesti, Romania) performs a beautiful rendition of the song in his dialect of Loshn Koydesh.

You may notice that for some of the numbers, Semyon lists all of the units in the set the first time they are mentioned: for example, he names the patriarchs, the matriarchs, the books of the Torah, and the twelve tribes. In addition to his impressive memory, Semyon is a marvelous and charming performer -- watch his warm and dynamic facial expressions as he sings.

Krotsh was educated in a kheyder (traditional religious boys’ school), a Romanian Modern Hebrew Jewish school, and a yeshiva, where he studied Talmud and other traditional texts. Although Krotsh was an excellent student and remembers everything he once learned in yeshiva, he also studied to be a tailor in order to make a living. 

During the war years, he escaped to the Soviet Union and was evacuated from the town of Rîbnita (Moldova) to the Caucasus region of Russia, where he worked on a kolkhoz (collective farm). From there, he was evacuated further into Azerbaijan and then drafted into the Red Army from 1942 to 1947. After the war, in 1949, Krotsh went to Kolomyya at the suggestion of a friend from the army, since it was near Romania. However, by the time he got there, the border was closed, and so he stayed in the town. AHEYM interviewed him there in 2005.

You may remember Semyon from this post, in which he sings a drinking song. You may also recognize this tune of Ekhod Mi Yoydeyo from Naftule Shor's performance of it, posted last Peysekh with this analysis by Michael Alpert.

--Asya Vaisman & Sebastian Schulman

Passover Games

Gut-moed! (Happy intermediate days of Passover!) This week was chol hamoed of Passover, the "profane" days of the festival, when some of the usual restrictions of holy days are relaxed but not entirely lifted. In Eastern Europe, children would often play games on the holiday, such as the one described by Duvid (David) Vider, interviewed in Kolomyya in 2003.

Because Jewish children in Eastern Europe could often not afford elaborate toys, they would invent games that required only everyday items as props, such as nuts (often walnuts). This game used eight nuts, equivalent to the eight days of Passover and of Sukkoth, the other occasion when the game was played. 

Duvid Vider was born in 1922 in Sighetu Marmatiei (in present-day Romania). He received a traditional religious education in a yeshiva in Iasi, Romania. 

For more of Duvid Vider, see Professor Dov-Ber Kerler's blog post in Yiddish about Vider's rendition of this Passover song.

--Asya Vaisman

Passover Fish

With Passover coming up this week, we have another clip from Sonia Litvak in Rivne, Ukraine (interviewed 2003), talking about how the holiday was celebrated in her home. Sonia recalls that fish was an important part of the Peysekh (Passover) meal. The father, as head of the household, was served the fish head, which was considered a delicacy in Eastern Europe. The rest of the family had to share the body and tail, with the tail being the least desirable part.

Because the family was unable to acquire enough matzah to last the entire holiday, they celebrated only the first three days, marking the first day with a traditional Passover Seder. Even though they observed a shortened holiday, those first three days were observed fully and strictly -- there was no bread or grains in the house, and Sonia's younger brother asked the fir kashes (the Four Questions) at the Seder.

--Asya Vaisman

Purim in Podgaytse

Last week was the holiday of Purim on the Jewish calendar -- a day of celebrating, hearing the Megillah, eating festive meals, exchanging gifts, and giving charity. In Eastern Europe, the purim-shpil, or Purim play, was a popular phenomenon: performers would visit homes during the holiday and entertain those present with skits, songs, and comedy. Dressing up in costumes and wearing masks was another common custom, as mentioned in this week's clip by Izrail Gliazer from Podgaytse, Ukraine. Izrail was born in 1919 and received a traditional Jewish education in a kheyder (religious school for boys). 

AHEYM interviewed Gliazer in Ternopil', Ukraine, in 2005. Gliazer mentions a few other traditions that were observed in Podgaytse on Purim. One that was fairly common throughout Eastern Europe but that may be surprising today is the custom of playing dreidel on Purim, a practice usually associated with the holiday of Khanike (Hanukkah). Finally, Gliazer discusses "purim gelt" -- money that was collected on Purim to fulfill the commandment of giving charity. He enumerates various organizations that were active in his town, such as the Zionist Trumpeldor organization, representatives of which would go door-to-door collecting money on Purim.

--Asya Vaisman

A Lemon for Sukkes

Semyon Later was born in 1919 in Smotrych, Ukraine, where he received an extensive Jewish education. He attended both kheyder (religious Jewish school) and a Soviet Yiddish school. When AHEYM interviewed him in Kamianets Podolsk in 2003, he remembered how his family observed Jewish holidays before the war.

Semyon begins by recalling two of the Four Questions traditionally recited by the youngest child in a family during the Passover Seder. He mentions that he would recite these questions at his grandfather's house. He then talks about the rituals involved in the celebration of the Sukkoth holiday, which he mistakenly remembers as Shavuoth. Semyon insists that instead of the traditional esrog (citron), his family would buy a lemon for the holiday. Likely the lemon was the closest approximation of the esrog that was available to the family. Semyon additionally recalls eating his meals in the Sukkah.

--Asya Vaisman

Three Generations of Religious Expression (Gaysin, Ukraine)

Mira Murovanaia was born in Nikolaev, Ukraine in 1926. During World War II, she was evacuated to Central Asia. After the war, she moved to Gaysin, Ukraine, where the AHEYM team interviewed her in 2002. Mira worked as a pharmacist in Gaysin for 45 years before retiring in 1990.

In this fascinating clip, Mira describes a broad spectrum of Jewish religious belief, practice, and custom of Soviet Jews before and after World War II. Her mother, though she believed in G-d "in her heart", felt that Jewish practice compromised her status as a Communist Party member.

Mira depicts a different manifestation of Jewishness in her account of holidays at her in-laws'. In this context, Communism and Judaism coexisted, as revolutionary and religious holidays both found their place in the home. Mira's memories of these holidays, however, are not marked by traditional observance, but rather by the foods that her mother-in-law taught her to prepare. The observance of holidays "without praying," as she says, suggests a more secularized form of celebration.

Finally, in her grandson's generation, Mira describes the reclamation of Jewish tradition by youth in the late Soviet period, reflecting the era of increased freedoms and social experimentation.

--Sebastian Schulman and Asya Vaisman

Homentashn on Shvues

"Homentashn on Shvues?!" you might ask. But the triangular pastry is usually eaten on Purim! Indeed, Purim is the time to indulge in prune- or poppyseed-filled treats, but on Shvues, Donia Pressler's family in Tulchyn (Ukraine) would make a filling of dairy rice pudding for their homentashn:

The holiday of Shvues (Shavuoth, Shavuot, Shvies), the Festival of Weeks, is coming up next week. The day commemorates G-d giving the Torah to the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt. Because the holiday lacks any distinguishing commandments (like the eating of matse on Passover or the building of a suke on Sukes, for instance), it was often one of the first to be forgotten by acculturating and assimilating Jews. In the Former Soviet Union, those Jews who do remember observing the festival usually recall eating dairy foods on that day, a well-known custom among Ashkenazi, Syrian, Iraqi, and other Jews. And that's how it came to pass that Donia's family ate homentashn on Shvues -- they were special, dairy, rice pudding-filled homentashn.

--Asya Vaisman

*Note: There will be no post next Wednesday in honor of the holiday. We'll see you the following week!

Who Knows One?

In case you still have a craving for matse, this week's post, brought to you by IU's Paul Artist-in-Residence and world-renowned Yiddish singer, pioneering figure in the Klezmer revival, and trailblazing Yiddish ethnographer Michael Alpert, offers one more look at Peysekh in Eastern Europe -- Naftule Shor in Bershad, Ukraine, chants hymns from the Passover hagode.

The markers of Ashkenazic Jewishness in the USSR and Former Soviet Union have differed greatly from those in North America or other parts of the world where religious and institutional life play a leading role. Since the late 1940s, Soviet Ashkenazic life and self-identity were almost entirely unofficial, often illicit, and manifested most vitally in family and small community contexts through grass-roots forms of expressive culture like language and verbal art, music – especially song – and  traditional foodways. 

Thus, the ability of persons of Naftule Shor’s generation to remember and especially to read portions of Jewish liturgy or paraliturgical text is usually a distinctive mark of religious or traditional upbringing transmitted and not forgotten through the Soviet Period, the Second World War, and the dissolution of community life that has often accompanied the emigratsiia: the large-scale emigration of Jews since the 1970s from the USSR and its successor states. New forms of Jewish life are again taking root in larger cities in the Former Soviet Union, but the continued dwindling and disappearance of smaller communities are not only a factor of the inexorable march of time and old age, but a consequence of an emigratsiia that continues to this day.

Many – though by no means all – Soviet Ashkenazim born before 1930 and still deeply familiar with traditional Jewish liturgy are zapadniki, (Russian: “Westerners,”), who grew up in areas of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic countries that were not part of the USSR until the years surrounding World War II. Naftule Shor’s Hagode reading transports us to an earlier era in East European and Soviet Jewish life and reminds us that religious Jewish life and tradition did not simply vanish with the establishment of the USSR or its annexations of neighboring areas.

This is particularly true of Peysekh, with its message of freedom and its function as a participatory celebration for which many older individuals recall ritual or textual specifics. In this clip, Shor chants portions of the four concluding hymns of the Passover seyder (lit. order: religious ritual accompanied by a meal and four glasses of wine). Asked by AHEYM interviewers what he recalls in connection with Peysekh, in particular the final hymnKhad gadyo (The One Kid), Shor begins to chant the latter from memory. Interrupted and asked if he knows the rest, he picks up a Hagode and begins to read and chant its four concluding hymns in order.

Shor begins with verses 1 and 3 of Ki loy noe, ki loy yoe (It Befits Him, it is Due Him), the final hymn of Halel(Praise), the penultimate Hagode section.  He moves directly into the Hagode’s concluding section Nirtso(Acceptance) with the first two verses of the hymn Adir hu (He is Mighty), before chanting all thirteen verses of the counting hymn Ekhod mi yoydeyo (Who Knows What “One” Means?). He often punctuates his chanting of the latter by translating the Hebrew original of each number into Yiddish for the interviewers, who he’s not sure understand (they do!).

Musically, Shor’s renditions are typical of an older, pre-modern and pre-American Ashkenazic style of reading theHagode, in particular its hymns. They are chanted (gezogt, lit. “said”) rather than sung (gezungen). Though they have pulse and melody, or more accurately mode, in the traditional Yiddish worldview they are not “songs”. This approach continues to distinguish the older Orthodox Ashkenazic style of synagogue and home liturgy from more modern, often West European-influenced styles employed by Conservative, Reform and Modern Orthodox traditions throughout the world. 

Additionally, Shor’s versions of the concluding hymns (chanted after the Seyder meal) are upbeat and mainly employ “major” modalities. This is also typical of older East European Jewish practice. While we don’t have an example here of Shor chanting the first portion/s of the Hagode, particularly Magid -- the narration of the Passover story itself -- it is characteristic to chant those portions in a more somber manner, utilizing musical modes that convey the suffering, power and drama of slavery, redemption from it, and the Exodus itself.

An intriguing modal and rhythmic moment in this clip is Shor’s brief rendition of Adir hu.  We don’t hear much of it, but it appears to be distinctive in its use of a “minor” mode (or one cadencing on the 2^nd degree of the mode) and especially in the pulse of the chant, which seems to imply an asymmetrical “7/8” rhythm in the repeated cadences. If the latter is true, we are witness to a moment of great exceptionality. Ashkenazic musical practice in general avoids or “straightens out” the asymmetrical rhythms of Ottoman or Balkan musics. Shor’s rendition raises the question as to whether Jews in southern, former Ottoman and certainly Ottoman-influenced locales like Bershad’ preserved features in liturgy or paraliturgical music that are otherwise absent from secular genres like the instrumental klezmer tradition as we know it.

The texts for Ekhod mi yoydeyo and Khad gadyo are likely of non-Jewish origin, given their parallels in many European cultures. Khad gadyo is unique among the concluding hymns of the Hagode by virtue of being in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Some see this as proof of its antiquity, but given its multitude of variants in non-Jewish European folk traditions, it is more likely a borrowed theme deliberately penned in Aramaic to give it the patina of age and Jewish specificity.

At the end of the clip, Shor refers to the custom of finishing the Seyder on the second night of Peysekh by reciting the blessing that begins the ritual period of Sfires ho-oymer (The Counting of the Omer).

-- Michael Alpert

(with concurring opinions provided by Sruli Dresdner)

Peysekh in Shpikov

We return this week to Evgeniia Krasner from Shpikov, Ukraine, as she describes Peysekh (Passover) preparations and practices. For Evgeniia, as for many other Jews from the region, Peysekh was a particularly important holiday. In Soviet times, while public displays of Jewish observance were heavily discouraged by state authorities, many Jews held on to the traditions of Passover, such as clandestinely baking and eating matzah. More than most other Jewish practices, Peysekh customs persisted among Soviet Jews, in part because of the symbolic content of the holiday's message of national liberation, and because of the memory of participation in the Seyder as children.

Evgeniia mentions how her father would read the Agude (Haggadah), and she would ask the Four Questions -- in the clip, she begins reciting the first one, about the difference between eating khomets (chametz) and matzah. Going in reverse chronological order, Evgeniia then describes the preparations that went on before the holiday, first bedikes khomets and biur khomets (searching for remaining crumbs of bread and then burning them), and then the kashering (making kosher) of pots for Peysekh using a hot stone.

More clips about Peysekh in the Soviet Union

A koshern Peysekh aykh!

--Asya Vaisman and Seb Schulman

Note: Next week's post will appear one day late, on Thursday, to accommodate the Passover holiday.