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Nizza Thobi:
Gebojrn in a sajdn Hemdl Yiddish
Songs
Original, Transcription, Translation, Commentaries
German / English / Hebrew
01 - Gebojrn in a sajdn hemdl
This song is a parable on the vital value of the native
Jiddish language. The silken shirt of the inherited mother tongue is like a
second skin which should never be given away. The threat of loosing it
arises mainly abroad where the danger of loosing ones linguistic identity is
particularly imminent.
02 - For ich mir arojs
This song is about the encounter of a religious Jew and one
who has abandoned his God in favor of worldly endeavours. After arduous
journeys, the poor Gallician coachman lands in a pub and there he meets the
landlord, whom he enthusiastically takes for a worldly emancipated Westeuropean
Jew. In order to partake in a conversation with this presumably higher ranking
man for a whole night, he allows himself to be encouraged to drink until dawn.
He looses his horses and his coach, his entire possessions, in order to pay the
ensuing bill, calculated by the devious landlord. On Shabbat the coachman has to
return to his home with nothing but the whip in his hand, a sorry symbol of his
lost power and his sole comfort. To his wife, who is preparing the home for the
Shabbat he assertains that God will surely restore their lot.
03 - Mojde ani
A Jewish prayer spoken before rising, still laying in bed
with unwashed hands. A young man can only remember the first three words of this
prayer. He laments that he lost this prayer because of the bad experiences he
sufferd in a foreign world. [Hören]
04 -
A din-tojre mit got
After yet another pogrom in the Ukraine the great Rabbi
Levi Itzchak from Berditschew is seen in his Temple, climbing the stairs of the
shrine which contains the Thora. He opens the pairs of doors of the shrine and
after a lament to God he recites his own death prayer, the Kaddish because he
sees himself as an expiatory sacrifice for the people of Israel. The lament
refers to the alliance between God and the people of Israel (2nd book Samuel
chapter 7,23). The Rabbi asks why God still demands that the struggling people
of Israel prove themselves to him and why he doesn’t remind powerful nations
like England, Italy or Germany of their duty. The Berditschewer finds the
explanation in God’s love for the world of the powerless, the children of
Israel. Therefore the Rabbi asks for protection and help from God. The
wrangeling with God, even in harsh arguments is an ancient Jewish tradition.
[Hören]
05 - Ich hob dich zufil lib
A song from the play Katerinchik / The Organ-grinder which
had its first performance in 1934 on Second Avenue in New York. A gypsy girl,
madly in love reads in her cards that her love for the young organ-grinder is
not returned.
06 - Nani nani
Ladino also called Español, is the language of the Spanish
Jews, the Sephardim. Like Jiddish, Ladino was spoken on workdays while Hebrew
was reserved for the holidays. 1492 the Jews were driven away from Spain. They
setteled in Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, in Turkey, Italy and the
Netherlands. In the extermination camps of the Nazis hundreds of thousands of
Jews were murdered who had originally come from Spain. Percentagewise more
Sephardim than Easteuropean Jews died in the concentration camps. For example:
95 percent of the Greek Jews of Saloniki, 53.000 were killed in the gas
chambers. [Hören]
07 -
Jafim halejlot bichnaan
Canaan is the biblical name of Erez Israel. The poet,
writer, teacher and director of the Hebrew gymnasium at Lemberg Jitzchak
Katzenelson was born in 1886 in Kareliz close to Minsk. In the Third Reich he
was in great danger because of his official position. In the Warsaw Ghetto he
lost his wife and two of his sons. In August 1943 he and his third son Zvi were
driven to an internment camp at Vittel in France. A few month before the
liberation by the allied troops a part of the inmates were deported to the
Auschwitz extermination camp. Among them were Zvi and Jitzchak Katzenelson, who
gave his writings to Ruth Adler for safekeeping while he was still in Vittel.
Hidden in the handle of her suitcase she brought the manuscripts to Erez Israel.
So his elegy ' Great Chant of the Exterminated Jewish People' could be saved. In
May 1944 Jtzchak Katzenelson and his son were murdered in Auschwitz. [Hören]
08 - A Chasn ojf schabes
A young cantor had applied for the vacant job of a cantor
in a small town. He is examined by three craftsmen: a taylor, a blacksmith and a
coachman. Alternately each of them praises the power of the young man’s singing
by using the terminology of his trade. The taylor compares it with the beauty of
a needle piercing rich cloth or the ironing of an expensive garment. The
blacksmith compares its power with the squeezing of the bellows and with the
sound of the hammer. The coachman declares that the cantor’s singing makes him
as happy as sitting on the coach-box behind a wonderful team of horses, holding
the reins in his hands or hearing the cracking of a whip from one of the most
excellent coachman. Thus the political representatives of the community elected
the cantor of the religious congregation.
09 - A pastechl, a trojmer
A shepherd in the midst of his flock is dreaming of himself
in heaven. When he awakes he discovers that wolves have caused a bloodbath among
his sheep. This parable speaks to all who have responsibility for others,
particularly the young. Over and above this poem expresses a great complaint:
the shepherd represents God’s part in our world. The poet mourns the godforsaken
world.
10 - Gehat hob ich a hejm
Written in May 1941. The old-established Polish family
Gebirtig was displaced from their hometown Lagiewniki near Krakow to the nearby
Ghetto of Podgorze. The carpenter Mordechaj Gebirtig emphasizes that he had
nothing worth taking by his enemies. The poet had been content with his modest
circumstances. Now, completely aghast, he faces the brutal events in the Ghetto
which he in his poetic language compares to the pest.
11 - Friling
Written in April 1943 by Schmerke Kaczerginski after
the death of his wife Barbara from the house of the Kaufmanns. This song was
first performed in a play in the Ghetto of Wilna. In it the author turns towards
nature, towards spring because the people around him are not listening.
12 - S’dremlen fejgl
The journalist and poet Lea Rudnitzki wrote this lullabye
in the Wilna Ghetto for a three year old child who escaped the massmurder but
lost his parents. A partisan, Lea Rudnitzki was caught by the Gestapo and
deported to Majdanek, where she was burnt.
13 - Ejli, Ejli, lomo asavtoni
A song from the play 'For One Night A Jiddish King in
Poland' which had the first performance in New York in 1896. The indictment in
this poem refers to the pogroms against East European Jews in Poland and Russia.
Half a century later this song was sung by Miriam Eisenstadt, the nightingale of
the Warsaw Ghetto, often even before the Nazi occupying forces. She at the same
time took part in concerts of the underground movement. Her constant accompanist
in the Ghetto was the world-renowned artist Ignazi Rosenbojm.
Sad irony of this story: the very popular singer was abused by a film team from
Berlin to present the song in a propaganda movie which misrepresented the
situation in the Ghetto completely. The song starts with the shout: My God! My
God! Why did you abandon me? In the history this cry appears for the first time
with King David repenting his sins (Psalm 22,2). On the mountain of Golgatha,
citing David, Jesus at the Cross cries out this exclamation (Matthew 27,46).
Miriam Eisenstadt’s life was to have been saved but she decided to share her
family’s fate. When in autumn of 1942 the Ghetto was eliminated, she refused to
be separated from her parents at the transfer center from where the Jews were
taken to their extermination; the Nazis shot the twenty year old on the spot.
14 - Ovntlid
The Melody to this poem of Itzik Manger expresses the
striving for wholeness, the yearning for being safe within the harmony of the
cosmos. The poet wishes the beauty of the surrounding nature to shine into his
poem like the purity of the prayer. Manger presented his song as an evening
prayer on the occasion of his 60th birthday in New York: I merely would ask you
to say a silent Amen in your hearts.
15 - "Wir erkennen..."
Shortly before his death in 1963 Pope Johannes the XXIII
wrote this prayer of repentance. He was born as Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on
November 25, 1881 in Sotto il Monte near Bergamo, Italy. In cooperation with the
special emissary of the American committee for the refugees of war, Ira
Hirshman, he in the summer of 1944 issued numerous certificates of baptism to
Hungarian Jews, mainly to children. This way many could be saved. In 1958 he
ordered to eliminate from the Good Friday prayer the part referring to the
perfidious Jews and unbelievers.
Commentaries © 2000 Nizza Thobi,
Translation to English © Alexander E. von Richthofen
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