Having become a grandfather for the second time last month, I
have the
privilege and pleasure of singing
lullabies to my two grandchildren. I have
often thought about the Jewish
lullabies that my grandparents sung to me as
a child; sadly I remember
only two or three of the Jewish words. The main
words were Shlufe
Shlufe Kinderele. I asked
my mother if she remembered the
words to this lullaby and she
could not. It is the memory of my grandparents
and the songs they sang to me
that motivated the writing of this article.
After some research, I found out that Jewish musicologists have
catalogued
and written about many of the
beautiful Jewish and Hebrew lullabies that
exist or existed; most have
fallen into disuse. One scholar wrote the
following, “Ask an 80-year-old to
sing you a lullaby her mother sang to her
and chances are she will
remember the songs word for word. But ask the same
questions of a 30-year-old or even a
50-year-old, and you may well draw a
blank.” This is what Hanna Yaffe, a
during her recent research on
lullabies from
She believes that lullabies
are becoming obsolete. People just don't sing
lullabies as much anymore," says
Yaffe. "In past generations, people would
cry as they recalled the songs
their parents used to sing them to sleep.
Younger people, if they
remembered any songs at all, were not emotional.
Perhaps this is because even
if they did hear lullabies, chances are they
were from a record player or
tape recorder rather than their own mother's
voice."
I tried at a recent evening minyan to test her hypothesis. Those present
could not remember the lullabies
that there were sung to them as children.
Of 14 present, only one
person, Barbara Leinwand could remember the
beautiful words of a lullaby that was
sung to her. This seems to confirm
what Yaffe
found.
As I pursued this topic, I
found out that, beyond the words and the tune,
there is much variation in the
choice of topics for lullabies. For instance,
look at the following lullaby-
"Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top. When the
wind blows, the cradle will
rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will
fall. And down will come baby cradle and all." How many times have you
heard or sung this lullaby to
your child, niece or nephew at bedtime? Have
you ever looked closely at the
lyrics, some of which are dark, threatening?
Does it frighten you to sing
about a bough breaking with a cradle in it?
What was the intention of
the songwriter in writing those lyrics? These are
questions pursued by "lullabologist" Julia Lebentritt
of
whose research is similar to Hannah
Yaffe’s research in
So why are the images so
dark in certain lullabies? One Jewish musicologist
tried to answer it this way. A
passage from the Song of Songs, {which is
also read during the nighttime Shma prayer), says that upon retiring King
Solomon surrounded his bed
by 60 warriors holding swords because he was
afraid of the night. Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik, of blessed memory wrote that
he did not know what the king
was afraid of. Yaffe wrote that Rav
Soloveichik, A’H himself was put to
sleep each night to the sound of his
mother's voice reading to him. Yaffe comments that had the Rabbi gone to bed
without hearing his mother's soft
voice he would have had a better
understanding of the fears that 60
warriors couldn't allay.
Other musicologists explored why violent
images appear in lullabies.
Psychologist Marcia Levine-Shbiro believes these expressions serve a healthy
purpose. She says expressing such
feelings and realizing they are legitimate
and shared by others can help
alleviate post-partum depression. Regardless
of the culture,
"lullabies put babies to sleep because the melody is always
soothing, calming and
comforting," says Yaffe. "But the words
seem to be
there to give the mother the chance
to express her feelings."
An analysis of famous Jewish lullabies seems to confirm these
findings.
Jewish Lullabies have
recurring themes: mother complaining about father's
absence or her own miserable life;
a prayer that the child will have a
better future than that which
seems available now; or that the baby will
grow up to be a decent person
and look after his mother in her old age.
Who wrote lullabies? Many great authors wrote at least one
lullaby. Robert
Burns, Yeats,
Sir Walter Scott, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis
Stevenson -
and Mozart, Schubert and Brahms
wrote the music to lullabies, of course.
But what about Jewish
lullabies? In our own culture, Bialik, Tchernichovsky,
Shalom Aleichem
and S.Y. Agnon all wrote lullabies. Some of the
titles of
these lullabies are: Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen,
Tum-Balalayka, Amol Iz Geven A
Mayse (Once Upon A time There Was
A Story), Unter Der Kind's Vigele (Under
The Babies Cradle), Numi, Numi, (Numee, Numee),Ah-f Pripitchik (By The
Fireside), Shlof Mayn Kind (Sleep My Child),
Yankele (Yankehleh) and
Ay-Lye,
Lyu-Lye, Lyu-Lye.
One of the most popular
Yiddish lullabies, regarded by many as a "true folk
song" is Der alef-beyz (The Aleph Bet, or
The ABC), or, as it is commonly
known Oyfn
pripetshok (On
the Hearth). Here is the story behind this
wonderful song. But first the words:
On the hearth a little fire
is burning,
And it is hot in the house,
And the rebbe
is teaching the little children.
The Aleph
Bet.
Study, children, with great
interest,
That is what I tell you;
He who'll know his lessons
first,
Will get a
banner for a prize. (Refrain)
When you get older,
children,
You will understand that
this alphabet
Contains the tears and the
weeping
of our people.
(Refrain)
When you grow weary,
children
And burdened with exile,
You will find comfort and
strength
within this Jewish alphabet.
(Refrain) Refrain:
See now children, remember
dear ones,
What you've learned here;
repeat it again and again
Aleph with kametz is "o"!
This lullaby has an interesting history. Its author Mark
Warshawsky (1840-1907) was not a
professional poet, composer or performer.
His songs, however, came to
be sung along with the oldest Yiddish folk songs
in
some fifty texts and tunes. Even
before they were published, more than
twenty of these songs became
household songs in many Jewish homes in the
Pale of Settlement (the
territory within the borders of czarist
the residence of Jews was
legally authorized), and it became officially
known that Warshawsky
was their creator.
Mark Warshawsky's
songs mirror his abounding love for his
oppressed, poverty-stricken people
under Czarism of the 1880s and 1890s.
Simple, direct, musically
familiar to the folk ear, retaining the
folk
idiom, his songs deal with the
period of disillusionment and suffering
wrought by the pogroms, the
migrations to
the daily concerns of the
average Jew in the Pale. The success of
Warshawky's songs was immediate,
especially after they were published in
1899 with
an introduction of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Both men became
associated as traveling performers,
with Sholem Aleichem
reading his stories
and Warshawsky
singing his songs before Jewish audiences. The most popular
of all of Warshawsky's
songs, regarded by most people as a "true" folk-song,
is Der
alef-beyz (The ABC) or, as it is commonly known Oyfen Pripetshok (On
the hearth). Warshawsky was the last folk bard of the nineteenth
century,
bridging the gap between the songs
in folk style and the Yiddish art songs
of the twentieth century.
The melody from Warshawsky’s song was later used as a theme in the film
based on the life of George Gershwin. During the Nazi Holocaust it was used
as a ghetto song: "At the
ghetto wall a
fire burns, the surveillance is
keen." And in the
it became a theme song sung
clandestinely by Jewish activists; the closing
words were reworded thus:
"Even should they beat you or throw you on the
pyre, repeat kometz-aleph-o."
So the next time you hear or, even
better, sing any of these
beautiful lullabies hopefully to your
grandchild and their grandchildren
too, remember the wonderful
heritage and culture of which these lullabies
were born.
Sincerely,
Cantor Elihu Feldman