My classmate from high school Eric Finkelman sent me this link to a video recording of Fay Webern from the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project saying, he had heard this song as a kid as well. Let this be the blog’s small contribution to the anti-Putin sentiment we all feel.
Tsar Nikolai, yob tvayu mat.* Zey nor mit veymen di host khasene gehat. A kurve, a blate, an oysgetrente shmate, Tsar Nikolai, yob tvayu mat!
Tsar Nikolai, go f__ your mother. Just see with whom you married. A thieving whore, a used up [sexually] rag Tsar Nikolai, go f__ your mother.
* In Cyrillic it’s ‘ëб твою мать’ (or the way she’s singing it – ‘ëб ваю мат’).
S’hot mit indz geleybt a khaver / A Comrade Lived Among Us. A Soviet Yiddish song praising Stalin. Sung by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman [BSG], recorded by Itzik Gottesman, Bronx. 1990s.
Image: A Jewish Kolhoz in Crimea
Commentary on the song is below after the lyrics and translation.
BSG spoken:
Dos hob ikh gehert tsum ershtn mul in Chernovitz in tsayt fun di rusn. I heard this for the first time in the time of the Russians. [The Soviet occupation of Chernovitz was June 1940 – July 1941]
S’hot mit indz geleybt a khaver. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay S’iz geveyn a yat a, braver. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
A comrade lived among us. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay He was a brave lad. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Er fleygt kikn af di shtern. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay A kolvirt vet bay undz vern. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
He used to look up to the stars Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay. We should build a kolvirt [farming collective]. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Fun di velder ungekimen. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay Hot er indz tsunoyf genimen. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
From the fields we came. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay He gathered us together Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Lomir trinken a lekhayim Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay far dem leybn, far dem nayem. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
[BSG indicates this verse can be sung at the end]
Let us make a toast Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay for the new life. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Far der oktober-revolutsye Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay in far Stalins konsitutsye Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
For the October Revolution Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay And for Stalin’s constitution Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Far di kinder, [far] di zkeynem. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay In far alemen in eynem. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
For the children, for the old ones Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay And for all of us together. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Zol der ershter kos zikh khvalyen. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay far indzer libn khaver _______
(BSG spits and says “yemakh shmoy” then continues) …Stalin. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Let the first drink swirl Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay for our dear comrade ______ [BSG spits and curses him “May his name be erased” then continues] …Stalin. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
Far der Oktober-revolutsye Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay in far Stalins konsitutsye. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
For the October Revolution Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay And for Stalin’s constitutution Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay
.ביילע רעדט: דאָס האָב איך געהערט צום ערשטן מאָל אין טשערנעוויץ אין צײַט פֿון די רוסן
BSG was reading from a notebook of Yiddish songs that she wrote down in Vienna in the Displaced Persons camp (1947- 1950). You can hear my voice helping her read some of the lines.
It seems that this song started out as a Hasidic nign (כּיצד מרקדי Ketzad merakdin);
Here is an instrumental version of the Hasidic tune from the album “Chassidic Authentic Wedding Dances (Galton D-5935):
Then the melody was used for a Soviet Yiddish song praising Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, probably made popular by the 1938 recording of the Soviet Yiddish singer Zinoviy Shulman (1904 – 1977) .
The text version praising Stalin as was printed in the collection Yidishe folks-lider, edited by Y. Dobrushn and A. Yuditsky, Moscow 1940, p. 425
Here is an image of that version:
In the 1950s, after the death of Stalin (1953), the song made its way into the leftist 1956 American Yiddish songbook Lomir ale zingen / Let’s Sing (Jewish Music Alliance, NY) but dropped any mention of Stalin, of his constitution and of the October revolution. It was called “S’hot mit undz gelebt a khaver”.
A rousing version of the song entited L’chayim Stalin and based on the Shulman recording was recently recorded by Dan Kahn and Psoy Korolenko, including the references to Stalin on their album The Third Unternationale (2020):
Special thanks this week to Benjamin Ginzburg, Arun Vishwanath, Psoy Korolenko and Dan Kahn.
Nodele / Little Needle Words: Sara Barkan, music: H. Wolowitz. Sung by Martin Horowitz, recorded by Gertrude Nitzberg, Baltimore, 1979
Commentary by Itzik Gottesman
Martin Horowitz
The singer Martin Horowitz of Baltimore passed away on Feb, 12, 2020. The obituary in the Baltimore Jewish Times (Mar. 25) writes that “He loved music, dancing, and was an energetic and graceful performer. He played guitar, accompanying himself on folk and Yiddish songs.”
This is another song from the Nitzberg Collection at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. This song, words and music, is included in the collection Zing mit mir published by Workmen’s Circle, NY, 1945 (third printing), edited by Mikhl Gelbart. We have attached the pages, Yiddish words and music.
The text was written by Sarah Barkan (also known as Barkan-Silverman), a radical Yiddish poet who was very much part of the Yiddish communist literary world before the Second World War. She contributed many poems to the leftist Yiddish schools in America, and “Nodele” is one of them. It is published in her book Gutfriling (NYC,1936) where it is titled “Tsu a nodl”.
Sarah Barkan
Barkan was born in Dvinsk (Daugavipils), Latvia, in 1884 and immigrated to the US in 1907. She died in NY in 1957.
The composer Hersh Wolowitz was active in the 1920s and 1930’s. His best known song “A fidler” begins with the line “S’hot der tate fun yaridl”. He published two collections Tsen kinderlider (1929) and Lider tsum zingen (1936).
TRANSLITERATION
Nodl, nodl, nodele,
Shtekh durkh dem gevant.
A fodem in dayn eygele
Loz durkhgeyn mayn hant.
Refrain:
Fal nit, fal nit nodele,
fun mayn mider hant.
Mir tantsn dokh a nodltants,
Af zayd un af gevant.
Ven der tog vet shlofn geyn,
rustu in mayn lats.
Nodl, nodl nodele,
nodele mayn shats.
Refrain
TRANSLATION
Needle, needle, little needle,
poke through this cloth.
Let pass a thread in your little eye
through my hand.
Refrain:
Don’t fall, don’t fall little needle
from my weary hand.
We dance a needle dance,
on silk and on cloth.
When the day will go to sleep,
you rest in my lapel.
Needle, needle, little needle,
little needle my treasure.
It was very sad and shocking news to hear that Chana Yachness passed away on September 29th, 2013. She grew up in the leftist (“linke”) Yiddish circles of New York, loved Yiddish culture and was a wonderful link to that world. She was beloved by all and this week‘s contribution to the Yiddish Song of the Week is in her memory.
Chana Yachness and her husband, Ted Haendel. Photograph by Emily Socolov.
Her mother Rukhele Barak Yachness was a fine Yiddish singer and actress and in this recording (which I recorded in the Bronx, 1999) they sing together a revolutionary folksong In dem vaytn land Sibir that can be found in the volume of Moshe Beregovski’s writings and transcriptions edited by Mark Slobin, Old Jewish Folk Music (1982, see below). It‘s obviously not a perfect recording with bantering and joking – Chana sings the name of Yiddish actor “Maurice Schwartz‟ instead of “khmares shvarts‟, but it is the only recording I can find of the song. Their spirited interpretation gives one the sense of how a Yiddish revolutionary song used to be performed, especially by Jewish choruses. Note that in the Beregovski volume there is a second verse; Chana and Rukhele sing the first and third.
Many of the Yiddish songs that are sung by di linke today, including In dem vaytn, were learned from the folk operetta A bunt mit a statshke (A Revolt and a Strike) assembled from songs printed in Beregovski‘s song collection of 1934 by the choral leader and conductor Jacob Schaefer and critic Nathaniel Buchwald. This operetta was not only performed by the choruses of the time, 1930s, but in the Yiddish leftist camp Kinderland (at Sylvan Lake, Dutchess County, NY) where Chana no doubt learned it in the late 1940s and 1950s. See the recent documentary on Kinderland – Commie Camp
In the distant land Siberia Where the sky is always covered by clouds, I was banished there, for one word – for freedom. I was beaten with the whip, so I would no longer say
“Let there be freedom – to hell with Nicholas‟
Soon will come the happy time, Soon we will know from near and far, that Russia is bright, that Russia is free. “Let there be freedom – to hell with Nicholas‟
Yiddish Song of the Week 