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The novel says "His old man, God rest him, was a klezmer known as Berl Bass or Berl Stempener, after the village of Stempeni not far from Mazepevke".
Of course, this is fictional, because Mazepovka is far from the Pale of settlement, within Rssia proper. But Hetman Mazepa is associaated with the Ukraine, so the name proably sounded quite Ukranian for Sholem Aleichem. On the oither hand there indeed a couple Polish places called Stępień, which is phonetized as Stempen' סטעמפּעני, so the derivation seems plausible. Loew Galitz (talk) 03:25, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
