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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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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.