Israeli, Hebrew, Jewish, and Yiddish Folk Music

Background and History

The folk music of Israel is in many ways a contradiction. It embodies the hopes, aspirations, beliefs, customs, and daily lives of an ancient people, whose recorded history and culture go back several thousand years, but it is also the music of a new country-the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948. Although Israel is located geographically in the Middle East, its religion and its history of immigration make the country culturally very different from the neighboring states of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. Israel is one of the most vividly multicultural countries in the world, and its folk music is as diverse as the people themselves. The origins of this music can be traced to every country where Jews have lived, both before and during the diaspora of the last two millennia. With a population drawn from more than 100 countries on five continents, Israel is a nation of competing and often conflicting voices and interests, but its folk music expresses community, continuity, shared tradition, and national identity.

Diaspora is a Greek word meaning "dispersal." It refers to the dispersal and settlement of Jews throughout the world after the Romans burned Jerusalem, destroyed the Second Temple, and expelled the Jews from their homeland of Judaea in around 70 A.D. But dispersal was nothing new to the Jews even then. The Assyrians had conquered Judaea in 722 B.C., and its inhabitants had been scattered all over the Middle East. The Persians and the Greeks had also annexed the area long before the Romans, and even when Jesus Christ was alive and protesting the Roman occupation, there were long-established Jewish communities in Babylon, Egypt, and elsewhere. But it is certainly true that after 73 A.D., the Jews spread throughout the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Wherever they went, they retained certain essential aspects of their traditional culture, customs, and religious beliefs and practices. The Jews made their home in every country in Europe, they built cities in China, and they traded and settled in India and the Far East. In recent centuries, the diaspora has continued to extend into the Americas and Australia.

In the words of the 1948 Declaration of Israel's Independence, "The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion." In other words, the diaspora, as a matter of enforcement and necessity, was at an end. Many Jews throughout the world saw this promise as the end of a long exile and took the opportunity that was offered, bringing a mixture of cultural contributions with them.

Jews in Israel and elsewhere are typically identified as Ashkenazic, Sephardic, or "Oriental." Ashkenazic Jews trace their roots to eastern European countries such as Russia, Poland, Austria, Romania, and Germany. Sephardic Jews are those who were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition and settled in places such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and the Balkan countries. Jews who come from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Kurdistan, Central Asia (Bukhara), and Ethiopia are sometimes referred to as "Oriental" or "Oriental/Sephardic" Jews. They developed languages that incorporated elements of the native tongues of the countries in which they settled. Yiddish is a blend of Hebrew, German, Russian, Polish, and other central and eastern European languages. Ladino, the language of the Spanish Sephardim, uses the Hebrew alphabet but contains elements of Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.

Jewish Folk Music - an Overview

Jewish folk music also typically incorporates musical ideas and styles from the countries in which Jews have lived over the centuries. The music is often passed down in the oral tradition from one generation to the next without musical notation. Jewish songs can be in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic, or any language that Jews happen to speak. Hebrew is the national language of Israel, but Yiddish and Ladino still live in numerous folk songs that reflect the history and cultural continuity of the Jewish people not only of Israel but of the world.

The Yiddish Tradition

The Yiddish tradition is a rich source of folk songs and music. Denied the right to own land, the Ashkenazic populations of central and eastern Europe tended to be urban rather than rural. Although they were often professionally integrated into the societies in which they lived-for example, as teachers, lawyers, doctors, writers, and musicians-they inhabited quarters or districts of towns and cities that were specifically Jewish. These communities were known as shtetls. Life in the shtetl was often hard: many Ashkenazic Jews were poor, and the conditions were overcrowded. But the sheer bustling vitality of shtetl life is celebrated in a vast body of traditional folk music, accumulated over many hundreds of years. "A Zemerl-Lomir Ale Zingen" laughs at hunger in a series of wryly ironic questions ("Tell me, Rabbi, what is bread?") and answers ("For the rich, bread is a good hot roll, but for poor people, it's a dry crust"). The verses are set in a plaintive mode that recalls the Middle Eastern origins of much Jewish melody, while the refrain is set to a rousing German folk-dance tune that was later used in several countries as a military march. "Beltz, Mayn Shtetele" is a moving evocation of a happy childhood spent in a shtetl that has since fallen into decay and ruin-what happened to it is not explained, but the song is a salutary reminder of the fragility of Jewish life in societies in which anti-Semitism was often not far under the surface. An old Romanian folk melody is the setting for "Papirosn," the ballad of a child who sells cigarettes on the snowy streets and dreams of death, and "Stav Ya Pyty" is a humorous, ribald lament of a drunkard who longs to reform his life but can never resist a good party.

Children and family life are central to Yiddish folk songs. "Eil Le Lu Lu" is a lullaby in which the child is told to enjoy the safety of the shtetl and his mother's nurturing while he can, because life is hard and the future is uncertain. Children's dreidel songs are sung in Yiddish, Hebrew, and every other language in which Hanukkah is celebrated. "Hob Ikh Mir a Mantl" is a children's song that tells the story of a garment so old and worn that it has to be picked apart and made into something else, which in turn becomes so old and worn that it too has to be picked apart, until eventually there is nothing left-and out of that nothing, the song is made. This piece recognizes the transience of material things and the infinite resourcefulness of the human spirit. The old wedding song "Et Dodim Kala" has lyrics from the "Song of Solomon," and the melody is said to be Babylonian in origin, while "Boire Oilom Bekinyon," another wedding song, was originally sung by Hasidic Jews in medieval Hungary.

Klezmer

No Jewish or Israeli folk music incorporates a wider variety of cultural or musical influences than Klezmer. Klezmer has enjoyed a surge of popularity in recent years, both among Jews and non-Jews, in Israel and all over the world. Klezmer music was already in its prime in central and eastern Europe by the fifteenth century. Today it contains a mixture of musical elements from Hebrew, Russian, German, Romanian, and Middle Eastern cultures. Elements of Balkan gypsy music sit side by side with old melodies from the synagogue. It is great dance music that is sometimes brash, joyous, and often dissonant. Melodies are usually ornamented with grace notes, trills, chirps, crying effects, and glissandi. Until the nineteenth century, Klezmer was traditionally played on violin, cymbalom (a kind of large hammered dulcimer), and bass. More recently, the clarinet has taken the lead in the Klezmer ensemble, joined by accordion, brass instruments, and drums.

Ladino

Folk songs sung in Ladino (the original language of Sephardic Jews), are similar to Yiddish folk songs, in that they also celebrate the secular and religious lives of Jewish people, but they reflect the Spanish and north African environments in which they evolved. "A La Nana," a Ladino lullaby, has a very Spanish feel, and "Quen Su Piese," an old Ladino Passover song, shows its Moroccan origins in its structure and rhythm. Oriental music in Israel surfaced in the 1970s and 1980s as the underground music that had evolved among immigrants from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries began to surface and become more popular with the general public. Zohar Argov, a Sephardic folk singer from Yemen, began to make cassette tapes of his songs and sold them on the streets of Tel Aviv. His hit song, "The Flower in My Garden," brought Oriental Israeli music, also called mizrachi, to a legitimate spot on the music charts. This style fused a Middle Eastern harmony and melody with Western rock and Israeli themes to produce a uniquely Israeli pop music that was very popular with the working class, especially. Groups such as Ethnix and Tipex took the mizrachi style further into the mainstream of popular music.

Nigunim

Not all Jewish music has lyrics. A nigun (pl., nigunim) is a song without lyrics. Nigunim are initiated by the rabbi and echoed by a group of men in the synagogue. These songs, which are without a strong rhythmic beat, are meant to elevate the soul to a mystic state, away from the distractions of the senses and rational thought. Some Orthodox and Hasidic Jews also sing them at home around the table after special meals.

1948 and Beyond

When the Jewish homeland state was established in 1948, efforts were made to create a national folk music. Songwriters and composers, such as Naomi Shemer, Menashe Ravina, Moshe Vilensky, Sara Levy-Tanay, and Isaac Levy, labored to create a national folk music that Israelis from any country could relate to and identify with. The folk revival in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s had its Israeli counterpart in the folk songs of the Kibbutz movement. But authentic folk music is not composed, it evolves-and it survives. There has recently been a revival of interest in the old music. Klezmer bands like Tapuah Ve Dvash abound in Israel, Yiddish songs are performed in cafes and concert halls, and groups like Los Pasharos Sefaradis play authentic Sephardic folk music to packed theaters. There is a growing recognition that the real unity of Israel lies in its diversity, its multiculturalism, and the real, living history of its people and their music.