YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

In libshaft un in gerangl (In Love and in Struggle)
The Musical Legacy of the Jewish Labor Bund
YIVO, 1999

Inspired by the January 1998 concert celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Bund held in Cooper Union’s Great Hall, this CD features performances by The New Yiddish Chorale, the Workmen’s Circle Chorus, soloists Adrienne Cooper and Dan Rous, and conductor and accompanist Zalmen Mlotek. Songs range from Yiddish poems to an English language “Ballad of the Triangle Fire.”  

This CD also includes a poignant rendition of “Rampage, Rampage, Raging Winds!”,  “Bread and Roses,” the “Youth Anthem” from the Vilna Ghetto, and “Vilne”, the paean to the Bund’s home city of Vilna, among others. There are workers’ songs of exploitation and struggle, cries of protest combined with exhortations of hope, poems by David Edelshtat, I. L. Peretz and Abraham Reisen, songs calling for human liberty and dignity. These songs were popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Producer Donna Gallers dedicated the recording to her grandparents, Brucha and Dr. Emanuel Platt, activists in the Youth Movement of the Bund in Poland.  For conductor Zalmen Mlotek the songs hold an extra personal meaning: they were sung in his home when he was growing up and at Camp Hemshekh, the Bund-sponsored summer camp that he attended.

Featuring Zalmen Mlotek, Adrienne Cooper, Dan Rous with The New Yiddish Chorale & The Workmen's Circle Chorus

Available from:

Fanya Gottesfeld Heller CJH Book Store
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY  10011 
917-606-8220                                                                               

The Jewish Book Center
of the Workmen's Circle
45 East 33rd Street
New York, NY 10016
212-889-6800
800-922-2558

CD ($18) | Cassette ($12)

List of Songs on the Recording

Produced by Donna Gallers. Sold with an illustrated booklet of song notes and lyrics in Yiddish and English.

1. Hof un Gleyb (Hope and Faith)
2. Maylid (Song of May)
3. Barikadn (Barricades)
4. Yidn shmidn (Jewish Blacksmiths)
5. Eyder ikh leyg zikh shlofn (No Sooner Do I Lie Down to Sleep)
6. In kampf (In Struggle)
7. Vakht oyf! (Awake!)
8. Mayn tsavoe (My Testament)
9. Vilne (Vilna)
10. In zaltsikn yam (In the Salty Sea)
11. Hulyet, hulyet, beyze vintn! (Rampage, Rampage, Raging Winds!)
12. Arbeter-froyen (Working Women)
13. In ale gasn/Hey, hey, daloy politsey! (In Every Street/ Hey, Hey, Down with the Police!)
14. Mayn rueplats (My Resting Place)
15. Shnel loyfn di reder (The Wheels Turn Fast)
16. Ballad of the Triangle Fire/Dos lid funem trayengl-fayer (Song of the Triangle Fire/Bread and Roses)
17. Di tsukunft (The Future)
18. Yugnt-himen (Youth Anthem)
19. Di shvue (The Oath)

Listen to Excerpts from the Recording

Note: To hear the audio excerpts you must have RealPlayer version 6.0 or higher installed on your system. The player can be downloaded for free from the RealPlayer Home Page.

Text: David Edelshtat (1866-1892)
Sung by Adrienne Cooper

Edelshtadt's Arbeter-froyen addresses women in its protest of the hardships of factory work. The song sounds a call to oppressed women workers to join the labor movement in its fight for justice and equality. Published in the New York newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Voice of Labor) in 1891, it was also sung by striking workers in Russia and Poland.

Text: Szmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954)
Music: Basya Rubin (n.d.)
Sung by Avrom Mlotek with Children's Chorus, The New Yiddish Chorale, and the Workmen's Circle Chorus

Vilna poet and partisan Szmerke Kaczerginski wrote this stirring march song for the youth movement in the Vilna ghetto. Many of the young people who took part in the ghetto's active resistance movement later also became combatants in the partisan units that fought the Nazis in the forests.