|
Recording Content:
This recording consists of a formal interview with David (Duvid-Hersh, or sometimes Duvid-Tsvi when called up to the Torah) Abramovich Vider (b. 1922 in Sighetu Marmatiei). (Part 1 of 4. See MDV 515, MDV 516, and MDV 517) He provides Professor Kerler with a brief tour of the synagogue and a look at its old Torah scrolls, and discusses Kolomyya’s contemporary Jewish religious community.
|
00:00:00
|
This tape consists of a formal interview with David (Duvid-Hersh, or sometimes Duvid-Tsvi when called up to the Torah) Abramovich Vider (b. 1922 in Sighetu Marmatiei). He provides Professor Kerler with a brief tour of the synagogue and a look at its old Torah scrolls, and discusses Kolomyya’s contemporary Jewish religious community. Vider talks about his traditional religious education in a yeshiva, where he learned to speak Hebrew. Vider’s father Avrum-Mayer worked many jobs as a shoykhet (kosher butcher), melamed (religious teacher) and a khazn/bal-tfile (cantor and/or prayer leader). Vider states that he remembers all the prayers and liturgy he learned. He briefly describes how he and his father once led Simkhes-Toyre (Simchat Torah) celebrations together. Vider then shares his and his family’s basic biographical details. He was born in the town of Sighetu Marmatiei, moved with his family at the age of three to Hîrlau, and then moved again around the age of twelve to Iași where he attended yeshiva. |
|
00:14:04
|
After some audio and logistical problems, Vider continues, explaining that he moved to Russia in 1940 without knowing any Russian. At the age of eighteen, he began working in a mining town in the Urals and then worked for some time as a mechanic in the Garagum (Kara-kum) desert in Turkmenistan, where he earned a decent living, but hated living in that area. After that job, he worked in a mine in the L’viv area, staying there until the age of seventy, at which time he retired to Kolomyya, a town he had visited often as his sister lived there. Vider learned how to cook and bake a whole repertoire of traditional Jewish foods from his sister, and he shares a recipe for chicken liver. |
|
00:20:15
|
Vider returns to the subject of his family life before he moved to the Soviet Union, richly describing shabes (Sabbath) and Passover celebrations, as well as his five siblings’ life stories. |
|
00:26:58
|
Vider shares his recipe for tshulnt (cholent, slow-cooked shabes stew) and discusses shoykhtim (kosher butchers) and the different kinds of meat dishes, including pastrami and geese that they would prepare. |
|
00:29:13
|
He sings a loshn-koydesh (the Hebrew-Aramaic “holy tongue” of prayer & liturgy) song that he learned while a student in the Beys-Arn Yeshiva. He describes the yeshiva’s teachers and curriculum, and recites some of the Hebrew grammar and verb conjugations that he remembers. Vider also explains the difference between a “rebe” and a “ruv”. |
|
00:36:57
|
Growing up, Vider was a khusid (Hasid, follower) of the Botoshaner Rebbe who lived in Iași. He and his family would go to the Rebbe for the high holidays. Vider studied for three years to become a tailor, but he did not enjoy the work, so he moved to the Soviet Union, where he thought he could earn a better living. |
|
00:39:11
|
Vider further describes the court of the Botoshaner Rebbe in Iași, detailing the baking of matzos and making of wine there. Vider then shares a fragment of the Rebbe’s “nign” (wordless melody) and sings a special “shir hamaloys”. Vider states that he used to sing this song and others when he went fishing and that is how he has remembered everything. |
|
00:41:17
|
“Shir Hamaloys” (Song of Ascents). |
|
00:44:15
|
He sings fragments from several shabes zmires (paraliturgical songs), including “Ko ribon,” and “tsur misheloy”. |
|
00:45:20
|
Vider talks about his prewar family life, focusing on his mother and father’s work, the family house in Hîrlau, and that town’s geography. He comments on the Yiddish dialect differences in the places he lived in his youth, and speaks about Kolomyya’s synagogue and contemporary Jewish community. Vider reports that he reads and writes in Yiddish. He shares his attitudes towards different dialects and talks about different people in Kolomyya with whom he speaks in Yiddish. |
|
00:54:06
|
Vider discusses his family relationship with the Botoshaner Rebbe, noting that he officiated his sister’s religious wedding. He also speaks about Jewish weddings and match-making in general. Vider also shares his memories about the Rebbe’s wife, family and court, and mentions that his mother’s cousin, Reb Mayer was a khazn (cantor) and tsadik (righteous holy man). |
|