“Kivele” by Mordkhe Gebirtig, Sung by Jacob (Kobi) Weitzner Recorded by Itzik Gottesman, Warsaw, 2017
Commentary by Itzik Gottesman
This week we honor the memory of Yiddish writer, playwright, scholar and journalist Jacob (Kobi) Weitzner (March 24, 1951 – September 20, 2018). His second yortsayt will be Sept. 29. 2020
Jacob (Kobi) Weitzner
I had known Kobi since the early 1980s in NYC and worked together with him for years at the Yiddish Forverts newspaper. On the Forverts radio hour, his comic imitations of Ariel Sharon and other Israeli leaders attracted a large following, particularly among the Hasidim in NY.
We last met in Warsaw in August 2017 and at that time, he asked me to identify this song that his mother sang to him as a child. The one verse he sang for me was from “Kivele” by Mordkhe Gebirtig. Someone along Kobi’s chain of performance changed the name from “Kivele” to “Yankele” (the name of a different, more well-known Gebirtig lullaby) and reduced an eight-line verse to four.
“Kivele” is not among the better known songs by Gebirtig and has only been recorded by a few singers – “The Bashevis Singers” of Australia, Barbara Suie, Mariejan van Oort among them. I could find only a couple of recordings in the 20th century: Max Reichart and Mascha Benya. Benya’s, version can be heard at this link.
I have attached the original words in Yiddish and music from a 1942 edition of Gebirtig’s songs Mayne lider, published by Arbeter-ring. Gebirtig’s text transliterated with German translation can be found at the Virtual Klezmer link.
Kobi Weitzner sings this one verse:
Shluf zhe man neshumele, mayn kleyn yingele, Hay-liu-liu-liu, shluf zhe mir. S’iz finem tatenyu gekimen a brivele, toyznter zise kishn shikt er dir.
Sleep my dear soul, my little boy Hay-liu-liu go to sleep. From your father a letter has arrived thousands of sweet kisses he sends you.
Shluf mayn kind, mayn treyst/Sleep my child, my comfort An otherwise unknown alternate melody for Sholem Aleichemś lullaby from Chernovitz, Romania sung by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
Commentary by Itzik Gottesman
There are several melodies for this song known commonly as “Sholem Aleichem’s lullaby”, words by the writer Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovitch, 1859 – 1916).
Sholem Aleichem
There are two popular tunes to this poem but Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (BSG) sings an otherwise unknown third melody that she remembers from her home town of Cernauti/Chernovitz, Romania.
BSG sings only two verses of a longer song. Sholem Aleichem first printed the poem in 1892 but only a few years later it was already published as a “folksong” in the Ginsburg and Marek collection of 1901.
The most commonly sung melody was composed by Dovid Kovanovsky. You can hear Ruth Rubin sing the Kavonovsky melody at this link. (from YIVO’s Ruth Rubin Archive). Also posted at the link is Feigl Yudin’s performance of the second most popular melody. Below is a version of the Yudin melody performed by vocalist Rebecca Kaplan Muranaka, accompanied by tsimblist Pete Rushefsky from their 2003 CD, Oyf di vegelekh – On the Paths (Yiddishland Music):
Both melodies plus transcribed words and translation have been printed in Ruth Rubin’s Jewish Folksongs in Yiddish and English (Oak Publications, 1965) (scans attached).
In Emil Seculetz’s Romanian Yiddish collection Yidishe folkslider, (Bucharest 1959) the compiler collected 5 versions of Shlof mayn kind, with music. Two of them (#21 and #22) are related to BSGs version. (scans are attached))
In BSG’s repertory she knows a completely different song to this second popular melody sung by Yudin: a lullaby about armed resistance which can be heard on her CD “Bay mayn mames shtibele” (2004).
There is much more to say about the history and transformations of Sholem Aleichem’s lullaby. See the article “America in East European Yiddish Folk Song” in The Field of Yiddish, 1954 by Eleanor Gordon Mlotek and the chapter on Sholem Aleichem in Perl fun der yidisher poezye, ed. Yoysef and Khane Mlotek, 1974.
Fans of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman – be sure to watch this amazing online concert commemorating BSG’s 100th Birthday!
Shluf man kind as sung by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
Shluf man kind, man treyst, may sheyner Shluf man zinonyu.
Shluf man kind, man kadish eyner Hayda-liu-lku
Shluf man kind, man kadish eyner Hayda-liu-lku-liu
In amerike der tate, dayner zinonyu.
Bist a kind nokh shluf lis-ate shluf zhe, shluf liu-liu
Bist a kind nokh shluf lis-ate shluf zhe, shluf liu-liu
From Emil Seculetz’s Yidishe folkslider, (Bucharest 1959), #21 and #22:
From Ruth Rubin’s Jewish Folksongs in Yiddish and English (Oak Publications, 1965):
This week’s post features a medley that combines three distinct lullabies sung by Esther Korshin in 1946. Yiddish lullabies, as most Yiddish folksongs, are women’s folk poetry. But with the genre of lullaby the element of improvisation plays a bigger role as we see in this week’s post.
Esther Korshin, August 1957. Courtesy of Oliver Korshin.
1) The first part consists of the Russian lullaby Spi mladenets moy prekrasniy (Sleep My Wonderful Boy)better known as “Cossack Lullaby”
2) This is followed by a Yiddish verse of a lullaby beginning with the line Shluf mayn feygele (Sleep My Little Bird) sung to the same melody as Cossack Lullaby.
3) The lullaby medley concludes with a different Yiddish lullaby also beginning with the line Shluf mayn feygele.
Parts one and two are connected by melody; parts two and three are connected by the lyrics. See below for the recording, notes on the songs and finally the lyrics.
Spi mladenets moy prekrasniy
The popular Russian lullaby Spi mladenets usually referred to as “Cossack Lullaby” was written in 1840 by Mikhail Lermontov (1814 – 1841). It has been folkorized over the years and Korshin’s version differs slightly from the original poem.
The melody was the basis for Yiddish lullabies by Avrom Goldfaden (1840 – 1908) and J. L. Gordon (Yehude-Leyb Gordon 1830 – 1892). See: Ruth Rubin Voices of a People, pp. 260-261.
Jewish mothers wished for many things for their sons in Yiddish lullabies but growing up to be a soldier, as in this one, was not one of them. So it is no wonder that such a hope would be expressed in Russian not Yiddish. Her performance of this song reflects how intertwined Russian and Jewish culture were.
Shluf mayn feygele 1
After concluding the Cossack Lullaby, Korshin switches from Russian to Yiddish to sing two verses with the same melody. This is Goldfaden’s lullaby that originally began with the line “Shlof in freydn” (sleep in peace) and was printed in his collection of poetry Di Yidene (The Jewess, Odessa, 1872) Attached at the end of this post is the complete original poem (Yidene 1, 2, 3). By 1901 it was an anonymous Yiddish folksong in the Ginsburg-Marek collection. A version closer to Goldfaden’s original poem, including music, can be found in Eleonor and Joseph Mlotek Songs of Generations, p. 4.
Interesting that in “Shluf mayn feygele 1” Korshin sings “Ay-liu-liu”, one of the Yiddish equivalents of “hush-a-bye” but also the Russian equivalent – “bayushki bayu”, making the connection between the Yiddish song and the Russian one even tighter.
Readers of the Yiddish Song of the Week blog will remember that another lullaby with the first line Shluf/Shlof mayn feygele but a different melody, sung by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman.
Shluf mayn feygele 2
This is a popular Yiddish lullaby with many variants. Here is a link to another version on the web, sung by Jill Rogoff.
For more on Yiddish lullabies see: Dov Noy “The Model of the Yiddish Lullaby” in Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore, ed. Dov Noy, Jerusalem, 1986. On the lullaby in Jewish literature and culture, Hebrew and Yiddish, see the entry “Lullabies” by Dov Noy and Aliza Shenhar in Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions.
Thanks to Samantha Shokin of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance for the Russian transcription and translation, Jennifer Herring for the recording, and Cantor Janet Leuchter for connecting us with the Korshin family.
Sleep my little bird,
close your eye.
Ay-lyu-lyu-lyu-lyu
Sleep my dear son
Sleep my dear child
Bayushki bayu
Ay-lyu-lyu-lyu-lyu
Ay-lyu-lyu-lyu-lyu
Sleep my dear son,
Sleep my little bird
Close your eye,
Ay-lyu-lyu-lyu-lyu
Sleep my little bird,
close your eye.
Ay-liu-liu-liu Liu…
All of the previous recordings in this blog of the Bukovina singer Lifshe Schaechter-Widman [LSW] are from the 1954 recordings done by Leybl Kahn. But her daughter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman recorded a few songs from her in the 1960s and early 1970s. This lullaby was recorded a few months before LSW died in 1973.
Lifshe Schaechter-Widman with her brother Luzer Gottesman. NYC ca. 1912
As usual, the transcription in English letters more accurately reflects her dialect than does the Yiddish transcription in the Yiddish alphabet in which we use standard Yiddish.
Spoken introduction by LSW: “Ikh fleyg dus zingen ven ikh bin nokh geveyn a kind mistame, finef, finef un zekhtsik yur tsurik. In dernokh hob eykh dus gezingen mane kinder. Kh’ob es gezingen Beyltsyen; Kh’ob es gezingen Mordkhen. Un hant vilt zikh es zingen…efsher veln mane eyniklekh es amul veln kenen.”
Shluf mayn feygele makh tsi dayn eygele.
Hay-da-lyu-lyu-lyu
Shluf mayn kroyndele, di bist a parshoyndele,
Shluf zhe, shluf lyu-lyu
Az di vest oyfshteyn fin deym zisn shluf
Hay-da-lyu-lyu-lyu
veln mir beyde geyn pasn di shuf.
Shluf zhe, shluf lyu-lyu
Oyf der khasene af daner, veln file mener
tantsn zinenyu.
Mir veln geyn oyf di beler, tantsn in di zele*
Shluf zhe, shluf lyu-lyu.
*(German: säle) the usual Yiddish plural of “zal” – a large room, ballroom would be “zaln”. LSW uses the more Germanic form, perhaps the local Yiddish Bukovina form, to rhyme.
TRANSLATION
LSW spoken introduction:
“I used to sing this when I was still a child, probably about 65 years ago. Then I sang it for my children. I sang it for Beyltsye. I sang it for Mordkhe. And today I feel like singing it…perhaps my grandchildren will want to know it.”
Sleep my little bird, close your eye.
Hay-da-lyu-lyu-lyu
Sleep my little crown, you are someone special.
So sleep, sleep lyu-lyu
When you wake up from your sweet sleep
Hay-da-lyu-lyu-lyu
We will both go to tend to the sheep
So sleep, sleep lyu-lyu
At your wedding many men will
dance, my dear son.
We will to the balls and dance in the halls
So sleep, sleep -lyu-lyu
This song by Nitsa Rantz was recorded at the same concert as Rantz’s song Mayn shifl that we had earlier posted in in our blog, at the club Tonic on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 2009. Rantz is accompanied by Jeff Warschauer on guitar.
Nitsa Rantz in Paris, Late 1940s
In their column “Lider demonen zikh lider” [Readers remember songs] in the Yiddish Forward newspaper, Feb. 7th 1992, page 15. Chana and Joseph Mlotek printed the words of Nitsa Rantz’s version of this song.
The columnists note that Rantz called the song “Viglid fun der frantzeyzisher revolutsye” [Lullaby of the French Revolution], and that they had found a printed version in a Workmen’s Circle songbook, 1934.
A version was sung during the Holocaust in the Vilna ghetto and was printed in Shmerke Katcherginski’s collection “Lider fun getos un lagern”, 1948. The singer Rokhl Relis called it “Dos lid fun umbakantn partisan”. Instead of the guillotine, the father is killed in a gas chamber.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman sings a similar version to Rantz’s, and there is enough difference in the text to make it worthwhile to post it on the Yiddish Song of the blog at some point. A beautiful version is found in the Stonehill collection, sung by an as yet unidentified man, (Reel 9).
Shlof shoyn kind mayns vider ruik ayn. Shtil es flit shoyn di levone-shayn. Fun der vaytns finklen shtern, Kuk nisht kind af mayne trern. Shlof shoyn kind mayns vider ruik ayn.
Sleep my child once more quietly. Quietly the moonlight flies . From the distance stars are twinkling. Child do not look at my tears. Sleep my child once more quietly.
Es vet der tate mer nisht kumen. Im hot men fun undz genumen. Iber di gasn im geshlept, af dem eshafod gekept. Blaybn mir dokh eynzam kind aleyn.
Your father will no longer come. They took him away from us. They dragged him through the streets, on the guillotine they cut his head. So we remain lonely, my child.
Reder geyen in fabrikn, menstshn geyen underdrikn. Dort ahin iz er gegangen, vu es raysn zikh di klangen. Vu di shteyner zenen royt baflekt.
Wheels turn in the factory, the people go oppressed. There is where he went, where the noises wildly sound, where the stones are stained red.
Unter der fon hoykh gehoybn, hot er mit a tifn gloybn, az er muz bafrayen shklafen, firn zey tsu a naym hafn, Tsu a groyser, sheyner, nayer velt.
Under the flag raised high, with a firm belief that he must free the slaves, take them to a new harbor, to a great, beautiful new world.
The song Drayfusl mayn kind is a rare Yiddish song about the „Dreyfus Affair‟: the trial and tribulations of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France, convicted of treason in 1894.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus
I remember, from a taped interview, that the singer Lifshe Schaechter-Widman (LSW) learned this song from a street singer/organ grinder in her home town of Zvinyetchke, Bukovina. Perhaps this explains why she sings the song at a faster pace than she usually does with the other songs in her repertory.
The song is a little gem, for though the song comments on a current event of the times, it is not a broadside by any means, but a lullaby, transforming Captain Dreyfus into a child in the crib. He comes to represent all vulnerable Jewish children, and by extension the entire suffering Jewish people.
In mayne oyern tit mir klingen,
Hay-da lu lu lu
Vus mayn mame fleyg mir zingen
bay mayn vigele.
In my ears it still rings,
Ay- li lu lu lu
What my mother used to sing me,
At my crib.
Hay-li- la-lu la,
Di gantse velt zingt‘ekh dos lidele.
Hob kayn moyre Dreyfusl mayn kind,
Farges nisht az di bist a yidele.
Hay¨ de la lu¨ lu
The whole world is singing this song.
Fear not my dear Dreyfus,
Don‘t forget that you are a Jew.
Vus in Frankraykh hot (itst?) pasirt
Veyst a yeder gants git.
Men hot farurteylt kapitan Drayfus
Nor derfar vayl er iz a yid.
What happened in France
Everyone knows too well.
Captain Dreyfus was convicted,
Only because he is a Jew.
Hay-li-la-li-la
Di gantse velt zingt‘ekh dos lidele.
Hob keyn moyre Drayfusl mayn kind,
Farges nisht az du bist a yidele.
Hay-li-la-lu-la
The whole world is singing this song.
Fear not Dreyfus my child,
Don‘t forget that you are a Jew.
Esther Korshin, August 1957. Courtesy of Oliver Korshin.
Yiddish Song of the Week 