Yiddish Folk Songs

In this volume I have made a selection of religious and holiday songs.

Actually, they constitute a single group, since in reality it is hard to draw a sharp dividing line between the first group and the second. The religious songs are mostly sung during rest times, that is, on the Sabbath and holidays. The specifically holiday songs, with the exception of a small category of jolly, lighthearted Purim songs, likewise are infused with a clear religious tone.

What is particularly interesting about the aforementioned group is the fact that it represents the fruit of original Yiddish folk creation. The other categories are not as independent: we find in them many themes that we have taken over from other peoples.

In the Yiddish religious and holiday songs, the student of our folk psychology can find a great deal of important characteristic material.

You undoubtedly remember the prayer:

And so forth.

From this passionately selfless song of praise was fashioned a highly joyous and exalted folk song:

And so forth.

That is a splendid rebuttal of the widespread prejudice that the Jew’s prayer is always mechanical, that he never understands the words of the prayer that he simply rattles off, like a wound-up music box.

It is true that for more than one Jew, worship is no more than a habit, even a meaningless burden. But the truly pious Jew, the sincerely religious Jew, feels every word of the liturgy deeply; every letter is filled with bliss—“sweet as sugar”—and he absorbs it to its very depths, to its inaudible echo, to its hidden shadow.

In moments of great exaltation, the familiar expressions of the beloved prayer become too narrow. A need is felt to make them broader, so the Hebrew passages are translated into the living language, into the language of intimate life. The laconic Hebrew is given a new poetic form in the mouth of the people:

And so forth

[The devout Jew] becomes intoxicated with God by means of one or another of these similar verses, those with a long chain of repetitive, monotonous rings.

Jewish religious sentiment is highly conscious, intense, and exalted. How else could it have brought forth hundreds of such lofty and boldly enthusiastic folk songs, clear as crystal, perfumed like Sabbath spices:

That is mostly sung at Simḥat Torah.

And danced to.

And how it is danced to!

With the hands and with the feet, with the head, the eyes, and the lips. Every muscle moves, every vein pulses to the beat, absorbing the holy contents of the words, creating in the whole organism the spirit that unites a human being with the divinity.

When the rapture, the communion with God, is at its highest, the limits of one language become too narrow. For that reason, most of the macaronic folk songs, that is, those whose words are a mix of two languages, belong to the category of religious and holiday songs:

That is how the Jew sings [in Yiddish] at the Purim feast, and right away he repeats the same thing in Polish:

For the inspired singer, this unusual translation seems like something fresh, something with a brand-new flavor.

Some of these multilingual folk songs are permeated with the most delicate and elevated poetry.

I never cease enjoying, for example, the following ode, which I provide in its purely Yiddish form:

That seems to me the most beautiful pearl in the rich strand of our folk songs!