A Classy Yiddish Writer Sings ‘Oy Vey Mame’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Ezra Glinter August 11, 2010
In this week’s Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts managing editor Itzik Gottesman writes about Yiddish writer Ita Taub and “Oy Vey Mame” a song she remembered from her shtetl.
Ita (or Eta) Taub (1908 – 2003) was born in the Ukrainian town of Stidenitse on the Dniester river. She immigrated to Montreal and then New York. She published two volumes of autobiography in Yiddish, “Ikh gedenk” (“I Remember”), with one volume appearing posthumously. She also wrote a volume of poetry, “In klem fun benkshaft” (“In the Fetters of Longing,” Jerusalem, 1993) and published the Yiddish love poetry and love letters sent to her by an admirer (“Libe briv un lider” by Itzik Freiman).
She was well known for her philanthropic generosity and financially supported numerous Yiddish causes, especially those connected to Soviet Yiddish literature. She was a classy lady, as they say, with a huge apartment on 106th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. By the time I recorded her, her voice was clearly not very powerful, but she still could sing an unaccompanied Yiddish folksong in a compelling way.
Read the whole post and listen to Ita Taub sing “Oy Vey Mame” here.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
