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

A Ba'al Shem Tov Tale

We return this week to Isaak Nibulskiy, who retells a story that he heard from his grandfather about the Ba'al Shem Tov (also known by the acronym, the "Besht"). In this tale, the Besht works a miracle by helping a poor barrel-maker improve his lot.  Such stories are typical of the hagiographic tradition of the Hasidic movement and are perhaps best exemplified by the wonders told in the collection known as Shivhei ha-Besht, or, as it is known in English, "In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov".

A keen listener might have noticed that the setting of Nibulskiy's story in early 19th century Lithuania does not correspond to the biography of the Besht, who lived c.1698-1760 and settled in Medzhibozh, present-day Ukraine.  This sort of confusion is indicative of the process of folklorization, in which a story is passed on from generation to generation, in this case from grandfather to grandson, and the details get lost in transition.  It is possible that Nibulskiy combined two or more different stories about the Besht himself and about Shneur Zalmen of Liadi (the "Alter Rebbe," 1745-1812), the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty.  Because the stories were orally transmitted and there was no written source for Nibulskiy to refer to, it would have been easy for him mix these memories together.

--Asya Vaisman & Sebastian Schulman

Cholent: a Folk Etymology

When describing a special shabes (Sabbath) meal that his grandfather used to host, Isaak Nibulskiy (interviewed in Zhytomyr, 2008) mentions that his grandmother would serve tsholent (cholent), a meat stew slow-cooked starting on Friday. Because cooking is prohibited on the Sabbath, making cholent is a way to have hot food on Saturday, as the stew would cook overnight, kept warm in the oven. In this clip, Nibulskiy relates his understanding of the origins of the word "cholent". He believes it comes from the consonant Slavic word "chulan", meaning closet or pantry, where the oven could be located in a Jewish home. This folk etymology does not conform to the history of the word, however, which dates back to the 13th century, before the Slavic component of Yiddish was prominent. The commonly accepted etymology of the word is that it can be traced to the "present participle of the Latin verb CALERE (to be warm)," "calentem" (Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, Volume I, p. 400). An alternative etymology holds that the word comes from the French "chaud" (warm) and "lent" (slow).

Nibulskiy grew up in Poninka, in northwestern Ukraine, where a subdialect of Volhynian Yiddish was spoken. His dialect can be heard in the combination of the vowel shift from "oy" to "ey" ("tseneyfgeyn", "azeyne"), more commonly associated with the Northeastern Yiddish (or Lithuanian Yiddish), with the vowel shift from "o" to "u" ("mul") and from "u" to "i" ("fin", "kimen"), more commonly associated with Southeastern Yiddish (or Ukrainian Yiddish). (See, for example, Shaya Mitelman's post on the Mendele listserv describing some features of the dialect.)

--Asya Vaisman

Two Remedies for the Whooping Cough

Etia Shvartzbroit was born in Mohyliv Podilskyi in 1928. She comes from a religious family -- her grandfather was a Rabbi, and her parents kept a kosher household. Her family was quite wealthy -- they kept two servants and donated generously to the poor. Her mother, however, had trouble having children. When Etia was finally born after 13 years of trying, her mother wanted to make sure that she would grow up healthy.

Lutsk, 2003

Etia was, unfortunately, a sickly child -- she had whooping cough and was not responding to treatment. When the cough returned after a treatment with a doctor in Odessa, her parents turned to folk remedies. First, her father attempted to ward off the illness by "giving it away" to various streams in the town. When that did not help, her mother "sold" the child to a widow with many children who was so poor that bad luck (and thus, sickness) would stay away from her.

--Asya Vaisman

Keyn Eyn Hore! -- No Evil Eye!

"Incantations must not be taught to anyone," writes Avraham Rechtman in his 1958 book Yidishe Etnografie un Folklor (Jewish Ethnography and Folklore). During an expedition to Tomashpol (a shtetl in the Podolia region of Ukraine) in 2003, AHEYM met Liza Petrunenko, who believed in this rule of silence. Although she knew the formulas that one must say in order to ward off the Evil Eye, she refused to tell the interviewers. However, she did agree to demonstrate the procedure of "rolling an egg", which is done to dispel fear.

After a careful examination of a number of Jewish sources, I could not find any direct references to rolling eggs, though I did learn that eggs were used for other purposes in Jewish folk customs; for instance, the Talmud mentions eggs being used for divination (Sanhedrin 101a). I did find, however, an almost exact description of the procedure Liza performs on Dov-Ber on a website about remedies to ward off the Evil Eye among Mexicans and Latin Americans.

Scholars have proposed that the Evil Eye, as a folkloric and cultural symbol, originates in ancient Sumer and is present to this day in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim folk beliefs. The remedy of using an egg in the way we see above is most likely a fairly old practice and was probably brought over to Mexico by European settlers.

In Jewish custom, the Evil Eye is mentioned as far back as Proverbs in Tanakh (see, for instance, 23:6 and 28:22), and many preventative and curative measures for it exist, including spitting and incantations (mentioned in the video). Folklorist Dov Noy writes that "Although practices of this kind were disapproved of by rabbinic authorities... they persisted... In the Middle Ages there is evidence of a more widespread use of folk medicine among Jews. There are many folk prescriptions in the Sefer Hasidim (13th century), most of them derived from the contiguous Christian culture" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition).

How does your family ward off the Evil Eye? Have you ever seen someone "roll out an egg"? Let us know with your comments below!

-- Asya Vaisman