Ekh in mayn lyubitshke/I and My Darling Sung by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman [LSW], Recorded by Leybl Kahn, NYC 1954
Painting by Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) “The Wedding”
Commentary by Itzik Gottesman
This song has the same melody as the folksong “Hot zikh mir di zip tsezipt” recorded by Ruth Rubin and can be heard as a field recording sung by her in the Ruth Rubin Archive at YIVO.
The melody and text of “Hot zikh mir di zip tsezipt” is printed on p. 94, in the collection Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive. Scans of those pages are attached.
The melody also begins the “Rumshinsky Bulgar” recorded by a number of klezmer groups including Marilyn Lerner on her recording “Romanian Fantasy”
LSW’s daughter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman who heard the song from LSW many times, typed out the words in the 1970s and moved the first fragmented verse of LSW to the last verse. I suggest any singer of this song follow this change which makes sense logically: the couple are married at the end
Thanks to Ruth Rubin Archive at YIVO, Christina Crowder, Josh Horowitz, Joel Rubin, Martin Schwartz and many others who pointed out similar variants.
Ekh in mayn lyubitshke/My Darling and I [Ikh vel zayn dayn ]…tabele. [This should be the last verse not the first] Gliklekh veln mir beyde zan. Az ekh vel zayn dayn vabele un di vest zayn mayn tayerer man
[I will be your dear] dove. How happy we will be, When I am you dear wife And you will be my dear husband.
Ikh un mayn lyubitshke; mayn mame in der mit. Ikh vil mayn lyubitstshke. Mayn mame vil zi nit.
I and my sweetheart; my mother in the middle. I want my sweetheart My mother does not.
Her ikh nisht oys mayn mames reyd Un nem mir mayn lyubitshke Vi’zoy zi shteyt un geyt.
I do not heed what my mother says. And I take my sweetheart Just as she is.
Vayl gelt iz dokh kaylekhik Un gelt geyt avek. Nem ikh mir mayn lyubitshke Un kh’fur mit ir avek.
Because money is round And money rolls away. So I take my sweetheart And go away with her.
Ekh fur mit ir avek biz keyn odes. Shtel mit ir a khipe s’gedoyert a mis-les
I go away with her All the way to Odessa. I stand under the khupe [wedding canopy] with her in less than a day.
Perhaps because of an advertisement in the Kolomey [Kolomyia, Kolomea – Eastern Galicia, today Ukraine] newspaper, young women came to the city and became street walkers. Any other interpretations of the first line of this song, which Lifshe Schaechter-Widman (LSW) says was created during the first world war, would be welcome. This recording of Lifshe was made by Leybl Kahn in 1954 in New York.
As part of YIVO’s I. L. Cahan Folklore Club Leybl Kahn recorded approximately 90 Yiddish songs from LSW in NY in 1954. This photo of Kahn is from the 1980s
Klezmer music scholar Prof. Martin Schwartz (Berkeley) remembers his mother from Brisk de Lite (Brest Litovsk, now in Belarus) singing this song, but about a “Bialistoker tsaytung” (newspaper from Bialystok) He also pointed out that the same melody, more or less, can be heard in the klezmer repertoire in Harry Kandel’s Odessa Bulgar.
Note: in the first verse LSW sings mistakenly “Arop fun dem shlekhtn veg iz zi” which means – “She went off the bad/crooked path”; the opposite of what she intended. I believe she meant to sing “Arop funem glaykhn veg iz zi” – “She went off the good/straight path”.
Spoken:
LSW: A pur lider vos me hot gezingen in krig.
LK: In der ershter velt-milkhome.
LSW: In der ershter velt-milkhume
LK: Gut, dos ershte lid…
Di kolomeyer tsaytung hot gebrakht a vabele
shpeyt bay nakht.
Gegangen iz zi
fun shpeyt biz fri
Arup fun dem shlekhtn [glaykhn] veyg iz zi.
Meydlekh in der ershter klas
geyen arim in der (h)intershter gas.
Hefker iz di velt atsind.
Tsi iz dus fayn? Tsi iz dus sheyn?
Biz shpeyt ba nakht arimtsigeyn?
Es iz nisht fayn; es iz nisht sheyn.
Dus iberike shtoyst zikh un aleyn.
Spoken:
LSW: A few songs that were sung in wartime.
LK: In the first world war.
LSW: In the first world war.
LK: the first song…
The Kolomey newspaper brought a young woman
late at night.
She walked from late to early morning
Off the straight path she went.
[LSW sings mistakenly “off the evil path she went”]
First class girls wander around in the back alleys.
The world is topsy-turvey now.
Is this fine? Is this nice?
To walk around till late at night?
It is not fine; it is not nice.
You can imagine the rest yourself.
Ordinarily, I would not include such a fragmentary performance in this blog, as this version of Kimt der shadkhn Shame (the name “Shame” is pronounced with two syllables “Sha-me,” rhymes with “mame”)performed by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman (LSW). But the investigation into the song is intriguing. I broadcast an earlier version of this research in Yiddish on the Yiddish Forward Radio Hour on WEVD seven or eight years ago. My commentary here will also be abbreviated.
Additionally, Kalisch‘s songs and other Lemberg Yiddish singers are featured on Gerda and Franz Lechleitner‘s „phonomuseum‟ website. When I heard Kalisch sing „Der schames‟ I immediately recognized LSW‘s song:
The 78 record label indicated that Der schames originated from the Yosef Lateiner (1853-1935) play Der seder, and I fortunately was able to buy a copy but did not find the song in the text. I donated the 78s I bought at the yard sale to Lorin Sklamberg at the YIVO sound archives and he transferred them to CD for me and he turned me onto other recordings with what I call the „Lena From Palesteena‟ melody-motif. By this I mean the melody of the phrase “Lena is the Queen of Palesteena just because she plays the concertina.”
The popular 1920s song „Lena from Palesteena” was written by Con Conrad and J. Russel Robinson, and first recorded with words by Eddie Cantor in 1920. Here is a great old version by Frank Crumit:
Lorin Sklamberg identified the Romanian language recording Colo’n Gradnita (There in the Little Garden) performed by S. Bernardo, no date, recorded in Bucharest, with only piano accompaniment. Bernardo is a great singer, obviously Jewish and includes “Oy veys” and some other Yiddish words:
Sklamberg also found a recording of a young Aaron Lebedeff singing the song Tate ziser (Syrena 12560) recorded in Europe (Warsaw?), no date but probably the late 1910s, (and no relation to the klezmer tune by that name recorded by several bands). Lebedeff is clearly riffing off Bernardo’s earlier recording:
Finally, Sklamberg dug up Simon Paskal’s Eppess noch, with words by Louis Gilrod, recorded in New York, 1913 – A typical comical Yiddish theater song about American Jewish life, with emphasis on food (Noch a bisl, Eppess noch – there seems to be a theme emerging).
There is much more to write about the musical reincarnations of the „Lena from Palesteena‟ motif, and I believe Prof. Martin Schwartz of Berkeley and others can play Greek, Turkish and other people‘s variants of this motif on recordings. It seems to be assumed that the Yiddish use of it came after the Romanian, but the Kalisch recording is the earliest I have found.
Back to LSW‘s song and its connection to Der Schames as sung by Kalisch. The rare rhyme „brie‟ and „Ishes tsnie‟ appears in both, so they are definitely related. Kalisch is about a shames (synagogue beadle); LSW‘s about a shadkhn named Shame. So the two lead characters are also too closely related phonetically to dismiss the notion the songs are from a single source. However, the narratives of the songs differ: LSW‘s Kimt der Shadkhn Shame is ultimately a maskilic song about the Hasidic rebbe, the “Datshn‟ (Germans – modernized Jews) and the „apikorsim,‟ the non-believers; while Kalisch‘s Der shames is clearly a theater song closely related to a play’s plot. In the song collection Der badkhn by (E)Luzer Bergman, Warsaw 1927, 1930, there is included a version that is obviously a variant of LSWs song, including the line about the „apikorsim.‟
LSW’s singing has been presented more than any other on this blog, but in Kimt der shadkhn Shame you can finally hear her perform a more upbeat comic song, even if the song is incomplete. Here is her rendition, recorded in the Bronx by Leybl Kahn in 1954 (the first chorus is incomplete– a long pause in the middle of the recording has been removed):
Kimt a shadkhn Shame
tsi mayn tate-mame
a shidikh hot er gur far mir.
The matchmaker Shame comes to my parents; he has a match just for me.
A meydl a groyse brie,
un di mame‘z an ishes-tsnie
shoyn in git, es ekt dekh di velt.
A girl, a wonderfully clever girl, and her mother is a modest woman. Fine and good – the world comes to an end.
Oy, oy, khotsh nem un gib im shoyn shadkhones-gelt
sheyn in git, es ekt dekh di velt.
Oy, give him the matchmaker‘s fee right away, Fine and good, the world comes to an end.
[The chorus is incomplete due to a break in the recording]
Kimt a datsh, a higer
tsu mayn fliaskedrige,
a tshive vil er fin im aroys.
A local modern, enlightened Jew, comes to my unsightly person, and wants an answer from him, straight away.
Er iz a raykh kind,
un far zayne zind,
batsuln vil er mit a pidyen a gitn.
He is a wealthy child, and for his sins, he wants to pay a high fee to the Hasidic rabbi
Oy, oy, vi kent ir dus gor farshteyn?
Tsitsekikn dem rebns mine,
ven se brent af im di shkine.
Apikorsim, vi kent ir dus farshteyn?
Oy, oy, how could you understand this? To look upon the Rebbe‘s countenance, when the Divine Presence burns on him; Apostates! How could you understand.
Yiddish Song of the Week 