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Dos Lid Fun Der Ayznban
A humorous song from the Period of Enlightenment, commenting upon the shocked reaction of the Hassidim to the monstrous invention of the train. Text published in 1901 by S. Ginzburg and P. Marek, melodic variants in Ost und West, in 1907 and by A.Z. ldelsohn.
A longer version of ten stanzas is brought by Dr. Israel Taglicht in 1929, who heard the song about fifty years earlier, i.e. about 1879. Some of the other stanzas are: “How foolish the world has become to think that one can travel on a wagon without horses. Some one in Paris or Vienna, a Litvak smart aleck (sheygets) thinks up some kind of a machine, takes a lot of money and puts it in the ground. Wouldn’t it have been better to give this money to the poor! Any reasonable man will admit that this was done with pure witchcraft. The Apikorsim (heretics) are in league with devils. Do you think it possible to travel a few hundred miles daily? I saw with my own eyes that an evil spirit sits there. He eats as much as a hundred horses on the shortest trip. When his stomach is empty he stands still. With one bite he eats six feet of wood.” In some versions the song starts with a stanza about going to the Rabbi after the Sabbath to tell him of the train.
Dos Lidl fun Goldenem Land
Dos Naye Lid
Words by Avrom Reyzen (1875-1953), composer unknown. Published with this melody in Di fraye muze, 1918 and Binishe lider, 1932. The song was popular in the Yiddish schools in this country and was sung annually at the traditional Third Seyder of the Workmen’s Circle. It was also sung during the Holocaust. Poet Abraham Sutzkever writes that he heard the children of I. Gershteyn’s chorus singing this song in the Vilna Ghetto: “[Gershteyn] brought the children closer, arranged them according to their voices, and over the garret, over the ghetto, over the whole world rang out ‘Un zol vi vayt‘ . . . ” Another melody by J. S. Roskin, printed in Hasomir’s Sangbog was arranged for chorus by Zavel Zilberts.
Dos Pintele Yid
Dos Zangl
Words by Hirsh Glik (1922-1944), poet-partisan of the Vilna Ghetto and author of the partisan hymn “Zog nisht keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg” (Never say this is your final road). Glik wrote “Dos zangl” in the forest near Vilna, where he worked in the peat bogs. He was later imprisoned in a concentration camp in Estonia and killed by the Germans in 1944. The song was published by S. Kaczerginski in 1948.
Dray Tekhterlekh
Dremlen Feygl Af Di Tsvaygn
Song written in the Vilno ghetto by Leah Rudnicki, born in Kalvarija, Lithuania in 1916. Rudnicki was a member of the editorial stall of the newspaper Vilner emes. As a partisan she was caught by the Gestapo and deported to Majdanek in September 1943. The words were set to an earlier Yiddish song S’iz keyn broyt in shtuh nishto (words by lzi Charik, music by Leyb Yampolski).
Drey Zikh, Dreydele
Du Meydele, Du Fayns
A variant of the text of this riddle song appeared in the S. Ginzburg-P. Marek collection of 1901; text and melody were published in Ost und West, 1905. This song type of the contest between a maiden and young man is a popular international ballad theme – the oldest type mentioned in the Child Collection of Anglo-Scottish Balladry (Child I). A few of the Yiddish riddles were compared to the English type by compiler in her paper “International Motifs in the Yiddish Ballad” (1964). The German parallels were cited by Alfred Landau in 1903. The Yiddish song contains a Jewish motif in two replies, which is absent from other European parallels–that the “Torah is deeper than the spring” and “Mikve-vaser (the water of the ritual bath house) is without a fish.” One version (Mir zingen, Paris, 1948) combines the riddles of this song with those of the popular song “Tum-balalayke.” In The Jewish Songster, 1929, the song is translated into Hebrew as “Yaldoh yaldosi.”
Du, Du
Love song popular in the United States and Europe in the 1930’s. Words by Aliza Greenblatt 1888-1975, written in 1933; melody based on an Israeli tune. Words and music published in the poet’s collection Tsen lider.
In her memoirs, Aliza Greenblatt notes that the Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein referred to her as the only Yiddish woman troubadour. She traveled throughout the United States giving song recitals, not unlike her son-in-law, the famous balladist, Woody Guthrie, and her grandson, Arlo Guthrie.
Dzhankoye
Folksong of Jewish farmers in the Crimea in the middle ’20s, published by Moishe Beregovski-ltsik Fefer in 1938. In the YIVO Archives there is a ghetto song of Transnistria which is an adaptation of Dzhankoye (sent in by ltsik Schwartz, Baku, 1948), about an old man who collects corpses from the concentration camp to bring them to the cemetery for burial. The first stanza is:
“Az me geyt keyn obadivke, / lz nit vayt keyn balanivke. / Dortn iz a lagerl faran, / Mentshn lign op mes-lesn /Nish’ getrunken, nish’ gegesn / Fritsl zogt:-azoy dart es zayn!” (When you go to Obadivka, it’s not far from Balanivke, there is a concentration camp. People lie there for days, without drink, without food. Fritz says: that’s how it should be!). A variant collected by Moishe Beregovski and Reuven Lerner was published in Sovetish heymland,1968:4. Also Chava Lapin recalls that in Israel in the 50s; the melody was.sung to the words of “Daroma leElat.”
In recent times the melody of “Dzhankoye” was used in a Purim song by Dmitri Yakirevitch, printed in the bulletin Mame-loshn no. 2, 1989, issued by the Initiative Group of the Yiddish Culture Association in Moscow.
Elis-ayland
Eliyoho Hanovi
Er Hot Mir Tsugezogt
Folksong. Text published by S. Ginzburg and P. Marek in 1901; text and music published by Joel Engel in 1909. The song combines the lullaby with the theme of an unhappy love affair. The lines beginning with “Es iz nishto keyn epl” (There is no apple. . .) are found in a song in one of the oldest Yiddish manuscript song collections of Isaac Wallich of the 16th century (Neubauer Catalogue of the Bodleian Library, 2420: no. 20): “Es ist kein apfel so rosenrot / es stecket ein wurm d(e)rin, / es ist kein maidlein so hofisch und fein, / es furt einen falschen sin.” (There is no apple, no matter how red, that a worm is not found in it; there is no maiden so elegant and fine, that has no falsehood in mind). (Quoted in Y. L. Cahan, Shtudyes, and M. Beregovski, 1962.)
Ergets Vayt
Poem by the Yiddish poet and playwright H. Leivick, pen name of Leivick Halper (1888- 1962), about his exile in Siberia for political activities; music by Lazar Weiner (1897-1982). Published in sheet music by the Jlbneh Verlag, Vienna, 1936. The song was popular in Europe and the United States.
Es Brent
Following a pogrom in the Polish town Przytyk in 1938, Mordkhe Gebirtig (1877-1942) wrote the stirring song which was to prove prophetic of the Holocaust. It was sung in the ghettos and is still one of the most often performed commemorative songs. Gebirtig was a popular Yiddish songwriter before the war who continued to write and compose songs in the Cracow ghetto. He was shot by the Germans on June 4, 1942.
Es Iz Nokh Faran Aza Blum
Submitted by Sara Rosenfeld, Montreal, who writes that the song was popular among the Jewish youth of Poland before World War II.
Es Shlogt Di Sho
This song was part of a revue Moyshe Halt Zikh, performed in the Vilno ghetto in September, 1943. Words are by Kasriel Broydo (see note about author in Geto). Composer unknown.
Es Vet Zikh Fun Tsvaygl Tzeblien A Boym
Song of the Vilno ghetto by Kasriel Broydo (see note about author in Geto). Music by Yankl Troupianski (1909-1944), teacher. composer, who was deported from the ghetto to Estonia for hard labor. He died in a concentration camp in Germany.
Eybik
Eyder Ikh Leyg Zikh Shlofn
Lament of the seamstress published in 1912 by Y. L. Cahan. This is one of the workers’ folksongs that Cahan designated as part of the older folksong repertoire, in which the singer is an individual, rather than the collective “we” of later workers’ songs (see Cahan, Shtudyes).
Eykho
The song appears twice in Shmerke Kaczerginski’s collection of ghetto and concentration camp songs without the melody. It was sung in the Bialystok region, Borki-Kamionka. It was also sung in Transnistria (between the Dnieper and Bug Rivers) where Jews from Romania, especially from Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported. The ghetto song was based on an earlier song that was sung during the Petlura pogroms in Bessarabia. That text was published in the YIVO Bleter in 1932. Clara Krasner, mother of Molly Freedman, recorded the song in response to our request, which her son-in-law Robert Freedman then submitted to us. The melody was transcribed by the compilers and thus is printed for the first time.
Eyli, Eyli
Eynzam
One of the many songs by the Yiddish poet and troubador, Itsik Manger (1911-1969), a variant of a melody by Simkhe Shvarts. This is an imaginative and playful song, expressing the depths of loneliness in allegorical images.
Far Vos Iz Der Himl
A song of the Vilno ghetto by Leyb Opeskin (1908-1944) one of the founders of the partisan movement. He was killed the day before the liberation of Vilno. Composer unknown.