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The Little Yiddish Bentsher / דער קלײנער יידישער בענטשער
/bentsher/

Cover

Background

In high school, I got hooked on the Klezmatics — I saw them on PBS performing with Itzhak Perlman, and then I ran out to buy their latest album, Jews with Horns. In college, I enrolled in Yiddish 10A with Ellen Kellman, and, lucky for me, she'd regularly bring her guitar into class and teach us Yiddish folksongs.

As our family has grown, I've tried to incorporate Yiddish songs in our Shabbat routine. What started as some informal printouts has grown into this bentsher, prepared in honor of Avi's bar mitzvah.

Notes

This is a somewhat idiosyncratic text, mainly because it simply represents our family's home customs.

  • The Yiddish songs are transliterated with the appropriate Ashkenazi pronunciation, but the Hebrew blessings are transliterated in the modern Israeli style.
  • Most blessings that are said aloud as a group are transliterated, but birkat hamazon is not, since we have many other bentshers nearby with transliteration for those who need it.

Buy a copy

The Little Yiddish Bentsher is available on Amazon for immediate purchase. Given the economics of Amazon publishing, it's not so affordable in bulk. I may be able to arrange cheaper bulk orders if anyone's interested.

Download the PDF

The bentsher is available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Songs

The links below should help with learning the songs we included.

Shabbes

Az ikh vel zingen

Lomir alle zingen

There's considerable creativity in the specific foods mentioned in each verse. Choose your favorites.

  • Lekhem: a shtikel beygele (a stick of bagel) / a dare skorinke (a dried crust)
  • Bosor: a lung un a leberel (a lung and liver) / an eingedart kishkele (a dried up kishka)
  • Dogim: a leybedik hekhtele (a lively pike) / a frish tzaplen karpele (a fresh, squirming carp) / a karpe gefilte (a stuffed carp)
  • Kol matamim: a zisse tzimes'l (a sweet tzimmes) / a kompot (a compote) / a bis'l haagen-dazs

Brider, zog

Eyn mol

We know Eyn mol from the Klezmatics, but the Ruth Rubin archive has a different version:

Eyn kol vein

Gefilte fish

Az der rebbe

Shnirele perele

Zol shoyn kumen di geula

Hey, Dzhankoye

Oyfn pripechik

Probably the most popular Yiddish song of all time.

Lekhayim rebenyu