Grandma Malka's Yiddish letters are a precious inheritance for her descendents

Will you give me a free Yiddish translation?

This is one of the most frequently asked question that I get on this site.

My answer is: a competent Yiddish translator costs money.

Some people feel that I have a sacred duty to Jewish history translate their old Yiddish documents for free, while others wish they could pay, but simply don’t have the cash.

Both these groups tell me that they plan to find some amateur Yiddishists or someone from the Old Folks Home to translate their documents for free.

To them I say: “Good luck and Gezunteheit!”

Free Yiddish Translation: The Reality

Not everyone understands that translating old Yiddish documents is time-consuming and hard work. They don’t acknowledge that it is a rare skill that must be cultivated with study and practice. For this reason, most native speakers cannot read old Yiddish letters and will not be able to translate them properly.

But don’t take my word for it – I’m running in business, after all. Take the advice of the folks at JewishGen.org. They are a non-profit body with extensive experience in managing translations and they firmly recommend paying a professional, rather than looking for volunteers, as noted in this article:

Having become frustrated with the task of organizing volunteers to do translations, many people want a different approach. Typical problems are:

People volunteer to do work and then find many distractions which interfere with the task.

Problem: can’t meet any deadlines.

Volunteers have varying capabilities with the original language (Hebrew, Yiddish) and also with English. If their skills with the original language are poor, there will be many blank spaces and/or question marks to indicate untranslatable words or phrases. If their skills with English are poor, then the translation is not readable.

Problem: the quality of the translation is poor and the coordinator may have to do considerable editing and/or rewriting or ask someone else to work on the same passage.

Or, not wanting to hurt the volunteer’s feelings, the coordinator transmits the poor translation to the Translations Manager, perhaps knowing that the Manager will reject it. Thus, the coordinator can pass the responsibility of rejecting a translation to the Yizkor Book Project and be absolved of the unenviable task of relaying the truth.

Problem: The Translations Manager has to read the translation, determine if it can be salvaged, spend time trying to rewrite it or returning it to the coordinator. In such a scenario no one’s time is used productively and often the frustration level of the coordinator rises to the point that he/she wants to resign from this position.

Our conclusion is that working with volunteer translators – although less expensive than paying a translator – can be unnerving, frustrating, and unproductive. Sometimes we allow a poor quality translation to get online because we don’t want to hurt the translator’s feelings and because the amount of good may outweigh the bad. Then we receive private emails castigating us for not upholding certain standards…

If there is a group of volunteers more devoted to preserving Jewish history and translating historical documents than JewishGen, I am not aware of it. So I think you can trust their advice on this point.

Real Yiddish Translation costs money.

How to Find Affordable Translations

If you are like most people looking for Yiddish translations, you are doing it for personal and not business reasons. All the money comes out of your own pocket, so you are naturally going to be careful to get the best value. Over time I’ve found ways to help you keep it affordable.

Here are a few tips that will help you keep costs down if you are on a budget:

1. Send a high-quality color scan: If you have an old handwritten Yiddish document, I need to see it before I can give you a quote. That’s because old Yiddish handwriting can be difficult to decipher or the document might be damaged, smudged, torn, etc. If your document is very hard to read, then it is extra time-consuming to translate it and it therefore cost more money. In many cases, a high-quality color scan solves some of the problems of illegibility. This means is that it will cost less!
2. Start small: If you have 100 pages of letters, you may hesitate at the cost of translating them all at once. In that case, start by sending me a few letters. Reading your first translations will help you determine if it’s worthwhile to continue.
3. Fund-raise from Relatives: If you are translating old family letters, chances are there will be other members of your family who will want to read the translations. Let them know that the letters will probably never be translated… unless they give their share. If you can split the cost two, three and four ways, it becomes very affordable.
4. Ask for a Basic Translation: We offer a unique service, called basic translations, which means that we create a very literal translation, without editing or background research. This translation will not be so fun to read, but it’s fine if all you need is to extract genealogical information from the document: e.g. names, dates, places, etc. It is about 30% cheaper than a regular professional translation.

Remember: I’m giving you more than just a bunch of words typed on a page. It’s your family story, it’s a profound journey into your own history. Just read these testimonials to see what I mean.

As one woman wrote:

Naomi’s deft and thoughtful translations of old family letters, despite their profound sadness, gave powerful insight to my family struggles. Naomi was extraordinarily conscientious in her translations while, at the same time, very sensitive to my reaction following a reading of them. After a lifetime of these letters gathering dust in the closet, in less than a week Naomi has begun to remove the shroud that has concealed my family’s past. Absolutely priceless.

For something that’s priceless, I think our prices are pretty low .

How do you feel about paying for Yiddish translation services?

The future monarch will also break a glass with his foot during the nuptial ceremony at London’s Westminster Abbey, and they are already planning to give their first-born son a bris.

What’s my source for these outrageous yet strangely plausible rumors?

On March 17, The Jewish Chronicle published an article detailing Will and Kate’s plan to integrate the Jewish custom of breaking the glass into their Anglican wedding ceremony. This surprising news quickly spread to blogs all over the web, and was even picked up by several respectable news sites (if you Google “Jewish custom at royal wedding” you will see it’s reported all over the place). Apparently even Palace officials took the report seriously.

The only problem was that this report was not true. In fact, the Jewish Chronicle even published a disclaimer that the article was a “Purim shpiel,” a joke for the Jewish festival of Purim, which is traditionally a time of pranks and merry-making.

Nu, it’s time for everyone to brush up on their pop-culture Yiddish slang already! (That article is good because it includes audio)

Alternatively, you can keep spreading this rumor and embellishing on it, like I did… That might be more fun. Let the spirit of Purim live on!

P.S. Actually the bris part is true – all British royal male babies are traditionally circumsized.

P.S.S. Mazal Tov William and Kate!

P.S.S.S. Go on, spread it around – click the Facebook “Like” button below

So here I present an original video: The 4 Questions of the Passover Seder (Mah Nishtana), in Yiddish and Hebrew, with my own English translation. The tune is by Alter Yachnes, also known as Rebbe Alter, and I find that it always puts me in a good mood when I hear it:

I always thought the Mah Nishtana was the highlight of the seder. Maybe that’s because I was the youngest in my family and that meant that I got to sing it first – my once-a-year spotlight performance. Since Pesach is such a family-oriented holiday, it seems to me that the four questions are very symbolic. Basically we all need someone to ask our question to and someone to ask us questions, and that is the intersection of generations.

Oh yeah, and Passover is Paysach in Yiddish!

A Kashern und fraylichen Paysach to you all!

PS. Thanks to Rebbe Alter’s management for permission to use this song. In our family, we are big fans of Rebbe Alter!  If you like his music you can hear more at Mostly Music.

PSS. Want to learn Yiddish? Get some free lessons at Yiddish Academy

Want to learn Yiddish? Visit our sister site Yiddish Academy and get a free Yiddish lesson! Consider it a birthday gift!

Over the past year, I’ve been privileged to manage over 40 translation projects, each of which has opened a window into Jewish history and lives of our people. Through this website, I have met so many wonderful people via email, phone and Skype. Thank you for your glowing testimonials. They give me much nachas!

Thank you to everyone for sharing this journey with me and I look forward to sharing more fascinating stories with you on this site.

Zei Gezunt!

Naomi

PS. Click here to get a free Yiddish lesson at Yiddish Academy!

Gwyneth’s father, TV producer Bruce Paltrow, descended from the Paltrowicz family, an illustrious Polish rabbinic dynasty and his great-grandfather Paltrowicz, was the rabbi of the town of Nowograd, near Lomza, in the Bialystok province. His father, Rabbi Simcha (Simon) Paltrowicz, moved to the USA in 1872 and held a pulpit in Buffolo, NY, for many years. He published this book, Simchas Hegion (Loose translation: “The Joy of Knowledge”), which collects his original insights into the Torah and the Jewish festivals (in Hebrew). Interestingly, it was published in faraway Jerusalem, which indicates a very deep attachment to tradition, though he had traveled so far.

Paltrow’s mother, actress Blythe Danner, is a Quaker of Dutch descent, according to Wikipedia (though I did not look into that).

The shows producers made use of the Jewish Records Index (JRI)-Poland‘s extensive records to help Gwyneth trace her family tree. The JRI-Poland is an incredible resource for Polish Jewish ancestry research, with over 4 million entries. So it’s well worth checking if you have Polish blood, and what Ashkenazi Jew doesn’t have Polish blood somewhere in their family tree?

My own background is Hungarian and my family were typically snooty about that, though recently I discovered that my great-great-great grandfather was from a town near Warsaw. That’s a special discovery for us as my brother now lives with his family  in Warsaw, where he works as a rabbi. The Joys of Jewish Genealogy!

Good luck, Gwyneth, in digging up your Jewish roots. It’s a wonderful journey –  and let us know if you find any old letters in Yiddish!

This picture of Joseph and Helen Weber was recognized by their grandson in the Biala Rawska Yizkor Book

I love doing Yizkor book translations as I find it quite thrilling to make a contribution to these incredible historical records. The Yizkor Books were compiled in the ’50s and ’60s, when thousands of Holocaust survivors organized themselves into small societies dedicated to documenting the history of destroyed European Jewish communities. These individuals contributed written accounts and photographs to create volumes of “memorial books” to perpetuate the memory of their towns and the people who lived there. This is even more astonishing when we consider that members of each town’s group were scattered across the world and that communications in those days were almost exclusively by snail mail, and that publication costs were high. As primary historical documents of huge significance, the Yizkor books are a gift for all generations from the those battered yet wise survivors, and a unique enterprise of the “People of the Book.”

The Yizkor books are primarily written in Yiddish and Hebrew, and I consider it a privilege to translate these volumes into English so that more people can benefit from them. Yiddish-Translation.com is regularly approached by people who want relevant chapters from Yizkor books translated in order to help them with their research. You can find scans of the original Yizkor Books on the New York Public Library website. JewishGen has a wonderful project to translate the tables of contents, which is a good place to start if you would like a general idea of what a particular Yizkor book might offer you. JewishGen encourages individuals and groups to privately organize the translation of chapters that interest them, because the volume of material is just too vast to rely on their own pool of volunteers. Michael Schoeman plans to contribute his translation to JewishGen’s archives and we encourage all our clients to do the same.

Yizkor books can be a goldmine of information for people researching their Jewish genealogy. If you know the name of the town where your family lived, you can learn a great deal about their lifestyle and society from that town’s Yizkor book, and you might be fortunate enough to find a mention of your relatives in the written accounts or among the necrologies (lists of the dead). Like Michael Schoeman, you might even hit the jackpot…

Michael has agreed to let me publish the English translation of his grandfather’s article in the Biala Rawska Yizkor book, for the benefit of other people researching the Jewish community of Biala and surrounding regions. Joseph Weber’s  account is packed with details about life in Biala, as well as some very interesting observations about that society. I especially enjoyed his insight about how there were no poor people in the town because the general standard of living was so low and that rich people would give away their fortunes in order to marry their children off well. The religious-social stratification and snobbery is also evoked quite clearly.

Thank you to Michael for making this translation available to us, and thank you to the late Joseph Weber, and to the thousands of other Yizkor Book contributors, for having the foresight to write down your memories for the benefit of us all.

My Birthplace: Biala Rawska

Joseph Meyer Weber (as a young Yeshiva boy) and his wife, before departing for America in 1905

My city of birth that I will describe here is called Biala Rawska. It is about ten miles south of Warsaw, on the left side of the Vistula River. In my time (1890-1905), the majority of the population was Jewish, comprising about 300 families.

I’m not familiar with the story of the first Jewish settlers of the town. In fact, there was really no one in the town who knew this story. The inscriptions on the tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery, as well as in the shul, whose construction no one remembered, were witness to the fact that the Bialer community existed at the beginning of the 18^th century. I use the word community, because there were individual Jews possibly living there already in the 17^th century, and maybe even before that.

In Biala, contrary to Sholom Aleichem’s folktales, there were fewer poor people than rich people. That means, that everyone was poor, even the so-called “rich” ones. But according to the general lifestyle of those times, there were almost no real poor in the town because of the low standards of living that prevailed. An income of three rubles a week was enough to cover the needs of daily living for a couple with two or three children. Even the Rav of the town received no more than a fifteen ruble annual pension.

Since the earnings of most people in the town were enough for wages and for basic needs, a real pauper was only the one who went from house to house collecting handouts (alms). There were only a few such people in the town.

On the other hand, a rich man was someone that earned a few hundred rubles, whose hundreds became, in the way of things, thousands. These types of rich people were in large number in the town. But they lost their wealth (though they did not, God forbid, become poor) after they married off one or two of their children. They gave the new couple dowries, gifts, wedding provisions, furniture, and sometimes even room and board.

The Jewish population comprised about 29% small-scale merchants and storekeepers, 20% shoemakers, 15% tailors, 10% butchers, 5% wagon drivers, and 5% of those who worked in the religious professions, such as the rabbi, khazzen (cantor), shokhtim (ritual slaughterers),and about 10 religious teachers. There were a couple of hat makers, tinsmiths, carpenters, barbers, knitters, and one weaver. There were no Jewish professionals, such as doctors or lawyers. A number of shoemakers and tailors had workrooms (areas) in their one-room homes, and often employed a few workers, generally the local youths. They were called “tandaytnikes.” Other shoemakers and tailors worked in their homes only taking customized orders. These orders were mainly for boots or for clothing for the holidays (Yom Tov), also for wedding outfitting. The tandaytnikes would sell their materials at the fairs of the surrounding towns and villages, and sometimes to local customers.

The main source of income was from the farming population of the surrounding villages. The farmers would bring grain, fruit, greens, eggs, and dairy into the town. They would sell these products to a merchant or storekeeper and use the money they received to buy what they needed for their daily life. The landowners around the town borrowed money from the rich people and shopped on credit at the stores. Often they would sell their last bunch of grain or the wool from their sheep. The landowners, as well as the farmers, would sell their cattle to the butchers and their horses to the wagon drivers. A common Jew would rent an orchard from the landowner or farmer, and after this Jew, his wife and children would laze around for five months in their orchard, this “sadovnik” (lessee) would come back into town with tens of rubles as earnings, and frequently with more than a hundred.

Merchants and storekeepers did not wait until the farmers would bring their products into the town. They went to the villages and bought the products at the individual farms. The butchers and wagon drivers did the same. The lifestyle was inexpensive. The daily menu consisted primarily of potatoes, bread, other grains, and dairy. The cost of these products was low. Rent for a room was about 20 rubles per year. A wagonload of wood for heating would cost about three rubles. A travel ticket to a nearby city was around 20 to 30 kopecks. To go by train, you would often go only with connections (by pulling strings, “na blat”). Tuition for a young boy in cheder was about 10 rubles a year in the younger classes, and about 25 ruble in the higher grades. That’s how everyone’s income was enough for the basics and other needs, though some had to collect more money to sustain them.

Chana Yocheved, the wife of Mendel Weber, the mother of Yosel (Joseph) Meyer Weber, who lived in New York

All the residents in the town were religiously disposed. They prayed three times a day, observed Shabbos, celebrated all the holidays (yomim tovim), fasted on all the fast days, blessed each new month and each new moon, did not taste any food before praying on Shabbos, washed hands and said “se’u yedeichem” (“lift the hand”) before eating [bread], then said the grace after meals; said “krias shema” before going to sleep and “modeh ani” upon rising every morning. Children that were already old enough to speak would have to say “modeh ani” or “brochos” blessings.

During Selichos time (the week before Rosh Hashana), children and adults alike would rise before daybreak and go to shul for the selichos prayers. During the yomim noraim (the time between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur), everyone in the town agreed, that “even the fish in the waters are trembling.” On Rosh Hashana, the entire town, women and children as well, would go down to the river and throw away their sins (tashlich). On the day of Yom Kippur eve, everyone would “shlog kapores” (swing a chicken around the head), and even a newborn had to do the same.

Every child had a religious upbringing, and the boys went to shul with their fathers. There were no misnagdim (those who opposed the Chassidim) or apikorsim (heretics) in the town, and each person in the settlement would travel to see his Tzaddik “leader” as frequently as possible.

The dominant role that religion held in the town had a destructive effect on the cultural side of life. Everything in the town was colored by religion. The babies were delivered with the help of a simple, unfamiliar woman who had experience of childbirth solely through the many births that she had endured. The religious view did not permit that a male, even a doctor, particularly a non-Jewish doctor, should take part in the delivery at all. If there were complications during a birth, the family would gather a minyan (10 men) who would begin to pray at the bedside of the woman in labor. If a woman in labor would was in a dangerous situation, they would tie a rope from her bed to the aron kodesh (Holy Ark) in the shul or in the beis medrash (place of learning).

When the child was born, they would hang shir hamalos notes (praises to God) around his bed so that evil spirits or demons should have no influence over the new mother and child, and every evening, a teacher and a group of young children would come and recite shema yisroel. When a young boy turned three years old, for the first time he went or was taken (carried, in fact) to cheder. He went with a little hat on his head and a pair of tzitzis or a tallis kotton on his body. In cheder, the little boy was taught the alef bais (Hebrew alphabet), and the gimmel (third letter of the alphabet) became a little bag of money that fell from heaven. In cheder, the boy also learned all the blessings, learned to be God fearing, and how to protect himself from evil spirits.

Later, when the boy grew a little older, he would learn Hebrew and how to daven (pray). When he would enter chumash cheder (the older classes where he would learn chumash or Bible), the teacher would explain everything in a religious context: Noah and the Patriarchs were painted as Tzaddikim and Godly people who fulfilled all the mitzvos (religious commandments), prayed wearing their tallis and tefillin all the time, and were always reciting tehillim (Psalms) and learning Gemara (Talmud). Moses was presented simply as a religious leader, a mediator between God and the Jews. A sort of chassidic rabbi on a larger scale. The boy, and later as a father as well, would refer to Moses as Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Rabbi). The Prophets were portrayed as Godly people who were able to see the future’s events and whose task it would be to punish the Jews for disobeying God’s commands.

According to the teacher, the destruction of the Temple was the greatest tragedy in Jewish history because now there was no place to offer sacrifices to God, or perform the rituals and other religious ceremonies. The word galus (exile), meant exile of the Divine Presence, a tragedy of God, in which the exile of the nation of Israel played a distinct role. Channuka was celebrated because of God’s miracle in making one vial of oil that was enough for one day and yet one candle lasted for eight days. Something in the story of Channuka retained the word “Maccabi.” But this was only as a reminder that during Channuka a special prayer was to be recited among the regular prayers. Purim was celebrated because Mordekhai Hatzaddik was victorious over Haman the evil man. Pesach (Passover) had more of a relevance with its matzo and chometz (leavened foods), the seder, the four cups of wine, and Eliyahu the Prophet, rather than with the Jews leaving Egypt (yetzias mitzrayim). Shavuos is a holiday in honor of receiving the Torah. Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the month of Av) is the day of the destruction of the Temple. No weight was placed on the fact that along with the destruction of the Temple the existence of the Jewish people went along with it.

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were Days of Awe, because in the heavens people would be judged and God would be deciding who was going to live or die in the coming year. Other than the fact that chumash was learned with a religious perspective, in general the learning went according to “כצפחות בדבש”, a system that can be translated as a taste of honey, “as a woman that has conceived and will give birth to a boy, etc., etc.” [this is a quote from Leviticus 12:1]

The regular boy did not go any higher than “chumash cheder” with his learning [that would be around ten years old], as if to say “the boy doesn’t want to study.” So, the father would take him to work or would give him as an “apprentice” to another local tradesman. And that’s how a boy grew up to be a Jew who could hardly daven (pray). The children of more prominent families, who had to take in more learning, because these children, God forbid, cannot be made into shoemakers or tailors, were sent to “gemara cheder” (more advanced learning). There, the Talmud was mainly studied, along with the commentaries, post-Talmudic commentaries, and other religious texts. Not only did they not learn world history, geography, etc., but not even Jewish history was touched. Teaching the children Hebrew, grammar, etc. was considered unnecessary and dispensable, even though the teacher himself had a solid knowledge of these subjects.

In the town, there was a government elementary school, where children learned to read and write Polish and Russian, arithmetic, etc. The education was free of charge because most of the residents were already paying a school tax. However, none of the Jewish boys went to this school because since the Czar’s picture was on the wall, they would have to sit with their heads uncovered, something a Jewish boy would never think of doing. From the time a boy left his cradle, until the final moments of his life, a Bialer Jew would never remove his hat or yarmulke from his head, except at the barber or when bathing. And even if one could sit in school with his hat on, this Jewish boy would still not attend this school because the cheder took up his whole day and evening, from 12 to 14 hours a day. For the same reason, the cheder boys did not go to Mendel Schreiber, who taught writing and reading, and aside from that occupied himself with watch making. His students were all girls.

The only place where a boy could learn to read and write was in the cheder. The teacher would write a grizel “גריזעל”, an example of letters or a complete sentence and would give this to the boys to copy. Meanwhile, the teacher would have a nap and a quick bite to eat, whiles the boys were busy with their writing. When the teacher roused himself from his snooze, he would examine the boys’ writing and test the boys’ reading, and right after that, would continue on with learning chumash or gemara. Since most of the writing time was dedicated to Yiddish, math, and correspondence writing, and very little time to Polish and Russian, most of the Jewish boys knew a little Yiddish, a bit of math, and practically no Polish or Russian. If a Bialer Jew needed to write a Yiddish letter, he would have to go to a “קענער” or someone that “knows how” to write the address on the envelope. So, this education system resulted in the educated ones in the town possessing a greater or lesser knowledge base in Talmudic and religious books, being able to write a letter, and knowing a little bit of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. But even this “educated one” could not respond to a question with a grammatically correct and sophisticated Hebrew sentence, nor was he able to name three or four Jewish kings in chronological order.

In this sort of cultural situation in the town, naturally, there was no need for literature. Part of the residents were not even able to daven. The rest of them would occupy their free time with learning Talmudic texts or with reciting Psalms. No one had any idea about Mendele Mocher Seforim, Y.L. Peretz, M. Spector, Sholom Aleichem, Y. Denizon, etc. The names Shomer, Tannenbaum, etc. [all of the above were pioneering Yiddish literary figures of the era], were a little familiar only to the youth that worked for a little bit in the larger cities such as Lodz and Warsaw, and they would also tell about the existence of theater and actors. They would also bring folk music into the town which the mothers would use as lullabies for their children. Also, some of Goldfaden’s pieces were used in Purim plays. [Abraham Goldfaden, 1840-1908, is known as the father of Yiddish theater.] There was no newspaper in the town. The seforim (religious books) in the Beis Medrash (study hall) comprised the only library in town.

In the first years of the 20^th century, there were already a few boys studying in the Beis Medrash who subscribed to Yiddish papers and read Mapu, Smolenski, and other writers of the Enlightenment (Haskalah) period in the most secret fashion. But when the town discovered these goings-on, there was a terrible outcry. That’s how the cultural life looked in the town at the time.

Medical care in the town was exceptionally poor, and hygiene was generally an unknown concept. There was lots of illness, but nevertheless, the mortality rate was within a normal range because the fresh air that the winds would blow from the surrounding fields, gardens, and forests, along with the nourishing, fresh foods helped prolong the life span and overcome illness. Speaking of issues of illness, it is worthwhile to mention that the words “illness” and “sick” were not uttered in the town. Instead, the words “sleepiness” or “sleep” were used. The “sleepy” behaviors mentioned were mainly colds, typhus, pneumonia, etc., all of which began with the ayin horo or “evil eye.” In the town, they didn’t know about heart disease, cancer, blood poisoning, etc. It was only that these types of towns were “taken over” by sorcery, apoplexy, or were just “caught.” If anyone took to being “sleepy,” he would take home remedies that a neighbor would recommend, for example cupping or leeches.

A doctor was called only in situations where the illness had worsened. When the “sleeper” was almost at the end, a minyan (quorum) of ten men was assembled and they recited Psalms for the sick person’s benefit. Sometimes his name would be written on the Holy Ark in the shul, and sometimes a new name would be added to his original name, a name alluding to a long life – such as Chaim or Alter (meaning the “old one”). Sometimes a family member would run to his Rabbi for a blessing. When the sick person was in his last minutes, they would say he had “passed through” it.

No dead person was buried in a casket. There were side boards placed in the grave, and afterwards the body was positioned in the grave with his talis and shrouds on his body, and small pieces of shards were placed on the eyes. They covered him with boards and buried him with the earth that was dug out of the grave. The only organized group that existed in the town was the chevra kadisha, a group of ordinary Jews whose job it was to prepare the body for burial, and then to bury it.

In the town, there were no community activities. The three communal buildings – the shul, the beis medrash, and the mikva (ritual baths), could all be on the verge of collapse, but no one would even think about calling an assembly to think about this issue and raise funds for this cause. The remnants of these buildings would have to wait for the death of a member of a wealthy family, and the chevra kadisha undertook to do the final rites so that the family would donate a substantial sum to the community, part of which would go to “le’chaim” events (meaning festive occasions), and the rest would go to community needs.

The cemetery (“דאס גוטע ארט” the good place) served as a place of burial as well as a feeding place for cattle and horses. Only in 1923, when an American came to visit his father’s grave and he became aware of the situation with the cemetery, he used his American dollars to make sure that cattle and horses would not come near the graveyard.

In the town, there were no benevolent organizations, no unions or political parties. The settlement was divided between those from an elite ancestry and the ordinary folk. And the elite ones were divided into groups, each one to his sort. Each group was called by the name of the city in which their Rebbe or Tzaddik lived, such as Gerer, Alexander, Amshenover, etc. Each group kept a distance from the other and all the groups distanced themselves from the ordinary folk. The result of this was that neither the festive nor tragic occasions bore a true united, harmonious character. For example, Purim and Simchas Torah were very spirited in the town, but the festivities were not united. In fact, each group was to its own.

The only time, in my days, when there were political factions in the town, was when we needed a new Rabbi. There were two candidates: one from the Gerer chassidim, and the second from the Alexander chassidim. The town was divided into two sides: the Gerer side and the Alexander side. In those times, being called a Gerer or an Alexander chossid had great merit. This was the only time that the prominent people were counted along with the regular people.

May this description serve as a gravestone to my deceased town of Biala.

About the Author (written by his grandson Michael Schoeman): Joseph Meyer Weber was born in 1883, married in 1905 and immigrated with his wife, then named Ella, in 1906. They lived at first in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, where he owned a confectionery store and then in the 1920′s moved to the Bronx where he changed his business into a wholesale tobacco and candy store. (What a treat for a grandchild!). He and Ella (changed to Helen) had five children and 11 grandchildren, and both lived until 1958.

Learn more about Yizkor Book translations.

In this post, I’ve included a list of Yiddish names for girls. (A similar list of Yiddish names for boys is also in the works – coming soon) There are many interesting Yiddish girls names which you may find in your family. You may even consider giving your own daughter a Yiddish name after a relative of that name. Naming after deceased ancestors is a very old Jewish tradition and a way of handing down an inheritance of good character to the next generation, since we believe that a person’s soul is attached to their name. Some Yiddish names sound very old-fashioned, while others are making a comeback. In this list, I have also added the Hebrew equivalent of many Yiddish names, as these are quite popular among parents who want to carry on the family names but don’t want to give a Yiddish name to their child, for whatever reason.

Yiddish Names for Girls

Note: This list is still a work in progress – I just started with 20 Yiddish names that came to mind. I’m sure I missed many. If you want to add a name to this list and learn more about it’s origin and meaning, write it in the comment are below.

Perhaps they do. We’ll never know until you get them translated. But even without seeing your letters and postcards, I’m willing to bet that they contain multiple variations of the following statements:

• “Please write more often”
• “Thank you for the money you sent (and please send more…)”
• “Your mother/father/sister/cousin is suffering from poor health”
• “Send my regards to cousin X”
• “The winter is terribly cold”
• “Thank God we are managing to get by”
• “Please, please write more often (and tell X to write too)”

Sometimes a letter is a genealogical goldmine, revealing a wealth of names, dates, places and other details. Occasionally it will record an interesting story for posterity. Often it contains nothing other than minimalist updates on life. I guess that in the days before Facebook, our ancestors had to satisfy themselves with very little emotional interaction with their dearest ones across the seas!

In my experience interesting stories and historical insights are more common in Yiddish memoirs, which are characterized by hindsight, than in Yiddish letters, which were penned in the immediacy of the moment, when today’s weather seems more consequential than the rise and fall of civilizations.

But there is something else we gain from Yiddish letters and postcards, if not the meaty data we thought we were craving. As we decipher the fragments of these fragile documents, which are so often damaged and hard to read,  we gain an intimate insight into the state of mind of real people in that moment – and not just anybody, but our own flesh and blood. We hear their voices and glimpse their personalities as they really were, and sometimes we recognize ourselves in them. We are touched by the power of the love that bound together the members of our families, though they lived on different continents, in different worlds, never to meet again.

Recently we translated a series of postcards written from Krakow in the late ’30s, and the client was surprised that they contained no reference whatsoever to the stormclouds of world war and Jewish doom that were gathering over Poland at that time. Rather they focused on the illness of the elderly mother of the family(the client’s great-grandmother), her eventual death, her funeral, and the debts incurred as a result of all of the above. Considering that all the people involved were brutally murdered and their entire society decimated just a few years later, these details seem quite petty at first glance. And yet the client felt a real thrill as he read his ancestors’ words and they came alive in his mind for the first time.

The rich reward of letters and postcards is that they, more than any other kind of Yiddish document, show us that our ancestors are not just names and dates appearing on our family tree, but real people, ordinary people who lived day by day, just as we do.

And that is ultimately what makes us love them.

Yiddish translation almost always involves more than just Yiddish…

Yiddish was orignally formed from a mixture of other languages: German, Hebrew, Slavic languages, etc. In contemporary Yiddish-speaking communities, the languages continues to morph and borrow words from the languages of the host countries where it is spoken. For example, American Yiddish is rich in English words, while Israeli Yiddish may be up to 25% Modern Hebrew. As a result, when a chassid from Jerusalem meets a chassid from New York, they will sometimes have a hard time understanding each other.

But even in pre-war Europe, Yiddish always had widely varying dialects and pronunciations, and speakers borrowed heavily from their host language. This presents a challenge for a Yiddish translator, who is generally best-versed in a particular dialect, for example, American Yiddish or Polish Yiddish. However, a “Yiddish translator” will often be called upon to translate lots of word in Russian, Hungarian or German. That’s why our translators work as a team; each of our translators knows a particular dialect of Yiddish and they help each other out.

On more than one occasion, I’ve gotten an email from someone asking me to translate a Yiddish document, but when I open it up, it’s not Yiddish at all! In such a case, it’s usually Hebrew – many people cannot tell the difference. Once a document was in Aramaic, and another I received one in German. We have no problem doing translations in any of these languages. We also regularly translate Russian and Polish documents, which come up a lot for people researching Jewish genealogy. As far as I’m concerned, Hebrew, Aramaic, German, Russian, Polish and any other language, all go come the territory for a Yiddish translation service. They are all common “Jewish” languages, and after all, Yiddish just means “Jewish.”