Adult Perspectives
Your Great Grandmothers’ Tkhines:
Yiddish folk prayers for Ashkenazi Jewish women
Folklorist Dr. Hanna Griff-Sleven will talk about Yiddish folk prayers, tkhines, most popular from the 1600s to the early 1800s in Eastern Europe. Many of the tkhines were collected in booklets of about 15 to 20 pages each and were reprinted many times, evidence of their popularity.
Originally written in Yiddish for both men and women, by men and women, these prayers were both personal and religious, focusing on the individual experience rather than a communal one. Because tkhines were written in the vernacular as opposed to formal Hebrew, the writers felt more open to talk freely, and often spoke directly to God as a friend, an attitude nowhere to be found in the official and impersonal Hebrew liturgy.
Written for the less educated in Yiddish, tkhines often dealt with the personal issues specific to women from a female perspective. They addressed the home life of women, issues related to marriage, childbirth and religious responsibility as well as the anxieties, superstitions, and fears that dominated the ordinary life of an Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish woman.
Hanna Griff-Sleven, Ph.D., was the Director of Public Programs and Intern Coordinator at the Museum at Eldridge Street for over 16 years. She conceived of and administered all the Museum’s public programs. She received her Ph.D. in Folklore and American Studies from Indiana University. Since then she has worked in folklore at Grinnell College, where she ran “Toldot Iowa”, the oral history of the Jews of Iowa, Sanyo Gakuen University in Okayama, Japan, and for the New York State Council on the Arts. Hanna is now an Adjunct Professor at the Eugene Lang College of The New School for Social Research in the Media and Cultural Studies Program as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program of Museum Studies at St. John’s University.
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