Re: Yidish Peysakh songs

[Itzik Gottesman <itzik...>]

The Yiddish peysekh songs are among the oldest we know about. If I remember
correctly,Khone Shmeruk writes convincingly that the aramaic Khad Gadyo was
printed after the Yiddish in the 16th century and the aramaic is a
translation from the Yiddish! The Yiddish versions of "me yodye" are also
very old (including the "shikt der har a poyerl in vald" -  a very old
Yiddish Passover song, printed in many collections, with many regional
variations). I recorded a young man from a Litvish Yeshiva tradition who
sang me his version of a Yiddish "me yodye" and the words matched exactly
the version in my facsimile Altona-Hamburg haggadah of 1739. (this could
get us into a theoretical discussion of the Litvish yeshiva world as
transmitters of the oldest Ashkenazic musical materials, but we'll leave
that for another time)

There are also a number of Passover songs with the theme of  "Burikes" -
beets, and the lack thereof to prepare the Passover borsht. See an older
song in Schack-Cohen "Yiddish Folks Songs" 1927, but I have a field
recording of a Solomon Golub composition, "Burikes af Peysekh". A marvelous
upbeat  song that nobody sings. It could be found in one of his collections.

Jacob Gorelik, a great singer fron Shedrin in White Russia sang a matsa
baking song which Michael Alpert taught in Klezkamp I think. - Itzik



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Dr. Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman
Assistant Professor, Yiddish Language and Culture
Department of Germanic Studies
University of Texas at Austin
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