Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2013 Expedition

AHEYM-2013-083 · Baia Mare

Baia Mare 2013-05-19 11 min · 5 stretches · 1 questions about words Yiddish 100%

Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.

Summary

Camera file from the 2013 Baia Mare session, with no named interviewee in the index. An older man recalls his religious teachers and the Hebrew he learned, says he was born in Budapest, and talks about a Yiddish song and Hasidic tunes. Kerler asks him for a nign at the end. The file begins and ends mid-conversation.

Stretches

00:01–03:28

The man recalls his two teachers (rebbes). The first taught Yiddish, writing and the weekly Torah portion. The second, a well-known man named R. Avrom Leyzer (?), was an educator he liked, who had a fine melody. He mentions the simple beit midrash in his town and says he speaks Yiddish and Hebrew (lashon kodesh) with his daughter. Kerler adds a word for an orphan.

03:25–05:33

Short exchange about where the man lived. It is confirmed that he was born in Budapest in Hungary. A second speaker praises his voice and asks if he knows Yiddish songs.

Informal Personal information · Budapest

04:24–08:33

He tells of an acquaintance in Cluj who works in television and talks with him before the Sabbath, and who asked him in an interview about Yiddish songs. He recites the Yiddish song about paper children on the walls, and says Jewish songs are more beautiful still.

Recitation life today Songs and musicYiddish language and dialect · Cluj

07:46–09:52

He talks about rabbis' wordless melodies (nigunim), one conveying the feeling of autumn. Kerler asks for a nign. He answers with a story about his uncle, a music student and later professor in Cluj and Timișoara (?), who collected Jewish melodies in villages.

09:52–10:40

He lists folk, Hasidic and synagogue songs that his uncle gave him. He recalls a visit when the uncle sat at the piano and began.

Questions about words

  • 08:33
    Can you perhaps sing us a nign? — a Hasidic melody sung