Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Listen To The Entire Yiddish Repertoire — At Once!

This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts.

Most American Jews recognize at most two or three Yiddish songs: “Afn Pripetshik,” “Tumbalalaika” and perhaps “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn.”

American Jews who grew up speaking Yiddish, however, can recognize dozens of others such as “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen,” “Afn Veg Shteyt A Boym” and so forth. Fans of Klezmer music and Yiddish folksongs know dozens of songs and Hasidic Jews know many more from their own repertoire. Very few people, however, know more than a few dozen Yiddish songs by heart.

In this charming video, filmed at Klezkamp 2013, musicians Benjy Fox-Rosen and Michael Winograd aim to perform “the entire Yiddish repertoire at once.” While they didn’t quite reach their ambitious goal they did create an interesting new composition, a sort of meta-folksong.

How many of these famous and (not so famous) songs do you recognize?

Here are all of the songs in the video in order of appearance:

1) “Oyfn Pripetshik;” Lyrics: Mark Warshavsky
2) “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen;” Lyrics: Abraham Goldfaden
3) “Di Rebetsin” Traditional
4) “Mayn Libe Beserabye;” Lyrics: Itzik Manger
5) “Milners Trern;” Lyrics: Mark Warshavsky
6) “Afn Vegn Shteyt a Boym;” Lyrics: Itzik Manger
7) “Hob ikh Mir An Altn Daym;” Lyrics: Yosef Grinshpan
8) “Zuntik Bulbes, Montik Bulbes;” Traditional
9) “Frayen Zikh iz Gut;” Lyrics: Arkady Gendler
10) “Bortsht;” Lyrics: Traditional 11) “Hudl mitn shtrudl;” Lyrics: Aaron Lebedeff
12) “Zog Nit Keynmol/Partizaner Hymen;” Lyrics: Hirsh Glick
13) “Tumbalalaika;” Lyrics: Traditional
14) “Urloyb;” Lyrics: Mordechai Gebirtig
15) “Sheyn vi Di Levone;” Lyrics: Chaim Tauber
16) “Yidl Mitn Fidl;” Lyrics: Itzik Manger
17) “Tshiribim, Tshiribom;” Lyrics: Traditonal

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.