Popular Poetry of the Russian Jews

[ . . . ] Similarly, the Russian Jews use the traditional rhyming couplet in those verses that chronicle a historical event or inculcate an ethical truth. The real folksongs, however, are set to music, both in Germany and Russia, and require a more regular distribution of syllables. In the Mother Country they were generally sung to existing German tunes; in their eastern home they readily adapted themselves to the new melodies of their environment. Thus, to their German inheritance were added Lithuanian and Polish airs in the northwest, and Polish Little Russian and Roumanian tunes in the southwest, and these, in their turn, further diversified their external structure.

The short chronicles and didactic poems are frequently arranged in couplets or stanzas beginning with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet (“nox’n alefbejs”)¹ or they are introduced by Hebrew words of well-known passages in the Bible or the Ritual, as if to anticipate or accentuate the meaning of the complete sentence in Judeo-German. Sometimes both methods are combined to ensure the retention of the whole in the proper order. By these contrivances they have escaped the ravages of time, and have been handed down comparatively intact from former generations.

Except for an occasional local word or dialectic rhyme it is not, as a rule, possible to ascertain where a certain song may have originated, as it seldom remains confined to the locality of its birth, and is subject to continuous variations to meet the requirements of the dialects. The many migratory individuals, such as the itinerant musicians, wedding jesters and young Talmudical scholars, have caused the oral literature to be shifted around. Even now every newcomer reputed to have new songs is besieged by the young people of the town until his repertoire has been committed to memory or taken down in writing. Many of the song collections of known authorship have become, in this manner, the common possession of the people long before they found their way into print.

The poetry so far discussed for the most part represents the older stage of the popular creation, and its authors can no longer be ascertained. Side by side with it there has grown up, since the middle of our century, an extensive printed literature² which lays claim to some artistic merit and pursues different aims than the spontaneous ebullitions of the popular mind, without ever dissevering its close relation to the people. It has developed steadily from its humble beginnings and has, within the last decade, received its highest attainable polish in the ghetto of New York.

The first impetus to the use of Judeo-German for literary purposes, other than the obsolescent one of ethical instruction, was given by the educational innovations of Nicholas I. On the one hand he brought terror in their midst by the inauguration of the military régime; but, on the other, he tried to rouse them from their lethargic state of several centuries and to open the way for their mental and social amelioration by the foundation of Rabbinical schools in Žitomir and Wilno, and by admitting Jews to the Gymnasia. The Jews were, however, slow in taking advantage of their new privileges as they had reason to be wary of Danaid gifts, and because during the long period of their political and social enslavement they had become accustomed to look with fear and contempt on Gentile culture. The small minority that was enlightened enough to make use of the opportunity thus offered to them, were either driven by force of circumstances to withdraw from the Jewish community, or they entered into a continuous struggle with their own correligionists, braving many annoyances and excommunication. The latter undertook to raise the ignorant and superstitious masses from the slough of physical and moral degradation into which they had fallen. This they attempted to do by speaking to them in the native Judeo-German dialects of their immediate surroundings, and by issuing books of attractive contents in which they could couch in the pleasantest manner possible the bitter truths which they were intended to convey.