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האַנט אין קאַלטן וואַסער נישט אַרייַנגעטאָן
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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.