In Kadoshem un teg by Itzik Kipnis 'zdbitse' is on the second page of chapter 2, about the middle of the page (page 27 in my edition). varft arayn, dekt tsu un farshit dos dekl mit zdibitse.

The alternate spelling זדיביציע occurs on the following page (that sentence is given above as well.

I have some information from a very reliable source that it is an agricultural product, dried in the sun and burnt as fuel to save on wood, but he could not identify the exact meaning nor has any other eminent Yiddish scholar or reader I have asked about the word, had any idea.

By the way, my translation of this work in progress is in the workshop dual language for quick reference to the original.

Thank you for your suggestion Sharell and for your feedback as well Harry,

Some other observations that were given to me I feel should be included in this discussion are:

"Dried in the sun? Burnt as fuel? Second, it sounds from the passage like it can go bad, which I don't think turpentine can.
- All the Google hits for this word are in Kipnis. So it's pretty local.
- we have זשיװיצע as a likely cognate to zhybítsya (doesn't mean there couldn't be another)"

Assuming it is referring to the solid state, I wonder if it would be in pellets?
It seems like it would have to be for farshitn.

Best and thank you!
Yosele

Here is some additional feedback from another Slavic informant:

> There apparently is a Ukrainian word здибиця, which I found with the aid of google.ua, but the only example (from some kind of chat site) was "Тобі скучно і немаєш шо робити їдь в бірок роботи здибиця", which I couldn't decipher. I have two Ukrainian dictionaries, a large, one-volume monolingual Ukrainian dictionary and a reprint of the four-volume «Словарь української мови» compiled by Hrinchenko in 1907-1909, but neither has здибиця or бірок/бірка or запар for that matter. Polish opar means "haze, mist" and the plural opary mean "fumes, odor." The "Словник української мови" (1970-1980) (http://sum.in.ua) has запара, запарити/запарювати which have to do with using boiling water, e.g., to make a thin dough or to soak a smelly barrel. Kipnis was from Ukraine, so it makes sense to look for Ukrainian cognates, but you may have to look for them in a dialect dictionary ...