On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, clarinetist Joel Rubin writes about “Vos vet zayn?” (What Will Happen?), a song performed by Rabbi Eli Silberstein of Ithaca, New York. Rubin writes: Rabbi Eli Silberstein (first name pronounced to rhyme with “deli”) has been the charismatic leader of the Roitman Chabad Center at Cornell University…
Over on the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman discusses the ballad “Az es shtarbt nor up dus ershte vaybele” (“As Soon as the First Wife Dies”), as sung by Lifshe Schaechter Widman. Formally, “Az es shtarbt nor up dus ershte vaybele” (“As Soon as the First Wife Dies”) could…
Canada is home to less than three percent of the world’s Jewish population, but every other year, Jewish artists from around the world congregate in Toronto for the Ashkenaz Festival, which returns this year from August 31 to September 6 at the city’s Harbourfront Centre. The festival was created in 1995 as a forum for…
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman writes about “Din Toyre,” a song that deals with the question of Justice, in both the mundane and cosmic senses. The performance was “recorded by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman in the Bronx, 1980s. The singer was a neighbor, M. Bauman, from either Lodz or…
Over on the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Ethel Raim discusses “Der shadkhn” (“The Matchmaker”) “a humorous song describing the special skills that a shadkhn needs for his trade”: The performer, Clara Crasner, was a truly marvelous singer who possessed a vast repertoire of Yiddish songs. I only regret never having met her or…
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…
Over at the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts managing editor Itzik Gottesman introduces the children’s folksong “Vos hostu gelernt mayn kind in kheyder” with a look back at the 1980’s Yiddish cultural scene in the Bronx: I recorded “Vos hostu gelernt mayn kind in kheyder?” (“What Did You Learn My Child in Cheder?”)…
Over at the An-sky Jewish Folkore Research Project, Forverts managing editor Itzik Gottesman, along with a few other contributors, has been poking through the nooks and crannies of Yiddish music and poetry on the Yiddish Song of the Week blog. As quickly becomes clear from reading the blog, these aren’t your regular Yiddish standards. Rather,…
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