Mayn Lid Farnem – Take my song
A poetic-musical program with songs by the Yiddish bard Leibu Levin from the eastern-European “city of the dead poets”
When Romanian and German troops occupied it in 1941, Czernowitz, a town in the Ukrainian part of the Soviet Union, with a little more than 100.000 inhabitants, was home to famous poets of Jewish descent, all of them writing in German.
One of them, Itzik Manger, was in exile, but safe, in England. But Manger’s poetry lingered in the town and had a profound influence on a young man, who was still in Czernowitz at this sinister time: Leibu Levin. He had already made some fame by reciting Manger’s poetry, often singing the poems to his own melodies.
In 1941, Levin was sent to a labor camp and then imprisoned, first by the Nazies, then by the Stalin regime, to be free only 15 years later – but he lived, unlike many of his contemporaries. He settled in Moscow and later in Israel, and continued to work as a reciter, singer, and composer, who throughout his life set to music many of the most beautiful Yiddish poems, finding a different, fitting tone for each.
And so, on this 4th of May we remember and mourn what we’ve lost – amongst the six million were most of the Jews from Czernowitz, as was their vibrant German and Yiddish cultural life. We mourn, while keeping alive what survived: We sing Manger’s poetry in Levin’s wonderful songs and then read on, compose, and improvise music, keeping alive Yiddish literary and musical traditions that were nearly eradicated – so that they can keep nurturing us.
English translation of the Yiddish songs will be provided.
