The history of Judaism in Eastern Europe—home for several hundred years to the world’s largest Jewish population—is generally told as the history of a male elite, of great rabbis and rebbes, of Lithuanian yeshivas and Hasidic dynasties. With male religiosity seen as more important than that of women, the ideal woman was expected to look after material needs so that her husband and sons could dedicate themselves to religious matters. Exempt by The legal corpus of Jewish laws and observances as prescribed in the Torah and interpreted by rabbinic authorities, beginning with those of the Mishnah and Talmud.halakhah from the obligations of religious study and communal prayer, in Eastern Europe as elsewhere women were largely excluded from the institutions of prayer and learning. Yet contrary to common assumptions, the spiritual realm was not entirely a man’s domain. In fact, a study of women’s customs and ritual leadership provides a fuller understanding of Jews of European origin and their descendants, including most of North and South American Jewry.Ashkenazi Judaism, which extended far beyond the walls of the synagogue and Houses of study (of Torah)bet midrash, permeating most aspects of daily life. 

As Chava Weissler has shown in her work on tkhines (Yiddish supplications often written for and sometimes by women), Ashkenazi Jewish women had their own rich traditions of prayer and ritual, which complemented and interacted with the “official” religion of the male elite. While many women’s religious practices took place at home, Ashkenazi Jewish women also served their communities as prayer leaders, professional ritualists, and religious functionaries. 

Often the only women employed by the kahal or community board, midwives were important functionaries. As late as the twentieth century, they remained among the principal healers serving the (Yiddish) Small-town Jewish community in Eastern Europe.shtetls in which a large proportion of Ashkenazi Jewry lived. Unsurprisingly, given the influence of rabbinic and biblical literature on traditional healthcare, midwives tended to have a high level of religious education. Frequently among the few women who could read Hebrew, they also often acted as zogerins or prayer leaders (see below). 

Midwives played an important and specific spiritual role in the Jewish life cycle. With human life believed to begin with the creation of the soul, the job of the midwife was not just to aid the physical process of birth, but also to facilitate the crossing of an unborn soul into the living world—a process that many believe created a soul-connection between midwife and infant. Following a birth, the midwife was treated as an important member of the extended family, honored with gifts at the bris (circumcision) or naming ceremony and often at other important rites of passage. In many communities, the midwife was gifted a white shirt or apron before one of “her” children’s weddings. In her famous memoir of Jewish life in Russia, Pauline Wengeroff recalled her midwife grandmother-in-law’s great collection of these white shirts. Midwives sometimes also gave “their” children gifts, for example, on Jewish holidays. 

One of the principal Yiddish words for midwife—bobe—is also the word for grandmother, reflecting these familial ties and the midwives’ respected elder status. Even in the early twentieth century, many people still preferred the care of traditional midwives—known also as heyvns or heybamen—to that of medically trained midwives known by the Russian term akusherke. In late-nineteenth-century Koriv (Kurów), Poland, the elderly heyvn’s presence at a birth was considered so important that, when she could no longer walk, someone carried her to the birthing bed on their shoulders (Rapoport, 1955).

In some shtetls, the death of the midwife was marked by the entire community, who lit candles and followed her coffin in a procession. Other traditions developed from the beliefs that the midwife’s work would lead to a reward in the afterlife and that her soul remained connected, even after death, to those she had helped birth. In Wselub (Usieliub), Belarus, Tzinke the midwife tied a knot in her girdle for every child she delivered. Planning to be buried with it, she hoped the girdle would be her “reference” for entry into heaven (Yerushalmi, 1963). In Saratov Province, it was recorded that “when a midwife dies, the women whom she delivered wind ribbons about her hands, so that the dead children may recognize and serve her” (Listova, 1992).

Shprekherins, also known as opshprekherins, opshprekherkes, farshprekherins (exorcists or incantation sayers), or sometimes simply mumkhntes (experts), were women skilled in removing or protecting people from the evil eye—a malevolent force that, as late as the interwar period, was believed to be the cause of many ailments and misfortunes. In the early twentieth century, shprekherins were still found in most Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement. Their services were particularly popular with pregnant women, pointing to an overlap between this role and that of midwives, who used many of the same remedies. 

With Jewish belief in the evil eye based in the Talmud, shprekherins, like midwives, generally had a religious education beyond that of most women. Their familiarity with Jewish texts is revealed in their incantations, which contained biblical and Talmudic references and overlapped in style and content with the written amulets used by male opshprekhers and baalei shem (kabbalistic practitioners). In stark contrast to the Jewish tendency to use euphemisms when talking about illness or death, shprekherins’ incantations were often very explicit. They frequently evoked natural imagery and, like certain tkhines, referenced Jewish ancestors whose qualities might help the sufferer.

While male ophsprekhers provided their customers with written amulets in Hebrew and Aramaic, shprekherins recited their incantations by heart in Yiddish and in local non-Jewish languages, perhaps helping to explain why their practices have been seen as tangential to what we think of as Judaism. Yet according to ethnographic research, shprekherins were more popular than their male counterparts and were clearly viewed as holy figures by their clients, who sometimes travelled many miles to engage their services. 

Shprekherins were often active in religious institutions, most often as Ritual bathmikveh attendants. Some, like Gnendl of Letichev, were descended from great rabbis or kabbalists. An audience with Gnendl, who worked for free, as a A biblical or rabbinic commandment; also, a good deed.mitzvah, was considered “a great honor” (Rechtman, 1958). 

Like midwives, shprekherins used medicinal plants, herbs, body fluids, movements, and household objects in their practice. One of the most common remedies employed by both shprekherins and midwives, as well as by women at home, was to pour molten wax or lead over the head of the afflicted person into a bowl of cold water. As well as removing the evil eye or associated affliction, this practice could be used for diagnosis, by reading the shapes formed by the wax or lead in the water. Another popular and similarly used technique was “rolling eggs,” which involved circling one or more raw eggs over the afflicted part of the body while saying an incantation, then breaking the eggs in a bowl of cold water. 

The feminine form of gabbai (an Aramaic word for tax collector that in Eastern Europe referred to male religious functionaries), gabetes were pious women who dedicated themselves to the performance of mitzvot, collecting and organizing charity and caring for the sick, needy, and recently deceased. Gabetes were usually active in the women’s section of the synagogue and the role overlapped with that of the shameste, the female equivalent of the shames or beadle.

In memoirs of Ashkenazi Jewish life, gabetes are often described as members of a religious old guard, holding onto Jewish tradition in the face of modernity. Pauline Wengeroff recalled the appearance of gabetes collecting charity in the streets of Bobruisk (Babruisk) every Monday and Thursday, an image echoed by other memoirists. Wengeroff described the Bobruisk gabetes as “veritable religious patrons of the poor of the Jewish people” whose “self-appointed life’s work was to do pious deeds” (Wengeroff and Magnus, 2010).

Gabetes often served the women of their communities as religious experts and ritual leaders. In Bobruisk, a gabete came to Wengeroff’s house during the Days of Awe to lead the women of her family in making the The Day of Atonement, which falls on the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei and is devoted to prayer and fasting.Yom Kippur candle. In times of crisis, the Bobruisk gabetes would measure the cemetery, keeping the thread to use for the Yom Kippur candle later in the year (see below). 

In Koriv (Kurów), a gabete called Gitele was so renowned among the women that she was remembered as the “women’s rebbe.” While most women attended synagogue weekly at most, Gitele prayed there twice a day. She was familiar enough with the liturgy to add her own personal prayers, one of which was believed by the women of Koriv to protect the shtetl from fire—a reputation that earned her the nickname “angel.” Gitele also acted as the shtetl’s feldmesterin or cemetery measurer. 

While Gitele’s mythic reputation provoked the male elite’s mockery, Rabbi Tuvye Gutman Rapoport, remembering her from his childhood, defended her as pious and learned. Rapoport emphasized the important role she played for Koriv’s women, his own mother included. Describing the importance of women religious leaders—“gabetes,prayer leaders, mourning women and evil eye exorcists”—to traditional Ashkenazi Jewish life, Rapoport dubbed nineteenth-century eastern Europe “the gabete epoch” of Jewish history (Rapoport, 1955). 

Zogerke, zogerin, and firzogerin (reciter or preacher) were titles given to female prayer leaders in the women’s section of the synagogue. They also often led other prayer and study sessions for women, for example reading the tsene-rene on SabbathShabbat or making candles for Yom Kippur. 

Able to follow the Hebrew prayer service, zogerkes were often from rabbinic or scholarly families and usually possessed a level of religious education that was rare for women and girls. Bobtshe Kilikovski-Cohen, the zogerke of Volkovisk (Vaŭkavysk), Belarus, for example, was the daughter of the head of the Volovisk Yeshiva and sister of the town’s Hebrew teacher. Bobtshe was known for her ability to study Talmud and authored a book of women’s prayers, which were transcribed by the town’s soyfer (religious scribe). In Drobin, Poland, firzogerin Roiza Baila Czarnoczapka Jedwabnik successfully defended her family’s bakery in rabbinic court, using her knowledge of rabbinic law to challenge a newly installed rabbi’s increased fees for Term used for ritually untainted food according to the laws of Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws).kashrut (kasher) supervision. Roiza Baila, who was brought up by her Talmud scholar father and knew both Hebrew and Aramaic, also organized a weekly bible class for women. 

Like gabetes, zogerkes often acted as communal leaders and were active in the charitable networks that formed the basis of communal welfare. Roiza Baila ran the Drobin Poor Brides’ Fund and the secular lending library and wrote letters on behalf of illiterate members of her community. On the eve of the Holocaust, she was raising funds to build a modern Yavneh school in Drobin, until both her life and this project were terminated by the Nazi genocide. Bobtshe Kilikovski Cohen, who left Volklovisk before the war, continued her charitable activities in America, where her family played a leading role in organizing aid work for immigrants and for those remaining in Volkovisk. Her funeral in New Jersey was attended by the entire community. 

Like many zogerkes and gabetes, Bobtshe also led prayer and ritual in the cemetery, for example measuring its perimeter in times of crisis. Before the wedding of someone who had lost one or both parents, Bobtshe took them to the cemetery to invite their deceased parents to the wedding, a common custom made famous by S. Ans-ky’s The Dybbuk. In other places, this and other cemetery customs were led by professional cemetery zogerkes or klogerins (see below). 

An important religious site for Ashkenazi Jews and especially for women, Eastern European Jewish cemeteries are sometimes remembered as the domain of female ritualists and prayer leaders. Perhaps the oldest of these women’s roles was that of the mourning women, who appear in the Bible (Jeremiah 9:16), the Mishnah (Moed Katan 3:9), the writings of Moses ben Maimon (Rambam), b. Spain, 1138Maimonides, and early modern Yiddish manuscripts. Still practicing in modern Eastern Europe, they were known as klogerins, klogerkes, klogvayber, klogmuters (wailers), and baveynerins (weepers). Like their medieval predecessors, klogerins worked in groups, usually led by one head wailer. Appearing spontaneously at deathbeds and funerals, they performed personalized laments, wailing and beating their chests. Whereas Jewish funeral liturgy tends to focus on accepting God’s judgment, these laments were raw in their expression of grief. They also invited the dead to continue to play a part in the fortunes of the living, an important tenet of Ashkenazi Judaism and particularly women’s religiosity. 

By the early twentieth century, traditional mourning women had been replaced in some communities by permanent cemetery zogerins or beterkes (requester), many of whom worked alone. In some places, the titles klogerin and zogerin were simply used interchangeably, alongside others such as ruferke (caller) and kvores-vayb (cemetery woman). Sometimes also acting as synagogue zogerins, cemetery women were generally highly religiously educated. In Lyubitsh (Liubichy), the cemetery zogerke (see below) opened a religious Lit. "room." Old-style Jewish elementary school.heder for girls, earning her the title “women’s (Yiddish) Rabbi's wife; title for a learned or respected woman.rebbetzin.”

While many synagogue zogerins did their work as a mitzvah, cemetery zogerins were usually paid for their work. Several sources list “cemetery zogerin” as a paid women’s profession. While cemeteries were a particularly important site of women’s prayer and ritual, cemetery women also worked for male clients. As well as leading mourning at funerals, klogerins and cemetery zogerins were also paid to lead graveside laments on yortsayts (death anniversaries) and during the month of Elul. On these occasions, the souls of the deceased were believed to linger by their graves waiting to be visited by their living relatives. Believing that on a yortsayt the deceased soul was elevated closer to God, this was also seen as an auspicious time to ask the dead for help (see below). 

In some places, cemetery women were paid to remember important yortsayts. They would also visit the dead on behalf of those who were unable to do so. In Zabludove  the zogerin Esther Khaye, who also led synagogue prayer, continued to work for former residents who had emigrated to America, bringing their letters to their deceased relatives in the cemetery.

Whereas traditional mourning women spoke entirely from the heart, by the nineteenth century many klogerins and zogerins used prayer books, usually either the eighteenth century mayne-loshn or the ma’avar yabok. Nonetheless, modern cemetery women were generally remembered as gifted orators, able to move the living to tears and—equally importantly—to get the dead’s attention. Indeed, the purpose of their graveside laments, which often took the form of petitions, was not just to mourn the dead, but to ask them for help. Believing that the souls of the deceased had been cleansed from sin and were physically closer to God, Ashkenazi Jews frequently called on them to act as advocates in the divine realm, where they could entreat God to bless and show mercy to their living relatives. Cemetery women, the most talented of whom were believed to hear the dead’s responses, were paid to do this on behalf of their communities. 

In the month of Elul, when Jews prepared to face God’s judgement on Yom Kippur, these appeals for aid took on a new urgency. During this month of repentance, Jews and Jewish women especially flocked to the cemetery, where professional cemetery women would guide them in the custom of raysn kvorim. Literally “tearing graves,” this involved wailing over their relatives’ graves and begging the dead to use their position in heaven to help the living. Remembering his mother, who led this ritual in Lyubitsh, Meir Pisiuk wrote “she was like the conductor of an orchestra, directing the wailing of the women in the cemetery” (Pisiuk, 1930s).

Cemetery prayer and ritual also played an important role in traditional healthcare, with raysn kvorim used to ask the dead for help in times of severe illness or crisis. A similar practice, aynraysn dem orn-koydesh, took place in the synagogue. A group of klogerins or zogerins would burst into the synagogue, interrupt the service, and, opening the ark containing the Torah scrolls, cry out their laments to God. Believed to be a way of getting God’s attention, this performative ritual also alerted the community to the suffering of one of its members, calling them to action. 

In cases of severe illness, difficult childbirth, or plague, Ashkenazi Jewish women turned to another set of cemetery rituals. Often as a last resort, the graves of close relatives of the suffering person were encircled with thread in a ritual known as keyver-mestn (grave measuring). Tkhines were recited calling on the dead to plead with God on behalf of their ailing relative. A thread roughly the size or “measure” of the buried person was then used as candlewick in special candles that were donated to the synagogue or Houses of study (of Torah)bet midrash. 

Sometimes the entire perimeter of the cemetery was measured in a ritual known as feldmestn (cemetery measuring), producing enough thread for multiple candles or one very large candle. In some places this was done with linen, which would be distributed among the poor. Sometimes carried out by gabetes or zogerins, in other communities these rituals were the work of paid, professional cemetery measurers known as feldmesterins. By the twentieth century, grave and cemetery measuring had become quite rare, practiced only by very pious Jewish women. (Shoys, 1933).

The custom of grave-measuring seems to have emerged in the medieval period, in conjunction with a similar Catholic practice that involved measuring the tombs of saints or the body of the sick person. The thread was used as wick in a candle the size of the body, which was donated to the church. Cemetery measuring may have developed in Jewish communities as a “substitute for measuring a patient” (Tuszewicki, 2021). Indeed, prayers and songs from cemetery measurements compared the thread to the sufferer’s soul or lifeline and suggested that the act of extending it around the cemetery would help to extend their life. In some places, the practice of measuring the sick person themself survived into the modern period. 

The thread used in cemetery and grave measuring was prepared with a special incantation.  Known in Yiddish as “the dead thread” or “the kosher thread,” its appearance in certain idioms demonstrates the prevalence of the practice. Other borderline spaces, such as crossroads, were also sometimes measured, and feldmestn has been compared to other Jewish acts of ritual encirclement, believed by some to have originated as forms of protection magic. Part of a range of customs that called on the dead to help the living, these rituals simultaneously created a protective boundary between the living and the dead. Usually used to protect the living from an early death, cemetery and grave measuring were sometimes also used to contain malevolent spirits. 

In many communities, the cemetery was measured annually in Elul and the thread used to make a wick for a huge neshome likht or “soul candle.” The candle-making ritual, known as kneytlekh-leygn (laying wicks), took place during the eight days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It was led by a female head of household, a gabete, zogerin or feldmesterin,or by a professional woman kneytlekh-leygerin (wick-layer) or likhtmakherin (candle-maker). 

The tkhines recited during kneytlekh-leygn called on God to recognize the merits of the women’s ancestors—both recent and biblical—and show mercy to their living descendants on Yom Kippur. Each time the wick was folded, another ancestor was named and their merits listed. Female ancestors in particular were also called on to advocate with God on behalf of the living. The soul candle was lit in the synagogue at the start of Yom Kippur. The stumps of soul candles, believed to have magical and protective properties when burned, were reused in other rituals.

Living family members were also often named when making the Yom Kippur candle, each wished a good divine judgement and good things for the new year. In some communities, a separate candle was made for the living, using thread from a second cemetery measurement or one that had been used to measure each family member. This candle was lit at home to protect the family from misfortune in the year to come.

First mentioned in an 1197 poem by Eleazar of Worms, the making of Yom Kippur soul candles was practiced by Ashkenazi Jewish women for almost a millennium. By the eighteenth century, it was included in some of the most beloved collections of women’s prayers, presented as part of the women’s mitzvah of kindling sabbath and festival lights—a custom that itself only became categorized as a mitzvah in the medieval period. It was also practiced in some of the major Hasidic courts, led by the (Yiddish) Rabbi's wife; title for a learned or respected woman.rebbetzin, sometimes with the rebbe’s participation. 

Appearing frequently in memoirs from Jewish Eastern Europe, the making of Yom Kippur soul candles remained popular in the twentieth century, even as cemetery measuring was in decline. Indeed, the practice of lighting memorial or yortsayt candles on Yom Kippur—still known in Hebrew as “soul candles”— seems to have developed out of this women’s tradition.

A study of these various women’s roles illustrates three key aspects of spiritual life in which women acted as leaders: healthcare and healing, the expression of emotion, and connection with ancestry and the spirit world. It also highlights one important public institution in which women religious leaders dominated, namely, the cemetery. With many of these women’s customs now disappeared from Jewish religious life, it is easy to assume that they were somewhat marginal. Yet multiple sources suggest the opposite. 

Often remembered as the female representatives of traditional Ashkenazi orthodoxy, women ritualists and prayer leaders also acted as the point of connection between the women of the community and the institutional Judaism of the male elite. Certainly, they were still excluded from that elite, whose attitude towards them seems to have varied. Yet while some of these women had to fight against the derision and dismissal of rabbis and other male leaders, others worked alongside them, and many were connected to male religious leadership by familial ties. 

In fact, the major critics of these women leaders and their practices seem to have been not rabbis, but female/sing.: Member of the Haskalah movement.maskilim—modernizers who wanted to see Judaism reformed and rid of superstitious elements. In maskilic sources critiquing traditional Jewish life, gabetes, zogerins, feldmesterins, and shprekherins are portrayed as part of the traditional old guard, the female counterparts to male synagogue functionaries, Torah scholars, kabbalists, and Hebrew teachers. Practices such as cemetery measuring, soul candle making, and evil eye incantations—cited by many writers as evidence of a Jewish woman’s orthodoxy—were also used as evidence of Ashkenazi orthodoxy’s superstitious character. 

As noted by Chava Weissler and other feminist scholars, women’s customs, which have generally taken place outside the synagogue and the Bet Midrash, are often categorized as part of “folklore” or popular religion, distinct from what we consider “Judaism.” A closer look at the women who led those customs complicates this categorization. In doing so, it has the potential to broaden our understanding not only of women’s religious role, but of Ashkenazi Judaism itself.