“Di velt iz meshige” Performed by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk

Di velt iz meshige/The World Has Gone Mad
Sung by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk [pronounced “Pshitik”]
Recorded with English subtitles by Wolf Krakowski, Way’s Mills, Quebec, Canada, 1986

 

Information on the song and Yiddish transcription provided by Eliezer Niborski, Jerusalem:

This seems to be a transformation of a song that was popular in the Lemberg/Lviv area in the 1910s. There is a 78rpm recording of Pepe Litman singing this song that you can hear here by clicking here.  There are at least two other 78rpm recordings of the song with this title, one by N. Glimer from Lemberg and one by Sam Schilling. 

78 Recording “Die Welt is Meschuge” by N. Gilmer recorded in Lemberg (Lviv) (Favorite, 1-27132X)

The same song, but titled “Meshige ist die welt” is sung by Julius Kalisch (1909) (Lemberg/Lviv) and can be heard by clicking here.

All three singers of these 78rpm recordings are basically using the same text and arrangement. In Sara Nomberg-Prztyk’s version, however, the content is adapted to the theme “modern women”. 

Commentary by Itzik Gottesman:

Thanks to Sara Nomberg-Przytyk’s introduction to the song in which she tells us her grandmother sang it with no sarcasm, but meant it literally, we can add her “Di velt iz meshige” to a number of songs using irony to mock the old-fashioned Jewish way of life or to make fun of the Hasidic rebbe and his Hasidim.

 In some interpretations of these songs, the irony was indeed often “lost” to the singer. But, of course, Sara, the more modern granddaughter did indeed “get it”. The naive narrator of the song in Nomberg-Przytyk’s version decries modern Jewish society, women in particular, with their “reading books”,  going to spas, and wearing their own hair and new immodest fashions. By “suffragettes”, the singer clearly just means “modern women”.

The video came with a translation and is mostly accurate. However as Niborski points out, when she sings “furn di kur”, this is shorthand for “furn af der kur” — going to spas, resorts.

Thanks for help with this week’s post to discographer Michael Aylward and Eliezer Niborski.

TRANSCRIPTION 

SPOKEN: Di lid vus ikh vil  atsind zingen iz zayer an alt lid. Zi iz antshtanen in di tsatn fin di sufrazhistkes. In dus iz geveyzn di yidishe sufrazhistkes. Ikh mayn az der vos hot geshribn di lid hot zi geshribn als a “joke”. R’hot gelakht derfin. Ober mayn bube hot es gezugt ernst. Zi hot es traktirt zeyer ernst.

SUNG:

Gevald vel ikh shrayen,
me zol hern, me zol hern!
Tsi hot zikh nokh azoyns gehert?
Dus yidishkayt vil du zikh iberkern, Oy-vay!
S’nemt mikh on a groys gevayn.

Zay furn “di kur”. 
Zay gayen in di hur.
Zay laynen bikher un a tsul.
Fin groys biz klayn,
zey makhn khayn,
un redn ale inter der nuz.

A mol hot men gefirt di kale tsu der khipe,
hot men ir ungetin di bubes a yipe.
Haynt geyen zey mit di naketdike paskudstves un – tfuuuu!
Zey hobn a punim vi a klipe.
Derfar haltn zey ober di hern far klige.
Ober ikh shray “Gevald!”
Di velt iz meshige!