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Born in Tel Aviv in 1971, Benny Mer is the coeditor (together with Hannah Amit) of the Hebrew review Dafke: The Land of Yiddish and Its Culture and vice-editor of the Ha'aretz literary column. He has published one novel (Most Nights), several short stories in various anthologies and literary columns, and translations from French and Yiddish (among others, Flaubert’s Mémoires d’un fou, a collection of short stories by Sholom Aleichem, Herman Kruk’s Vilna Ghetto Diary, and the songs from Chava Alberstein’s record Lemele). In addition, he is a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Yiddish Department. e-mail : bennym@haaretz.co.il    

After she composed songs in Hebrew, Chava Alberstein began composing songs in Yiddish as well. This occurred after she created a film with Nadav Livyatan, "It's Too Early to Be Silent, Too Late to Sing" (1995), in which she spoke in Yiddish with Israeli poets, most of whom unknown. The result of the composition was the wonderful album  Di Krenutzeh  ("The Well") from 1998, which she recorded with the Klezmatics of New York. In this meeting – an emotionally loaded and harmonic meeting of flute and drum, wedding and funeral – they sing and play, among others, the work of Itzik Pepper, Avraham Reisen, Itzik Manger and Binem Heler. In her newest record, Lemaleh, Alberstein returns to these poets and others, and performs the songs she composed, with the musical production of the Czech Als Brzina. The songs on the album were translated into Hebrew by Benny Mer.

Chava Alberstein's third record was recorded in 1967 – in Yiddish. After almost 40 years, during which she recorded more than forty albums in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, her latest album called Lemeleh ("Lamb") debuted.

Does  Lemeleh represent the connection between Yiddish and childhood? Bialik allowed himself to write in Yiddish only about childhood: "The faint nostalgia of childhood... is more conveniently recalled using the jargon in which they were created, rather than in the holy tongue." Do you find the same thing in your eyes?

"Usually I don't like the comparison with the Sephardic context, where you must always mention Ladino every time Yiddish is mentioned. On the other hand, lately I saw a TV show with Yaakov Cohen, an intelligent and funny comedian who talked about his Morrocan home, and all about his mother, and I thought to myself that one of the things that can never come back for him or for me is home. What Yiddish preserves is the feeling of home. I wasn't thinking about childhood, rather I was thinking about home. Yaakov Cohen's children won't understand a large part of the stories and expressions that he brought from home either, like those his mother used to say to scare them or to scold them. Yiddish represents the home and the family. They can probably never come back, but Yiddish can preserve them. In Aaron Lansky's book,  Outwitting History , there is a wonderful scene: all the Yiddish majors stand there and listen to a Yiddish comedian, and they all laugh at his jokes. Yet there are some young guys who can understand the words, but cannot get the humor anymore, and they don't understand what's so funny.

From a biographical perspective, is Yiddish connected to your childhood?

"During the last few years, I've asked myself why I sang in Yiddish so early on, and what attracted me to it, because I didn't grow up in only a Yiddish speaking house. My home was a multilingual one, and we spoke Polish, Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew. My father taught in a yeshiva and read in Hebrew. He didn't speak so well at first, and he had an accent with Hebrew that sounded like Yiddish. Lately, one sentence keeps coming back to me from childhood. When I started to sing, one of the first things I did was to record songs in Yiddish, and one sentence traveled around the neighborhood between my friends and my parents: Alberstein's tochter zingt Yiddish. ("Alberstein's daughter sings in Yiddish").

 I was really proud of that sentence, because I felt that I made them proud; the very ones who's pride was taken from them when they arrived in Israel as ridiculous foreigners and weirdoes. I was attracted to it subconsciously, to defend them a little, because all around me everyone ran away; my brother went to a youth movement, an agricultural school, and to a kibbutz, while I found it important to go with them. I would go with my parents to Yiddish plays, including to  Dzhigan and Shumacher, or to Yosef Bolof or Dina Halperin. We'd go to good things, because my parents didn't go to  Shund,  to stupid musicals, which aren't too bad either, but they didn't go there because they felt too cultured for such entertainment. I sang to identify with them and to strengthen them. They were weak in my eyes. But,  Chaveleh zingt Yiddish is a strong sentence, and it gave me a lot of power too. In the meantime, Yiddish became artistic material for me. It's material for work, like bronze or stone. It's great music; it has a unique sound which produces a different type of musical noise. It because part my artistic statement."

Is this expression clear to those who don't come from a Yiddish-speaking home?

"Yiddish is a European language which contains elements from there, and therefore what happens abroad is a kind of miracle, and there's no concert in which it doesn't occur. I start off with a few songs in Hebrew, because it's my identity card and because I'm from Israel and that's my language, and later comes the first song in Yiddish, and it's as if a hidden curtain is removed between the audience and me. You can feel that something is happening as everyone suddenly becomes emotional, including people who have no clue. Sometimes I sing a new song in Yiddish, for example from  "The Well" (Di Krenitzeh )  , a song which no one can claim that their grandma sang at home. On the other hand, there's a feeling that we went a bit deeper or rose a bit higher."

Is Yiddish less annoying in Israel today?

"Pardon the expression, but there are still dummies who link Yiddish with lots of disrespectful, unglamorous, alte zachen which they don't want to be a part of. But it's decreasing nowadays, because anyway they don't really know what the Diaspora is and what it means to be galuti ("exilic"). Of course, there are people who are really interested, who feel that something was taken away from them, from their biographies, and they want it back. There are people in Israel who are tired of machismo, belligerence, and the feeling that we are more than others. They are looking for the missing piece of the puzzle; questions such as who are we and what's an Israeli. For me this is Israeli, and Yiddish is part of my Israeliness. I'm basically almost a tzabarit; I immigrated at age four and I can't say I still remember my town in Poland."

Does that feeling of incompleteness make the difference?

"Yes. Once we the immigrants felt a kind of shame, but today I feel that a lot of young people are jealous that I possess this wealth of feeling; like my world is wider and bigger, and that I can see things from a different perspective. The perspective of an immigrant is an important one: it accepts transience, it knows nothing is permanent. It forces you to be more careful. Nothing is taken for granted in relation to Israel and to your neighbors. Really, everything is fragile, and no one promised you anything for keeps. Maybe this makes you more sensitive to what's going on around you. In the last few years, I've been under the impression that Yiddish was for me a type of protest against the strong will to throw all of us into a melting pot and redesign us into something new and different. My stubborn hold on Yiddish from a really young age was rooted in refusal – a refusal to turn into the "New Israeli". I always had the need to preserve what was available, even if I loved military singing troupes and sang in Hebrew; I refused to leave the past behind. For me, this was not the past, but something that lives forever. In my childhood, there was a weekly Yiddish radio show on Fridays, which I tell about in my song Sharliya. It was a magical hour at home. We used to sit quietly around the radio to hear the news and then entertainment programs. Of course, the highlight of the entertainment was skits by Dezhigan and Schumacher. After hearing them, we'd be on the floor laughing, but there were also singers on air. One of them, Noah Nachbush, was an actor in the Vilner Troupe (The Vilnius Band), and later he moved to America, became a singer-actor – something that really doesn't exist today; someone who sings a bit out of tune, but presents nicely. For the first time, I heard Manger's song, Rabenu Tam. He used to recite songs in a Vortkonzert, which was a word-concert. During my first trip abroad in December 1968, I performed in Argentina, and then afterwards I flew to New York. Suddenly, I wanted to find Noah Nachbush. I went to the Lower East Side and one of the religious shop owners sent me to Sea Gate, which was a retirement home that Lansky tells about.

I found a really short guy who was really moved to see me. He gave me a few of his signed records. For me, this was a big treasure. He taught the song Feter Eliyeh, which was later translated to Hebrew by Yoram Tharlev and sung by myself under the song title Etz HaKokhavim ("The Tree of Stars"):
"My grandpa had a field with one wonderful tree, / there's none like it in the whole world, says my grandpa. / Fruit does not grow on it, because anyway / the fruit ends up rotting and no one needs them / / This is the Star Tree which lights up the eyes / There they grow and rise like on the sky…"
Later I found out that the man who wrote this song, Leib Morgentoi, made aliyah to Israel and he lives in Holon in a forgotten immigrant home.
I had a sense of dedication that's hard to explain. It was my internal debt, which no one required from me, to my parents and their friends and all of those wonderful people. During that same trip in '68, I stopped on the way to Paris to visit my father's friend, who had another poet friend. Everyone there had small poet friends. They heard that Chavaleh zingt Yiddish and immediately added me to their gang. And I was happy to be with all these broken souls, as we called them at home. All three of us went for a walk, hand-in-hand, me in the middle and two little guys in black coats on the sides, and this is how we walked down the Champs Elysees, and they told me: Du zest, Chaveleh, dos iz undzer Champs Elysees, which means "You see Chavaleh, this is our Champs Elysees." I'll never forget that sentence. These charming Jews were citizens of the world, with love of life regardless of everything, and with the ability to be at home anywhere, without those typical comparisons Israelis make. Precisely because you're an immigrant you become a citizen of the world; you don't belong anywhere, yet you belong everywhere. Yiddish songs are a kind of gift for these people, a way to continue for them their lives and their pride."

Do you write music with a connection to the past?

"Of course. Not so much with kleizmer, but rather with Hassidic music and with the great composers which we grew up on. Maybe it's a bit less sweet and more reserved, but still there's warmth and feeling. I think that if I would compose Alterman and Leah Goldberg today, I would also write similar melodies for them. In fact, it's the same geographical area, with the same memories and melodies. Maybe it completes something within me, music that is no longer written in Hebrew, because the ear waits for music that is thinner and colder than Hebrew. Also the texts are very different in Hebrew versus Yiddish. It's impossible to compare the words in Hebrew, for example in London, with their irony and rage, to Yiddish music, which I write without defenses, like a big hug."

Do you compose Hebrew and Yiddish songs differently?

"Absolutely. The most beautiful melodies come out in Yiddish; maybe they're sentimental, but they're the most free, without any inhibitions of fear or boundaries. It's as if there is no audience which I'm singing for, because there really is no audience. Sometimes I feel that it’s a dialogue with ghosts. But when I sing, I become a "medium" and they arrive at the concert hall. I admit, it’s really magic. Singing in Yiddish does not resemble the continuing and deep dialogue with the Israeli and Hebrew audience. I made the Yiddish songs almost entirely in hiding, as if they were just for me, and in a strange way it arrived at very strange places. Every few years I came out with a Yiddish record, but I don't recall ever being interviewed, the way you get interviewed when a Hebrew record comes out, because I didn't have energy again and again for the same questions: Is it exilic or not, is there an audience or isn't there, and is Yiddish dead or alive. Songs and poets just weren't on the agenda."

So let's go back to them. Regarding the text choice,  Lemeleh follows "the Well" (di Krenitzeh) and uses texts of poets who aren't necessarily so familiar.

"My house is full of poetry books, and there are things that come to me. I became a type of magnet; people send me something they found at home. I found the song Lemeleh in an anthology which was published in Vienna in the 1930's, and I didn't know the poet, Ber Schnapper. I realize that he was killed in the Holocaust, and I figure that this is a way to remember him. Many creative producers disappeared in the Holocaust; disappeared because we don't know even where to. This song was written at the start of the thirties, and I understand it as a song about the Holocaust. In the biblical story, the ram saved Issac, but here no ram arrived. I used to play the song on the piano and cry. It was the same with Mayn Shvester Chaye. But then the time arrives where it's already fine.

Usually, I look for Yiddish texts with internal music. For now, I'm still with poet's songs which follow folk songs. Many poets, also Hebrew one, dealt with folk songs: Bialik and Goldberg and Manger, of course. Even though it's high poetry – like the song Nacht by Katya Molodovsky, which has a lot of poetry, it motivates me to sing, to connect with songs of the past. In Lemaleh the latest poet is Yosef Pepirnikov, who lives in Israel in poor conditions, and no one managed to help him. And of course, there's Manger, with his opulence, and with musicality which is impossible to resist. How can one stop composing when he writes: Trililiee? I personally knew Binem Heler, who wrote Mayn Shvester Chaya. I was attracted to his wonderful rhyming. As a composer, those rhythms were a celebration for me. During the covering, I allowed myself to be free. We live in a country overflowing with different shades and cultures, and since a young age, when I roamed around the world, people were amazed that we knew everything, including South American songs, Greek, Russian, and French; we absorbed everything. Eventually, when I started writing, the Eastern European roots took over; I guess that's what made me feel the most secure. My Yiddish is a little Greek and a little Romanian and a little Israeli, and that's different than the Klezmatics, who are a group of New Yorkers who are looking for a different kind of Yiddish. For me, they're exilic, so to speak, more characteristic of the Jews of the Diaspora. They still have to retain their Jewish identity within America, and hold on to things I don't need to anymore. I have more confidence in my Yiddishkeit.

One of the funniest incidents in my career was the work on Leah Goldberg's "The Songs of the Land of My Love". It's actually a song about Lithuania: "Seven days of spring a year", and all the other exilic imagery. But people thought I was singing a song about Israel. I managed to import it over here. For me, there's something in it from both worlds. It's as Jewish and as Israeli as it gets. I managed to bring those two homelands together, combining something spiritual and something material.

The last stanza was really prophetic for me: "And from city to city, from country to country / I shall wander with a song and a musical box / To the glamorous shop of your poverty". When I recorded that song in 1970 I didn't realize all its levels of meaning, how much it contains everything I wanted to say. I mean, nowadays I tour the world with my musical box, the guitar. I'm not an emissary of the State of Israel. I also tell the hard things, but out of love and commitment."

Does Yiddish influence the music you record in Hebrew?

"I'm recording children's songs in Hebrew nowadays, and it's really just an offshoot of the Yiddish music. I bring the Yiddish melody into Hebrew; Singing Aililu in Hebrew nowadays is something I find important. One of the things I miss the most in Israeli music is an echo from the singer's childhood. On the radio, I hear the latest album the singer heard, and not their background. I hope that in my music, you can hear other things, that I grew up on and that I heard. There are Eastern European influences even in Motza'ey HaKhag ("Holiday night"), because it's about the foreign workers. But you seldom hear those songs on the radio. People want to hear something for everyone, "without you, I'm half a person", without any criticism or protest.

I alternate between Yiddish and Hebrew. I always decide to do something, and accomplish the opposite. Suddenly, years ago, I realized I had to do something with Yiddish before it was too late. I asked my partner, Nadav Livyatan, to come and take pictures of poets reading, just like that. When we finished working on the film "It's Too Early to Be Silent, Too Late to Sing", I felt I had done my share. I was done with Yiddish and that was that. But then it started to itch again. I told myself: If you've already dabbled with the subject, try to compose a song in Yiddish. I started with my beloved Katya Moldovsky's song, on the piano, and it was a real trip. I find Yiddish and Hebrew two twin sisters, who fought ferociously. Yiddish lost without it being her fault. I have had the privilege to speak and sing in two languages who share a fascinating story: Hebrew, the sleeping beauty, and Yiddish, who was just starting to live life. There's a beautiful poem by Rachel Boimvol, in which she goes to the butcher and sees a tongue, and she feels that her own people's tongue was cut off in the same way.
There were periods of guilt, when I didn't care for Yiddish, for the people who were accompanying me. I found them a nuisance, and I felt I was betraying my calling. But I was young, and I also wanted to sing the Beatles. I was torn between my commitment to these difficult people, who were never satisfied, and everything else."

So now you've come to terms with yourself and made your decision?

"It'll never be finally resolved. Art must be a battlefield, with plenty of dilemmas and struggles. Guilt, discovery and missed opportunities must all occur. That's how you get the feeling something new is constantly starting."


Chava Alberstein's web : http://www.aviv2.com/chava/

Translation from Hebrew : Noahm Sharon Web : www.write2sell.com  
(2349)

Source: Dafkeyiddish # 1 July 2006
Published by Sholem Aliechem House Tel Aviv
Email: dafkyiddish@yahoo.com

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