What's that you say?
Today, Schechter's PA brought the Klezmer Conservatory Band to the lower school for a concert. We learned some Yiddish words like "freilach" which means happy and also got to hear Klezmer music variations from Romania, the Middle East and America. The concert got me thinking about what Yiddish books were in our library collection. While our collection lists 39 titles if you enter "Yiddish" into the search bar I will focus on just a few that I thought some of you might be interested in knowing about.
Today, Schechter's PA brought the Klezmer Conservatory Band to the lower school for a concert. We learned some Yiddish words like "freilach" which means happy and also got to hear Klezmer music variations from Romania, the Middle East and America. The concert got me thinking about what Yiddish books were in our library collection. While our collection lists 39 titles if you enter "Yiddish" into the search bar I will focus on just a few that I thought some of you might be interested in knowing about.
"Mayselekh far Kleynike Kindelekh/ Little Stories for Little Children" by Miriam Margolin tells ten (very, very short) stories in both Yiddish and Hebrew of Jewish small town life in Russia in the 1920s. (Sorry that the image is backwards.)
"Too Young for Yiddish" by Richard Michelson, begins on the opposite side from English books, just like a Yiddish book should. When Aaron was a boy his Zayde would not teach him Yiddish, but as an adult, Aaron longs to learn the language and history of the old country from Zayde and his many books. Here's a moving passage from the picture book:
Zayde's voice trembled. "In America,"he said, "the soup has lost its flavor. Everyone has mixed too well. No one remembers anymore where they came from. For Yiddish it is the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and no one on base."
Zayde's voice trembled. "In America,"he said, "the soup has lost its flavor. Everyone has mixed too well. No one remembers anymore where they came from. For Yiddish it is the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and no one on base."
Both "Five Little Gefiltes" by David Horowitz and "Beautiful Yetta: the Yiddish Chicken" by Daniel Pinkwater are both endearing and recent additions into Yiddish Children's Literature.
But let us not forget the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature who wrote only in Yiddish, Isaac Bashevis Singer. His stories carry us back into the mystical shtetl and all the warty and wonderful characters that fill that world. The story of "Zlateh the Goat" is my all time favorite and one that I read aloud with my family during Hanukkah time.
I leave you with one more video and a bit of joyous Klezmer music. A special thank you goes to Shula (first grade Judaic's teacher) for her freilach dancing!
I leave you with one more video and a bit of joyous Klezmer music. A special thank you goes to Shula (first grade Judaic's teacher) for her freilach dancing!
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