gelbart/dreydl

[Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan...>]

Khaveyrim,

You may remember my ongoing struggle to get to the bottom of the 
dreydl/dreidel issue of who is the original composer, Gelbart or 
Goldfarb (Gelbart having been my guess).  Here is the latest 
communication I have had about it.  Can anyone corroborate or expand on 
this information?

a dank,
Lorele


Mikh Gelbart died childless.  He always said that the children of the
Arbeter-Ring (Workmen's Circle) Yiddish schools were his children.  He
was the music teacher of the Arbeter-Ring mitlshul (supplementary
high-school) when I was a student there (1942-1946).  We all "knew"
that he was the composer of "Ikh bin a kleyner dreydl."

When I worked in the national Education Department at 175 E. Broadway,
NYC , during the early 1950s, the primary secretary to the then Ed
Director, Nokhem Khanin (Chanin), Millie Melnick, once indicated that
Gelbart had written the song that was now being claimed by someone
else, and that he, Gelbart, thought seriously of suing the interloper,
but did not have the financial means to sustain what could have been a
long, and costly trial.  It is a "sod far gantz brod," that teachers in
the AR Shuln were not people of means. And so he decided not to resort
to the legal system, and let the matter rest in no-man's land.


-- 
You can now hear Lori's new CD, Songs My Bubbe Should Have Taught Me; Vol.1: 
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