Yiddish Curiosities: a library of wonderful but forgotten Yiddish songs from the late 1920s and after (includes Polish Jewish Cabaret). Have a listen!

Here's another song I don't need to record as it has been recorded hundreds of times already. Zhelonek found space in his tiny booklet for all ten verses of Hatikva, which was written in 1878 by Naphtali Herz Imber from Zloczów; Imber emigrated to Israel in the early 1880s and published it there in his first poetry book.

According to Wikipedia, in 1888 Samuel Coen set Imber's words to a 17th-century Italian melody which had spread across Eastern Europe: "Cohen himself recalled many years later that he had hummed Hatikvah based on the melody from the song he had heard in Romania, Carul cu boi [The Ox Driven Cart]." The song was adopted as an anthem at the first Zionist Congress in 1897.

For text, transliteration and translation of all ten verses, sheet music with chords ($2.50):

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Labels: songs for sale, zionism