Family genealogy
The Yiddish song
Although all societies have cultivated song, its functions differ, in time and space.
In the musical tradition of Eastern European Jews, singing accompanies celebrations, rituals, and punctuates life events.
It has its origins in the itinerant musicians who travelled through the cities, shtetls and Jewish quarters.
For example, on the occasion of the festival of Purim, which commemorates the rescue of the Jewish people from the clutches of the Vizier of the King of Persia Ahasuerus, multiple rituals and festivals have developed, associating joy, laughter, and reversals of situations in burlesque, often carnival-like parades.
Combining theatre and song, these "Purim Shpil" also opened up the space for Yiddish song and musical comedy.
From songs of love, hope and struggle from Yiddishland to Broadway melodies, Yiddish song has made its way through various influences, and primarily in Yiddish, the language that the Nazis wanted to eradicate.
I borrowed the following analysis from Abigail Wood in an article published, "Music and the Holocaust."
The impact of the destruction of European Yiddish culture during the Holocaust on Yiddish song is evident: the cultural roots of this varied repertoire were razed and song collections were destroyed along with their singers.
Nevertheless, today Yiddish song continues to thrive and develop in contexts ranging from small cultural clubs to large concert stages, and embraces musical styles ranging from klezmer to hip hop.
Today, Yiddish is spoken by approximately 700,000 people, most of whom belong to strictly Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States, Israel, and Europe.
However, since the 1960s, Yiddish as a "heritage" has aroused keen interest among young Jews both in North America and in predominantly secular Europe.
People who sing in Yiddish today include amateurs and professionals, religious and secular individuals, people who grew up with Yiddish and others who know none of it, people who see in Yiddish an intimate connection with their own roots and others who are simply interested in exploring another folk tradition.
In 1968, Marie Laforet performed a famous song in Yiddish: "Roszinkes mit mandel".
Joan Baez translated another famous Yiddish song into English: "dona, dona, do"
The United States welcomed over two million Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe up until the 1920s. They brought their culture, which gradually blended with that of other American immigrants.
During the early decades of the 20th century, a number of European Jewish folklorists sought to collect, classify, and publish Yiddish songs, especially folk songs.
After the Holocaust, surviving folklorists vigorously continued this work, recognizing the value of Yiddish song as a reflection of the life of a tragically destroyed people.
Just after the war, projects to collect folklore material were organized in displaced persons camps by central historical agencies seeking to record testimonies about the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Folklorist Shmerke Kaczerginski, lithographer and songwriter who had been imprisoned in the Vilna ghetto before living with a group of partisans in the woods of White Russia, prepared a collection of 236 songs from the ghettos and camps.
Alongside the collection of Yiddish songs, a number of documentary recordings were made during the post-war decades, preserving the voices of individual singers.
Among those registered are Majer Bogdanski, Arkady Gendler, Mariam Niremberg and Lifshe Schaechter-Widman.
Alongside these professional recordings, many diverse members of the public have also become involved in recording projects.
During the 1970s , YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute, based in New York) set up a folk song project mobilizing people to collect songs from Yiddish-speaking immigrants in America.
Despite the decline of Yiddish as a spoken language after World War II, over 130 new songbooks containing either exclusively Yiddish songs or a substantial amount of Yiddish material were published between 1945 and 2001 (this figure is based on the collections of major libraries in New York and London).
These books tend to place side by side documents from diverse origins (e.g., theatrical songs, artistic songs, political songs, folk songs, and religious chants), reinforcing the idea that Yiddish song somehow summarizes the history of Yiddish culture.
It is important to remember that in pre-war Eastern Europe, these songs represented very different repertoires and contexts of performance: the idea of a single category of "Yiddish song" is much more recent.
In addition to publishing a book on Yiddish song, "Voices of a People", Canadian-born folklorist Ruth Rubin (born in 1906) collected, performed and published Yiddish songs, making several recordings, including one of songs dating from the time of the Holocaust.
Most of the contexts in which Yiddish songs are performed today in the United States have their origins in pre-war Yiddish culture, which flourished after the arrival of thousands of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Europe in the late 1900s and early twentieth century.
Several Yiddish choirs meet and perform regularly.
Some post-war Yiddish song performers in North America chose to continue along the path laid out by their predecessors.
Several Jewish stars in show business, in the USA and France, have performed or recorded Yiddish songs, thus acknowledging their own Jewish heritage and the contribution of Jewish immigrants to the development of music, particularly on Broadway.
Since the 1980s, however, the most important context for the public performance of Yiddish songs in the United States and Europe has been the "klezmer revival".
During the 1970s, a number of Jewish American musicians began to rediscover European Jewish repertoires that had largely fallen into disuse by the middle of the 20th century.
Most of the contexts in which Yiddish songs are performed today in the United States have their origins in pre-war Yiddish culture, which flourished after the arrival of thousands of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Europe in the late 1900s and early twentieth century.
Several Yiddish choirs meet and perform regularly.
Some post-war Yiddish song performers in North America chose to continue along the path laid out by their predecessors.
Several Jewish stars in show business, in the USA and France, have performed or recorded Yiddish songs, thus acknowledging their own Jewish heritage and the contribution of Jewish immigrants to the development of music, particularly on Broadway.
Since the 1980s, however, the most important context for the public performance of Yiddish songs in the United States and Europe has been the "klezmer revival".
During the 1970s, a number of Jewish American musicians began to rediscover European Jewish repertoires that had largely fallen into disuse by the middle of the 20th century.
From a few initial ensembles, the revival quickly transformed into a scene that today encompasses literally hundreds of groups, amateur and professional, covering North America, Europe and other regions.
Whereas in the old world - pre-war Central and Eastern Europe - the term "klezmer" (meaning instrument or musician) applied specifically to itinerant Jewish professional musicians, the revival transformed the term "klezmer" into a broad generic term encompassing Yiddish music of all origins.
Unlike the purely instrumental klezmer ensembles of pre-war Europe, Yiddish song is an essential component of klezmer music today: the majority of major klezmer groups include a singer, or at least have worked with one. The lyrics of these songs often address, with ironic humor, the relationship between life in the Old World and "modern" America, a subject easily accessible to Jewish audiences.
The song has become an integral part of the klezmer scene, offering an important forum for musical and cultural creativity. The best-known singers of the klezmer revival are Michael Alpert (Brave Old World), Judy Bressler (Klezmer Conservatory Band), Adrienne Cooper and Lorin Sklamberg (The Klezmatics). And in France, Sirba Octet (Les Yeux Noirs).
In Israel, Yiddish culture, including song, did not flourish during the first decades of the state's establishment: the government favored the new Hebrew-language Israeli culture at the expense of diaspora cultures. Nevertheless, a Yiddish cultural revival has taken place in Israel since the 1980s, aided by a law passed by the Knesset in 1996 encouraging public awareness of Yiddish culture. Although few Israeli singers perform in Yiddish, the popular artist Chava Alberstein has recorded several popular albums featuring Yiddish material since the 1970s.
Since the 1980s, interest in Jewish culture has increased in Germany and post-communist Eastern Europe.
A number of Yiddish music workshops and festivals are now organized annually in Germany, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
Yiddish music was not totally absent from Central Europe during the post-war decades.
A handful of performers sang Yiddish songs in East Germany, including Lin Jaldati, a Jewish communist from Amsterdam who had given illegal Yiddish concerts during the war before being deported to a series of camps. In 1952, she settled in East Germany and continued to sing in Yiddish, later joined by other members of her family.
In the 1960s and 1970s, some Yiddish songs also became part of student and folk culture, influenced by the repertoires of singers such as Joan Baez and the West German group Zupfgeigenhansel; several collections of Yiddish songs were published in Germany.
Since the early 1990s, a significant Yiddish music scene has flourished in Germany and Eastern Europe, primarily among non-Jewish musicians, and has given rise to numerous local klezmer music groups. Despite the public's great enthusiasm for "Jewish things," as Ruth-Ellen Gruber noted, "the memory of Jews and Jewish heritage is emotionally charged, whether due to official postwar taboos, government policy, persistent antisemitism, a genuine sense of loss, or a guilty conscience."
Because of the language's roots in Middle High German, Yiddish is widely understandable to German speakers, providing opportunities for communication between performers and audiences largely absent in English-speaking America; this situation has been exploited by German and American Yiddish singers.
Yiddish song continues to hold great appeal within the American Jewish community. For many, song is a gateway to a broader experience of Yiddish culture, an anti-assimilation statement, and an expression of shared roots and collective identity. Since the klezmer revival, a new generation of young people has grown up to the sounds of Yiddish music and song. However, while few members of the older generation of the klezmer revival grew up knowing Yiddish at home, this number is even smaller in the next generation, and the number of people still alive who remember traditional Yiddish culture firsthand is dwindling.
Despite the enthusiasm, the irreversible loss of the pre-war Yiddish cultural world is a fundamental constraint that limits the depth of immersion in Yiddish language and culture for those who choose to study Yiddish today. This lack of cultural and linguistic immersion has shaped the approaches of the new generation of performers to the Yiddish repertoire. The decline in Yiddish proficiency has also had a significant impact on new compositions. Learning enough Yiddish to understand songs can be accomplished in a few months of study; however, a much greater proficiency is required to write new songs, and few young Yiddishists choose to write new songs.
Nevertheless, artists continually seek new approaches to musical materials. Solomon and SoCalled's album Hiphopkhasene (2003) marks the arrival of a new generation of musicians on the Yiddish music scene, who use vocal material in Yiddish and English to comment on contemporary Yiddish culture.
I discovered Yiddish music as a child with my parents, and then later, in my twenties, through performers who were my contemporaries in France: Ben Zimet, Talila and Kol Aviv, the group Adama, Jacinta and the Barry sisters. My father introduced us to "Belz," which, for him, was associated with his small town of Wloszczowa.
I suggest you listen to the lecture given at the Mahj on Yiddish song, a treasure trove of history and interpretations.
Each year, as part of the Festival of Jewish Cultures, about ten choirs present their work: the Yiddish repertoire continues....