האַנט אין קאַלטן וואַסער נישט אַרייַנגעטאָן‎

[sovay]

Until about fifteen minutes ago, I had no idea that anyone in the U.S. had performed or recorded any of Shraga Friedman's Fidler afn dakh prior to the NYTF in 2018, but "Ven ikh bin a Rotshild" is a really distinctive translation. Jan Peerce recorded it in 1967, along with versions of three other songs from the musical (the one that differs the most has די תורה instead of טראדיציע, which makes me really curious if there's a recording of the original 1965 Israeli production to compare with) and an assortment of Yiddish folk songs, including "Oy dortn, dortn." The latter is technically what we call a schmaltzy arrangement, but I don't care, because if an entire string section can't ruin that last verse of eyes like black cherries and lips like rose-colored paper and fingers like pen and ink—you must write often to me—either it's bulletproof or I don't want to find out what could. What I really can't figure out is how I missed discovering him at Brandeis. It's not like I didn't listen to his brother-in-law. His Yiddish is slightly Southern, which makes it sound familiar to me. [edit: I make an exception for a song from Vilna. That one's supposed to have all those weird vowels.] This encore medley of Fiddler, in English, from a live concert with Roberta Peters in 1976, is adorable.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I have to admit that I don't know what the Latvian Yiddish (more specifically, Riga) my great grandmother would have spoken would have sounded like.

[sovay]

I have to admit that I don't know what the Latvian Yiddish (more specifically, Riga) my great grandmother would have spoken would have sounded like.

Generally, Northeastern Yiddish—Litvish, like selkie's people. Standard/YIVO Yiddish is very close, having used it as a basis. You'll have heard Yiddish that sounds like it. Riga specifically, I don't know.

[selkie]

For once, for once, I am the prescriptivist snob. I am never one otherwise. *ducks*

It's really quite comforting to hear him, even if his r's are just rrrrrredonkulous. It's like a conversation with my grandparents z''l.
(I think Riga would have been pretty straight YIVO Yiddish.)

Edit: I went looking for a good recording of 'Shtiler, Shtiler' because it was very popular up the railway line in Riga, and you have got to record that one. It'll make everyone sob, but cathartically, and... probably we won't have too much of a ghost problem. Almost certainly. (I know Vilna; hills, stone, plaster. When I dream it's always Łódź, though: parks, trees, fabrykn, I think I could get us around with my eyes closed. Never been there in my damn life.)

[cmcmck]

Weird things, dreams- I lived for some years in Brugge in Belgium (Korngold's 'Todt stadt') and that appears regularly in my dreams but along with bits of a town which I just cannot place.

[selkie]

I'm a bit woo by all accounts, but ever looked at photos of Riga before the Communists?

[cmcmck]

I have- including stuff under the Nazis which was disturbing the say the least.

We were supposed to be visiting last year so I could try to make connections with the missing family links but of course it never happened.

[selkie]

Yeah, Ghetto Riga was... somehow even more of an enormously dehumanizing mess, because it was weirdly tiny in relation to the city and, after 1941, almost everyone in it had been displaced from Germany and didn't even speak the language.

(Oof. I grew up with Holocaust knowledge/imagery at saturation point from a very early age, but it's been hitting harder lately, given world things.)

[cmcmck]

I can imagine.

I am not myself Jewish, although my maternal great grandmother was (and yes, with that ancestry, I've heard the comment: 'so if you want to be Jewish, you're Jewish').

Knowing you have family connections to the Sho'ah can be so hard for anyone, but knowing it without anyone to talk to about it is sometimes painful.

It makes me glad to know Jewish folks on here.

[selkie]

Gawd, you can always talk to me about it! I may as well use my hyperspecializations for something good like giving someone a sounding board/venting space. (I am really a better example of second-gen than third-gen Holocaust trauma relational stuff, because I was socialized by my grandparents as a sort of late-life-whoops child of theirs.)

Also, yes, you can and could be Jewish. Let me know if you want to come to Shabbat! Inviting people to come to Shabbat is my full-time real talk day job and actually, I love it. And everything is virtual now and BST means it's an hour earlier than inviting you in the winter.

Edit: sovay I would like one gold herring, Sorele, for stomping the professional impulse to say "We were all at Sinai!"

[sovay]

sovay I would like one gold herring, Sorele, for stomping the professional impulse to say "We were all at Sinai!"

*herring burnished, plated, served*

[cmcmck]

I was brought up Anglican but became a Quaker Universalist in my late teens courtesy of a gay, Jewish Quaker (see my response to _sovay_ below) and that opened my eyes wide to the fact that you can be whoever you wish to be. Given my life experience, that has been no bad thing! :o)

I may well take you up on talking about it.

[selkie]

Any time! Standard disclaimer: belief in God not a requirement for entry and indeed monotheism is between you and god[s] in question. russetblack at gmail dot com!

(The email address is S' fault and I love it very much.)

[sovay]

Also, yes, you can and could be Jewish.

You should listen to selkie. It is literally her job.

[cmcmck]

It sounds like a good job to have.

Funnily enough, I was taught by Harvey Gillman as a teen and he had quite an influence on me.

There can't be so very many gay, Jewish, Quaker Universalists out there.

It's his fault that I ended up a poet and Quaker Universalist! :o)

[sovay]

For once, for once, I am the prescriptivist snob.

You are a prescriptivist snob only because your dialect got academically-literarily prestiged! Litvish didn't even have the greatest number of speakers by weight! It's just the classier version of Duolingo Yiddish!

It's really quite comforting to hear him, even if his r's are just rrrrrredonkulous. It's like a conversation with my grandparents z''l.

Honestly, that makes me happy. I retract the Duolingo comment, especially since it's harder to flee the country these days.

(I think Riga would have been pretty straight YIVO Yiddish.)

(Cities have dialects of their own; I didn't want to leave the possibility out!)

'Shtiler, Shtiler' because it was very popular up the railway line in Riga, and you have got to record that one. It'll make everyone sob, but cathartically, and... probably we won't have too much of a ghost problem. Almost certainly.

"S'firen vegn zu Ponar tsu . . ."

(I know Vilna; hills, stone, plaster. When I dream it's always Łódź, though: parks, trees, fabrykn, I think I could get us around with my eyes closed. Never been there in my damn life.)

Only in family stories and strangers' photographs.

Incidentally, one of the Florida descendants got in touch with my mother a few weeks ago. We were not expecting it; she thinks it was quarantine reaching-out. His branch of the family relocated to Israel about a dozen years ago; they now live in Jerusalem and Tiberias, which I keep forgetting is still actually just called that. It threw everyone for a loop when he identified himself by his great-grandfather's English name. No one ever called him anything other than [redacted] in our family.

[selkie]

I remember when you made that post, but I don't remember why I didn't say anything at the time. You certainly made the salient points. It's unbearable looking at those photos, because I see us in them, our families, and yes yes statistically there must've been the usual percentage of jerks or people who would have socked me in the eye for being queer, but they were just living.

Also, that poor man must never have slept again.

Um. Do I need to redact [redacted]? (That is actually very cool. We have, as you say, a teeny tiny gene pool.)

[sovay]

I remember when you made that post, but I don't remember why I didn't say anything at the time.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, ghosts.

It's unbearable looking at those photos, because I see us in them, our families, and yes yes statistically there must've been the usual percentage of jerks or people who would have socked me in the eye for being queer, but they were just living.

Yes. I don't know how any of my relatives on that side would have felt about me! But still.

Um. Do I need to redact [redacted]?

No, no, no. I've finally gotten used to his name! Change it again and I'll probably revert!

(That is actually very cool. We have, as you say, a teeny tiny gene pool.)

Speaking of which, found while trying to attest a damn verb: A yid hot akht un tsvantsik protsent pakhed, tsvey protsent tsuker, un zibetsik protsent khutspe. One feels especially called out by the sugar.

[selkie]

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/a-song-of-the-vilna-ghetto There's a recording at the bottom of this article that's very accurate-sounding to me, because we say our vowels nicely.

Basically sovay 's folk in the fast-paced but theologically-traditionalist southern and central bits of *handwavey* Maybe It's Poland Today sound a bit casually drunk to me, and I sound extraordinarily stuck-up to them, as if I were reading instead of talking, and Riga would have landed culturally and practically on the Litvish side.

[sovay]

There's a recording at the bottom of this article that's very accurate-sounding to me

That's Chava Alberstein! She recorded it for Songs of the Vilna Ghetto (1969), which I think must have been one of the earliest compilations of its kind. I am not thrilled that the person who ripped it to YouTube reordered the tracks, I have to say. You damn well end with "Zog nit keyn mol."

[selkie]

Oof. They were all... middle-aged when they did this. Sitting around like we're going to be, soon, God willing. Still alive. Fffff.

Not ending with Zog Nig Keyn Mol is how you getcherself a ghost problem.

Edit: I kept forgetting to say the words to Shtiler were different in 1969! I am more familiar with -- vi di Vilye ageschriedet, how the river screams -- but that is not what Alberstein says in that verse and I am not good enough to get it down at a workday-appropriate volume.

[sovay]

I kept forgetting to say the words to Shtiler were different in 1969! I am more familiar with -- vi di Vilye ageschriedet, how the river screams -- but that is not what Alberstein says in that verse and I am not good enough to get it down at a workday-appropriate volume.

You're right! She sounds like she's singing:

Di Viliye a geshmidte
Hot oykh geyokht in payn
Yogn kries ayz durkh Lite
Itst in yam arayn

Which looks more or less like:

The hammered Vilye
Is also weighed down in pain
Ice floes rush through Lithuania
Now into the sea

I keep wanting to translate געשמידטע as in irons because of the blacksmithing, but I am not sure that is textually as opposed to poetically supported, especially since it would render superfluous the image of the burdened—literally, yoked—river in the next line. Being sure of קריִעס me nuts. I finally resorted to the print dictionary I have owned since grad school. Which is Weinrich's, from 1967, for YIVO. Whose else?