Yiddish song and the tunes you might know

What Yiddish is

Yiddish is a West Germanic language that originated in the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and was historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It is traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Before the Second World War it had an estimated eleven to thirteen million speakers. Wikipedia reports that around 85 percent of the roughly six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust spoke it, which is why Yiddish songs carry so much memory.

Yiddish today

Yiddish did not disappear. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University, quoted on Wikipedia, puts the number of speakers at 600,000 or fewer: about 250,000 in the United States, 250,000 in Israel and 100,000 elsewhere. For a visitor to Kraków this means the songs in the concert belong to a language that is still spoken, mostly outside Poland, and still sung.

Klezmer is mostly instrumental

Strictly speaking, klezmer is an instrumental tradition, with little history of songs or singing. Klezmer players did accompany the wedding entertainer, the badchen, who improvised rhymed couplets and called the ceremonies. Yiddish songs belong to a neighbouring tradition, which is why a concert such as this one sets instrumental tunes beside sung pieces. The two share audiences, melodies and the sound of a minor key, even where they do not share a stage.

Oyfn Pripetshik

Oyfn Pripetshik, which means On the Hearth, is a Yiddish song by M. M. Warshawsky, who lived from 1848 to 1907. It describes a teacher, a melamed, instructing young pupils in the Hebrew alphabet. By the end of the nineteenth century it was one of the most popular songs of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Its fourth verse turns sad, as the teacher tells the children what tears lie in the letters.

• Language: Yiddish
• Subject: a teacher and his young students
• Tone: tender, then tragic

A tune reused in a ghetto

Songs lived on under persecution. In the Kovno ghetto the poet Avrom Akselrod wrote new words to the melody of Oyfn Pripetshik. His song, Baym geto toyerl, is about smuggling food, firewood and money into the ghetto, on which survival depended. It was published after the war in a collection of songs from the ghettos and camps. Hearing a familiar melody in a concert hall can carry that history, even when the programme is cheerful.

Bei Mir Bistu Shein

Bei Mir Bistu Shein was written in 1932 by Sholom Secunda, with Yiddish words by Jacob Jacobs, for a Yiddish comedy musical in Brooklyn. It was a lovers' duet and a small part of the show, but it became a favourite in Yiddish theatre and Catskills resorts. The Andrews Sisters recorded an English version in November 1937, and it became a worldwide hit. It was banned in Nazi Germany once its Jewish origin became known.

Hava Nagila

Hava Nagila is a song in Hebrew, not Yiddish, and Wikipedia lists it among the best-known pieces in the Freygish mode, the scale most closely identified with klezmer. The title means Let us rejoice. Its melody is based on a Hasidic nigun, a wordless tune, which Wikipedia attributes to the Sadigurer Hasidim in present-day Ukraine. The song was first performed in Jerusalem in 1918, and Abraham Zevi Idelsohn published his arrangement in 1922, although there are competing claims over who composed it.

Mazel tov

One Yiddish phrase most visitors already know is mazel tov, which literally means good luck and is used to say congratulations. At a Jewish wedding it is customary for the couple's friends and family to clap and shout it after the ceremonial breaking of the glass. The phrase entered American English from Yiddish in 1862. It is a small reminder that the wedding, where klezmer musicians worked, is also where Yiddish sayings still live.

What to expect on the night

The organiser says the programme includes songs in Yiddish, and the organiser's description promises one or two songs you will recognise. It does not name them, and the ensemble chooses its programme on the night, so no particular song is guaranteed. Reviews mention that the spoken introduction has been in Polish. Learning two or three of the songs above will give you something to listen for, whatever the programme turns out to be.