Carl Wikeley

Discuss the ways in which post-revival artists have used

Yiddish song as a means of articulating or questioning
contemporary Jewish identity.

One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail
blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it
joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides.

-The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski

In the world, there are the marked and the unmarked.1 So says Richard Dyer, in reference to
ethnic minorities and white people. To be white is to be unmarked in the way that the white
voice speaks for all: when any number of humans is the subject of discourse, the assumption is
that they are white. A Google image search for man turns out over 6 billion results, most of
which depict a white man.2 The same goes for gender, sexual orientation, etc. In exploring the
ways post-revival Jewish artists use Yiddish song as a means of questioning contemporary Jewish
identity, it became clear to me that not only is Jew a marker, but so too is gender. In this essay,
I wish to explore the approaches of Adrienne Cooper & Mikveh and Daniel Kahn & The Painted
Bird. Initially, it seemed unbalanced to consider the two artists approaches together, as Cooper

1
Richard Dyer, White (Psychology Press, 1999), 38.
2
Google Image search, man, accessed 5th March 2017:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=man&biw=1280&bih=694&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9--jG
9b_SAhVCAcAKHWbrDvAQ_AUICCgB
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ostensibly articulates female Jewish identity, while Kahn seems to represent Jewish identity as a
whole. This alerted me to the way in which female becomes a marker when discussing
contrasting identities. It is therefore important to note that Kahns music reflects a male attitude
to contemporary Jewish identity: it is one imbued with socialist, anti-capitalist values which are,
by virtue of their Marxist historical connotations, distinctly masculine.
When Jerzy Kosinski describes the multicoloured raven in The Painted Bird then, he
articulates the reality of identity not only for Jews (and other ethnic minorities), but also women
and those who are not heterosexual. In a way, each of these marked peoples exist within a
diaspora of their own. Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird and Adrienne Cooper & Mikveh
represent two seemingly contrasting approaches to contemporary Jewish identity, which I will
critique in this essay. In Mikveh, Cooper seeks to reclaim female Jewish identity by imagining
and constructing an unprejudiced Jewishness, exploring issues commonly ignored in Hasidic
communities: love, fertility and domestic violence. Cooper thereby advocates a Burkean
approach to her marked identity: empowerment of the oppressed, as opposed to the dismantling
of the oppressor. In Kosinskian terms, Cooper might encourage the emboldening of the marked,
colourful raven. Contrastingly, Daniel Kahn seeks to encourage criticism and engagement
through Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (the artist terms his music Verfremdungsklezmer), is overtly
socialist, and unconcerned with past traditions. He emphasises present-day coping, in a
historical context. Thus, Kahn favours a Painean model, seeking to articulate a post-structuralist
disjuncture, highlighting the inherent contradictions and problems of contemporary Jewish
identity in an effort to dismantle the oppressor (capitalism), rather than seeking to reclaim
Yiddish song or embolden any one group. The groups wearing of colourful attire and bird
masks deliberately alludes to Kolinskis painted raven, and the entailing Brechtian theatricality
contrasts strongly with Coopers approach.
Before examining their approaches, I will briefly contextualise the groups in light of the
shifting role of Yiddish song in the klezmer revival, and subsequently Jeffrey Shandlers study
of postvernacular Yiddish. The way Kahn and Cooper articulate their identities hinges on the
symbol role of the Yiddish language in contemporary discourse, just as it does the new role of
Yiddish song in the klezmer repertoire.
Until the mid-1970s, Yiddish song played little role in Jewish music, given klezmers
attempts to survive in a state of increasing hybridity in the US, and the prominence of Israeli
influence with the influx of Hebrew songs and dances such as the hora.3 Come the emergence of
heterogenous revival groups, such as Kapelye and Brave Old World, a key unifying
the
component was Yiddish song. Why was this? In the context of Alex Haleys Roots (1976), the
focus of the core revivalists was not the continuation of tradition, but the forging of an
eminently new identity, based on the diverse roots of klezmer. As a way of creating a
distinctively Jewish American identity, revivalists drew on Yiddish song, often mixing the
language freely with english. As such, Brave Old World vocalist Michael Alpert advocated a new
Yiddish music, whose language and forms would be consciously created for the concert

3
Abigail Wood, The Multiple Voices of American Klezmer, Journal of the Society for American Music (2007) Volume
1, Number 3, 369.
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stage...but still deeply rooted in Yiddish folk materials.4 At its core, the revival was driven by
musicians who had grown up with relatively little heritage influence in their lives, and who saw
Yiddish as a form of cultural marker, which could at once promote a new individual identity in
American music, but also place their music within a deep rootedness of heterogenous sources.
Yet Shandler suggests that Yiddish has in itself become a marker of identity. As a
consequence of the holocaust, Shandler claims, a postvernacular Yiddish language has
developed within a new semiotic mode, whereby every utterance is enveloped in a
performative aura.5 This parallels Michael Alperts remarks regarding the new role of Yiddish
song in a performance context. No longer a method of communication, postvernacular Yiddish
has become a deliberate symbol, a natural continuation of I. L. Peretzs project of transforming
Yiddish into a language for enacting Jewish modernism in the face of obscurity. Alicia Svigals of
The Klezmatics recognises the use of Yiddish song as a example of Jewish self consciousness,
moving beyond reconstruction.6 Therefore, in the act of performing Yiddish song, Daniel Kahn
and Adrienne Cooper are participating in significant acts of mimesis, whereby their actions
speak louder than words.
Given the importance of Yiddish as a performative symbol, it is not surprising that
performers of Yiddish song should seek to explore their own Jewish identity within this context.
Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird offer an interpretation of Yiddish song which prioritises
performance, theatricality and contemporary identity, expressed through their self-termed
Verfremdungsklezmer. This is based on Brechts concept of Verfremdungseffekt, meaning the
alienation of the audience through anti-artifice referentiality, forcing the viewer/listener to
engage critically with the subject matter presented. Brecht achieves this through a variety of
techniques drawing the audiences attention to the fact that they are watching a theatrical
performance, such as the use of masks, staging, cross-dressing, and language. Every attempt is
made to emphasise the theatricality of the performance, through the use of extreme vocabulary,
such as in The Threepenny Opera, or indeed through the sounds of language itself. As such,
Yiddish is a language with an inherently close relationship to Brechtian distancing. Frank
London claims that in the context of revival and post-revival klezmer, the Yiddish language
itself act as a distancing device, like in a Brechtian sense.7 This alienating effect forces the
audience/listener to critically re-engage with contemporary issues, particularly identity. The
questioning of identity contrast sharply with mainstream postwar klezmer in Germany and
Poland, particularly in the instance of the reconstructed Kazimierz, Poland. Here, it could be
argued, the reality of contemporary Jewish identity is obfuscated through the presentation of a
romanticised, mystical stereotype of Jewishness.
Parallel to Brechts Verfremdungseffekt, Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird seek to capture
the audiences critical consciousness through humour and questioning. The members of the
band often appear wearing bird masks, an overt reference to Kosinskis novel. Similarly the use
of instruments is carefully negotiated so as to evoke a Brechtian level of discomfort, playing the

4
Wood, Multiple Voices, 374.
5
Jeffrey Shandler, Yiddish as Performance Art, TDR (1988-), Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 20.
6
Ibid, 31.
7
Wood, Multiple Voice, 368.
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4

accordion, harmonica, cigar box ukulele and often an electronic loudspeaker. A sense of
alienation is also achieved through his problematizing of conventional heroes. Six Million
Germans/Nakan tells the story of a Vilnian partisan, who fought against the Nazis. In a way
fitting to Kosinskis The Painted Bird, the partisan decided to poison German water supplies,
thereby killing millions of German citizens. Six Million Germans tells the story of this plan,
yet is performed in an upbeat polka style, juxtaposing not only theme and setting, but also
violence and heroism.
Another way in which Daniel Kahn achieves a Brechtian distancing effect, through the
specific use of the Yiddish language, is in Unter di Khurves fun Polyn (Under the Ruins of
Poland). This Yiddish song was collected by Shoul Beregovski in his Old Jewish Folk Music
anthology, and tells the ostensibly genuine tale of a traumatised soul, and evokes a Kosinskian
landscape of Poland, even incorporating avian metaphors. However, Kahn emphasises the
artifice of his Verfremdungsklezmer by incorporating a decidedly teleological structure to the
music, a change from Beregovskis transcription. There is a strong build-up in both
instrumentation and volume to the second chorus of Dolye, mayn dolye. This creates a sense
of melodrama which, in its exaggeration, draws attention to the artifice of its emotional content.
In creating this effect, Kahn also exaggerates the intonation and pronunciation of the Yiddish
text, evoking a recognisable but unrealistic Eastern European Ashkenazic accent.
Concurrently, Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird seek to draw attention to the reality of
contemporary Jewish identity by emphasising proletariat and anti-capitalist undertones of
Yiddish song, in the context of labour songs, a common song type in Beregovskis and others
collections. In the face of contemporary klezmer as a bourgeois world music type - and
particularly given the gentrification of klezmer in postwar Germany - Kahn appears to be
alluding to the reality of klezmer, past and present, as a symbol of modern Jewish identity.
While commonly associated with masculine identity, socialism and post-Marxist
anti-capitalism seeks to dismantle the overall oppressor in one, revolutionary sweep, as opposed
to simply empowering the oppressed, as Mikveh can be seen to do. In this socialist context, Kahn
seeks to offer a bottom-up critique of society and Jewish identity, forcing a rupture in
epistemology, in contrast to Mikvehs emphasis on reclaiming a feminist Jewishness. As such,
Kahns questioning of contemporary Jewish identity is often brutal in its criticism of alternative
Jewish perspectives. It is worth reproducing the lyrics of Oh, you Foolish Little Zionists in
full, given their pertinence:

Oi, ihr narishe tsionistn

Mit ayer narishn meykhl

Ihr mag dokh geyn tsu dem arbeter | (x2)

Un lernen bai im seykhl!

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5

Ihr vilt undz forn keyn Yerushalaim!

Mir zaln dortn golodayen

Mir viln beser zain in Rus[n]land, | (x2)

Mir veln zikh bafrayen!

Oh you foolish little Zionists

With your utopian mentality

You'd better go down to the factory | (x2)

And learn the worker's reality

You want to take us to Jerusalem

So we can die as a nation

We'd rather stay in the Diaspora | (x2)

And fight for our liberation

-Oy, Ir Narishe Tsionistn, lyrics Z. Lachmann.

Collected S. Beregovski, 1931 (Kiev)

The original text (1931) for Oh, you Foolish Little Zionists is taken from Beregovskis
collection of Old Jewish Folk Music, yet it is clearly as pertinent today as it was in the early
20th century. Jews may no longer work in the factory, yet the contemporary parallel of the
workers reality is the modern artist or worker living under in a late-stage capitalist system.
Crucially, the translation of Rus[n]land as diaspora has implications for contemporary
Jewish identity. In arranging and performing this song, Kahn is seeking to highlight the reality
of Jewish identity and the issues of capitalism, in contrast to Zionist, Israeli nationalist voices in
the Jewish community. As described in its sleeve notes, Kahn (this time performing with Psoy
Korolenko and Oy Vision) claims to perform dialectical klezmer cabaret. Kahn and
Korolenkos version of the Yiddish song evokes the workers labour-song aesthetic, with
heterophonic singing contrasted with solo voices in a call-and-response format, exploited also
by Brave Old World in Gather Together. The song mixes Brechtian distancing and
theatricality in the exaggerated singing of the Yiddish lyrics, and socialist sentiment with Kahns
singing of the lyrics in their English translation. Here, a connection to the roots of Yiddish song
is retained through the interpretation of Beregovskis collected lyrics, yet all artifice is disposed
with, and the message is clear: the reality of Jewish identity is different to how it is conceived.
How is Adrienne Cooper & Mikvehs articulation of contemporary Jewish identity
different to that of Daniel Kahn? As I have noted, it is important not to characterise Mikvehs
all-female approach as representing female Jewish identity in opposition to normal Jewish
identity, as we do not choose to mark the work of other artists as male. Nonetheless, Cooper
and Mikveh, in their eponymous album Mikveh, focus on those topics previously bypassed in
Yiddish song (and Jewish culture generally), such as fertility, domestic violence and womanhood.
Carl Wikeley
6

In doing so, Cooper seeks to reappropriate Jewishness in a feminist context. Essentially, Cooper
imagines a Judaism which is not sexist in an attempt to articulate her female identity and
empower the oppressed (women), rather than dismantle the oppressor itself (capitalism,
organised religion etc.).
The reality of female identity, as opposed to a sexist stereotype, has historically been
suppressed by Judaism, as it has by Islam and Christianity, and most other cultures through
history. Adrienne Cooper, whose mother was a classical singer and her father a cantor, seeks to
reappropriate Jewish identity in her own personal context. She studied at YIVO, and developed
a nuanced knowledge of Yiddish culture and language. Abigail Wood notes that 12 of the 14
songs on the album Mikveh pertain to womens issues (though it is important to note that
many of these are universal issues which have been categorized as womens, such as birth).8
Mikvehs style is accessible to the American listener, being somewhat reminiscent of an
American folk style, while Coopers rough, impassioned and low-registered voice evokes a
strong and powerful interpretation of the folk idiom.
Excepting Heart of the World, the majority of Mikveh is sung in Yiddish, unlike
Kahns repertoire. This emphasises the theatricality of the Yiddish language and its symbolic
importance in the construction of a distinctive Jewish style, however it poses a problem for the
effectiveness of Coopers constructed identity. Kahns songs succeed in encouraging critical
engagement as they mix alienating Yiddish with English, and eschew artifice. Mikveh seeks to
dignify Yiddish song as an art, but reinterpret it as something distinctively feminist. Yet in order
to successfully reappropriate Jewish identity and encourage engagement with issues of women in
Judaism, we are required to understand the music. If Shandler is correct in stating that
postvernacular Yiddish is no longer a method of communicating information, but rather acts as
a performative symbol, then it is not necessarily the contents of the songs which are of most
significance. It is all very well singing about issues affecting women in contemporary (and
historical) Judaism, however if, firstly, this is actually unintelligible to the audience, and
secondly, Yiddish has lost its purpose as a vernacular language, then these efforts are somewhat
in vain. The construction of identity hinges as much on reception as it does on creation. Thus, if
we do not receive Mikvehs music as articulating a feminist reappropriation of Jewish identity,
then it may not have been successful. Nonetheless, politics may be done by bodies, as much as it
is by communication, as William Washabaugh has suggested.9 As such, simply by performing as
an all-female group (and crucially not to an exclusively female audience, as is dictated by several
Hasidic laws), Cooper and Mikveh begin to construct a distinctive Jewish identity.
As an example of this construction of identity, the song Eyshes Khayil (A Woman of
Substance) is sung by Cooper and Mikveh as celebratory and dance-like, with instrumental
interludes in the style of a Yiddish dance. Wood sees this interpretation of the song as a
celebration of female empowerment,10 and goes some way to constructing a distinctive identity
by reclaiming elements of the song, losing its religious connotations.11 This is supported by

8
Wood, Multiple Voices, 378.
9
William Washabaugh, Flamenco: Passions, Politics and Popular Culture (New York: Bloomsbury, 1996), 24.
10
Wood, Multiple Voices, 378.
11
Ibid.
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7

Washabaughs suggestion that in simply performing as an all-female group, they may be doing
something political. Yet how this reflects contemporary reality for Jewish women is, as noted,
complicated by the obscurity of the Yiddish language to the average listener.
Suppose that a listener is aware of the context of the song A Woman of Substance,
whose original meaning was sexist and patriarchal. Consider this with reference to Shandlers
observation that singing in Yiddish is a theatrical performance of mimesis. Now suppose this
listener hears Mikvehs all-female version of the song, and interprets this as a reification of the
values of the song. In this way, Mikveh may be accused of self-exoticism, given there is no overt
statement made by the song, and also that there is, crucially, a level of artifice maintained in
Coopers attempt to dignify Yiddish song.
The difference between the approaches of Adrienne Cooper & Mikveh and Daniel Kahn
& The Painted Bird is that Brechtian alienation forces the listener to contemplate and question
not only the identity of the performer, but also their own, within the context of contemporary
society. Maintaining an artifice, and attempting to reclaim Yiddish song means the gaze of
the audience is one-way. This relates closely to the construction of an identity as either seeking
to empower the oppressed, or dismantle the oppressor. Mikveh can in this way empower the
oppressor, by forcing the audience to reconsider the identity of a contemporary female Jew,
however this is not sufficient to dismantle the oppressor: it does not require the audience to
critically engage with broader social issues. This is not a reflection of the quality or value of
Cooper and Mikvehs work, however it is a judgement on their ability to successfully construct
an effective identity. This, as Abigail Wood notes, may not be the aim of Mikveh, whose album is
generally unconcerned with political statements.12 In this way, Cooper has more in common with
Alpert, who speaks in an introspective tone in his recordings with Brave Old World, therefore
taking a personal approach to the issue of contemporary Jewish identity.
Ultimately, Kahn forces the audience to question the reality of Jewish identity, as well as
their own identity, through alienation techniques and the anti-capitalist and socialist sentiment
tied to traditional Yiddish labour songs. Contrastingly, Cooper retains an artifice in
performance which causes the construction of identity to run one-way, in its reception. Neither
Kahn nor Cooper actually articulates any identity, pers se. The definition of articulate is to
pronounce or state something clearly. Kahns Brechtian distancing prevents him from proposing
a genuine and distinctive identity, while Cooper arguably does not attempt this at all. Instead,
the two artists reflect what Wood terms the multiple voices of Jewish music. They provide
accessible, progressive, and distinctive Yiddish music in a contemporary world in which Jewish
identity is both championed, and threatened.

12
Wood, Multiple Voices, 378.
Carl Wikeley
8

Epilogue

In Jerzy Kosinskis The Painted Bird, a raven is marked by having its wings painted
multicoloured. The unmarked ravens ostracise, other and oppress the painted bird. In a
contemporary world, the coloured raven represents every oppressed group and minority. In the
same world, the black ravens represent capitalism, organised religion and every other kind of
oppression. How is it best to assert the identity and equality of all the birds? Ultimately, the
oppressor must be dismantled, but the oppressed must also be empowered. In the context of
Yiddish song, Daniel Kahn seeks to dismantle the system, while Cooper wishes to reclaim the
system as her own. Without seeking to elevate the raven metaphor any higher, this comprises
the Burke v. Paine debate: is it best to assert identity and alleviate oppression through
incremental change, or revolution. Cooper and Kahn represent these respective approaches.
However, I propose that these two positions are not dichotomous. The short-term gain of
Coopers reclaiming of female identity may be a step on the way towards fundamental change, as
advocated by Daniel Kahn. In the meantime, we must champion The Painted Bird.

Works Cited

Richard Dyer, White (Psychology Press, 1999)

Jeffrey Shandler, Yiddish as Performance Art, TDR (1988-), Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 2004)

William Washabaugh, Flamenco: Passions, Politics and Popular Culture (New York: Bloomsbury, 1996)

Abigail Wood, The Multiple Voices of American Klezmer, Journal of the Society for American Music (2007) Volume
1, Number 3

Online Sources:

Man, Google Image search, accessed 5th March 2017:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=man&biw=1280&bih=694&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKE
wj9--jG9b_SAhVCAcAKHWbrDvAQ_AUICCgB

Cover image by Brednia for Jerzy Kosinskis The Painted Bird