Der yidisher tam

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

If there's one Yiddish phrase everyone on this list should unederstand,
it's this: der yidisher tam (the Jewish taste). It means a really old-
fashioned Jewish aesthetic, and it applies first of all to food -- but
also to music or literature. So people say, "Es hot a yidishn tam"
(it has a Jewish "taste"), or "Es hot nish' ka' yidishn tam" (it doesn't
have a Jewish taste). In connection with this, and with what I wrote in
the previous message on "how does tradition live?" -- I wanted to
quote a passage from Sol Liptzin's _Eliakum Zunser_ (New York, 1950), 
p.191:

"Abraham Goldfaden [the father of Yiddish theater - I-L], who experimented
with many musical forms in his operettas, complained that all his efforts
to graft classical melodies of European composers upon the Yiddish words of
his musical dramas ended in failure. Somehow his audiences remained
indifferent to these alien compositions. No matter how beautiful these melodies
might seem to musical connoisseurs and no matter how singable, they did
lack certain familiar Jewish qualities. These qualities were not easy to
define, but his audiences sensed the strangeness, the incongruity, and
reacted coolly. Thereupon Goldfaden decided to try the kind of folk tunes
with which Zunser, Zbarzher, and their followers [i.e. badkhonim -I-L]
had aroused audiences to a high pitch of enthusiasm. Immediately he met
with a warmer response. This taught him a lesson that Zunser had learned
before him -- that, whether a melody be simple or sublime, it had, above
all, to be perfectly in harmony with its words and the ideas they expressed,
if it were to exercise a magnetic influence upon the emotions of a people.
Yiddish words and characteristic Jewish moods could not normally be
happily wedded to German or French operatic airs. They rather craved
embodiment in chants and tunes stemming from the synagogue and from Jewish
historic experiences. A Jewish Nigun (melody) had a charm and a sadness 
of its own. {or a happiness - I-L]

A gitn shabbes,
Itzik-Leyb