Yiddish Curiosities: a library of wonderful but forgotten Yiddish songs from the late 1920s and after (includes Polish Jewish Cabaret). Have a listen!

UPDATE: I made a new video with the lyrics transliterated and the translation. Maybe somebody besides me would enjoy singing this song!



Miriam Isaacs, who's been researching the Stonehill Collection at the Holocaust Museum, told me most of the dirty songs Ben Stonehill recorded at the Hotel Marsellaise were about rebbes. And here is one. It was written by Ludwig Satz, I found the recording at the Harvard Judaica Collection. Zhelonek, however, transcribed a recording of the song by Herman Fenigstein, I've never seen or heard that recording.

So there were three sets of words: the words Satz scrawled on a cocktail napkin or whatever and sent to the U.S. Copyright Office; the words he recorded; and the words Zhelonek transcribed. It seems to have been the rule that when somebody took somebody else's song into their own repertoire, they would re-write the words. So I chose the bits I liked best from those three versions and that's what I recorded yesterday. The song will be going on Nervez!, the last Itzik Zhelonek cd.

Here's our version. Roger Lynn Spears is playing piano, Randy Kloko is singing on the chorus.

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And here is a video from one of our concerts:

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The picture is of Ludwig Satz and Lucy Levine in the show called His Wife's Lover.

Below, my translation of what I sang.

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Labels: der rebbe, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, nostalgia, religion, songs for sale

UPDATE: I put up the second video here ten years ago, with the text as Itzik Zhelonek printed it, but I got complaints from singers who can't read the oysyes, so here is a new one with the lyrics transliterated, and with the translation:



Here's the video with Zhelonek's printed lyrics. Randy Kloko is singing with me on the last chorus. The words displayed, probably transcribed by Itzik Zhelonek from Herman Fenigstein's (now lost) record of 1933, are somewhat at odds with what we heard on Aaron Lebedeff's recording, but they're close enough. If you want to correct me go ahead and leave a note in the comments section.


You can buy the track (or the whole Nervez! cd) - or listen to the whole album - by clicking below:


Back in 2012-2014, when I was finding and recording these songs, I didn't make videos, because Randy lives in Florida and I couldn't get enough of his time to sing the songs and also videotape them. It didn't occur to me until well into the following project (American Yiddish Penny Songs) that it might be helpful to Yiddish singers if I put the original songsheets on the video - and that also reduced the need for other visuals, which are very time consuming to pull together!

So I started cranking out videos, and now I'm going back to the Zhelonek cds and making videos for those songs.

I've learned a lot in the two-four years since we made the four Warsaw cds. I was told once by a member of presiding Yiddish royalty that I make too many mistakes to be qualified to do this work. There was a time in my life I would have let that stop me completely - I would have abandoned this project about 200 songs ago.

But I said to myself, mistakes or not, I'm doing something that's worthwhile, and hopefully somebody more qualified will come along afterwards and do a better job recording these songs than I did. Nothing would make me happier - and if you DO record any of them please let me know! I'll add links to these blogs.

Click the image for a larger view. This A Gute Vokh contain is not the sweet, simple one still well-known: instead, it joins snatches of several Sabbath table song melodies (familiar to Jews of the time but now less known) into a nostalgic remembrance.

The lovely traditions signaling the end of the Sabbath are a bit sad. Few welcome the return of the work week with its responsibilities and worries.

Another song reflecting that bittersweet moment when the Sabbath ends: Bobenyu (zol nokh zayn shabes).

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English translation:
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Labels: home, klezmer, mother, nostalgia, religion, songs for sale

UPDATED: Re-posted to add a brand-new new video of the song I recorded on the cd Lebedik Yankel, now with Yiddish text and translation, click below:


Or click on the album cover to hear the whole cd Lebedik Yankel.

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This is one of the happiest songs in the Itzik Zhelonek collection. Nothing bad happens! The narrator, probably a yeshiva bokher, hears somebody shouting in Russian in the woods. The unseen fellow is saying, in Russian, "Katarina, come here!" Our narrator knows Yiddish and Hebrew but not Russian, so he parses the Slavic words as if they a passage to unravel in his learning.

There's a gorgeous recording of this song by Nekhama Lifshitz - it's available at the Dartmouth Jewish Sound archive. Zhelonek wrote that this is a folksong but there are 1930s sheet music arrangements available.

The first line, in Hebrew, does not appear in Zhelonek's collection, but Lifschitz sings it.


When I recorded this song I had two sources: the words as Itzik Zhelonek had transcribed them from some performance in Warsaw between the wars, and Nekhama Lifshitz's recording. They differed from each other significantly. Years later I found sheet music for the song, and it differed from both of the versions I had. It also, as was often the case, was at war with itself: the person who typeset the Yiddish oysyes and the person who typeset the music and the transliteration were at odds with each other. So now I have four versions. I hope this helps to explain to you inconsistencies in what you hear and what you see in the video.

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Here's my translation:

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Labels: humor & satire, religion, songs for sale

UPDATE: reposting to add the video I made today, with Yiddish lyrics and translation so you can learn it. I made it on an airplane coming back from New York, the modern world is amazing sometimes.

This is a BANGER of a song! Or as we say in Yiddish, a shlager. Randy Kloko sang with me.


Click the album's picture to hear and/or buy this song from our Lebedik Yankel cd.

Aaron Lebedeff was a king of Yiddish theater music, and I'm lucky that so many of his recordings have survived, because he covered a lot of the Itzik Zhelonek songs originally made famous by other Yiddish theater stars whose recordings have gone extinct.

I first found this song (variously known as Cirele Mirele or Zirele Mirele) in the US Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. It was perplexing because it was too short for the amount of melody I had. I fooled with it but laid it aside.

Later I discovered the song, to my joy, in the Mayrent Collection of Yiddish 78s, now housed at the University of Wisconsin. You can read about it here and here. Sherry Mayrent is a clarinetist, composer, and stalwart supporter of Yiddish music; she graciously sent me an mp3 of Lebedeff's recording.

I discovered that, in his haste to get his song copyrighted, Lebedeff had sent it to the Copyright Office half-baked. The manuscript did not include the chorus, nor did it include the instrumental hook that is used throughout the song.


I imagine that the singer has gotten himself in some sort of trouble with his girlfriend and this song is his attempt to jolly her out of it, with kisses, flattery, and the promise of a wedding, dancing, and joyful abandon. "Dance the kozatske like a boy," he exclaims (that's the Cossack Dance where the guys in hats squat down, cross their arms across their chests, and kick their legs out). He also offers her a sack of parsnips and a treat called vashmala, which I have not been able to identify.

Here's my translation:

Labels: klezmer, love, nostalgia, songs for sale, weddings

UPDATE: Reposted to add the new singalong Yiddish music video, part of my campaign to get other people to sing these songs:




Or visit to the whole track from our cd of the same name: Lebedik Yankel.

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This is yet another song about a guy who is not supporting his family because he's too busy praying. Well, he does have an occupation of sorts: he repairs crummy old shoes. (This guy doesn't look very lively, does he!?)

Itzik Zhelonek labeled it "folk song sung by Herman Fenigstein." Morris Rund, however, copyrighted the lyrics and credited Aaron Lebedeff (or Lebedoff as it says on the card in the copyright office card catalog) as composer of the music. For the sheet music I transcribed an older recording of this song sung by Aaron Lebedeff, but that cut was taken down. If that was for copyright reasons, it was unnecessary, as Lebedeff never renewed the copyright and the song is now in the public domain. Luckily somebody else has posted a newer version by Lebedeff (it desn't have the chorus members who were on the previous recording): Aaron Lebedeff's Lebedik Yankel.

I found the last verse not on the recording or in the Zhelonek collection, but online.

I chose this as the name of the second Itzik Zhelonek cd because it was one of the few titles I thought everybody would pronounce. I didn't use the YIVO-sanctioned spelling of "Yankl" because it would worry English speakers.

This song contains the worst tongue-twister I've ever encountered in my life - "zorg zikh nisht mayn vaybl, zorg zikh nisht mayn taybl." I practiced it over and over and still couldn't get it. I was tempted to substitute something that's easier to say.

When Randy came up from Florida, he added the chorus and I added some oom-pah on fiddle and viola.

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Translation of the Yiddish lyrics:

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Labels: battle between the sexes, klezmer, making a living (poverty), religion, songs for sale