|
Recording Content:
This recording is a continuation of a formal interview with Iosef (Yosl) Grigoryevich Grayf (b. 1922 in Kolomyya). (Part 2 of 2. See MDV 517)
Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivs’k.
|
00:00:00
|
This tape is a continuation of a formal interview with Iosef (Yosl) Grigoryevich Grayf (b. 1922 in Kolomyya). He speaks generally about prewar Jewish life in Kolomyya, and mentions that there is another Jew in the town who knows the history better than he does, but not Yiddish. Noting that this person is Jewish only on his father’s side, Grayf shares his negative views of Jewish law vis-à-vis the question of matrilineal or patrilineal descent. He comments on shabes (Sabbath) observances from before the war, focusing on the foods they would eat, including gefilte fish. |
|
00:08:52
|
Grayf details other holiday observances and traditional foods, and speaks about Yiddish dialects and Kolomyya’s contemporary Jewish community. He briefly returns to the subject of general prewar Jewish life, noting the different Jewish professions and many Jewish artisans in the town. |
|
00:17:42
|
Grayf discusses the non-Jews who spoke Yiddish in Kolomyya before the war, and speaks more broadly about anti-Semitism and Jewish-Christian relations in that period. He comments on contemporary economic conditions and the drastic changes in the town in the prewar, postwar and post-Soviet periods. |
|
00:24:36
|
Grayf notes that Kolomyya had many Jewish political youth groups in the prewar period including Zionist and Bundist factions. |
|
00:27:17
|
Grayf answers questions from Professor Kerler’s sociolinguistic and dialectological survey. |
|