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

I was recently asked for the sheet music to this song so I found a copy and you can order it from me below. This has got to be one of the most-recorded Yiddish theater songs of all time. There are dozens and dozens of versions on Youtube. It was the big shlager (hit) from Alexander Olshanetsky’s 1933 musical comedy Der katerinchik (The Organ-grinder).

The Milken Archive has a great writeup of Ikh hob dikh tsufil lib. Briefly, Tsirele (Jewish) and Abrasha (a supposedly Gypsy organ-grinder and pickpoket) are in love. Masha, a fortune-teller who is herself in love with Abrasha, reads her own fortune and, seeing in the cards that Abrasha will marry Tsirele, she sings this torch song to him. (It turns out later that Abrasha is not a gypsy but a Jew kidnapped as a baby so all is well.)

Click here to purchase sheet music for $2.50: Ikh hob dikh tsufil lib digital pdf file sheet music download.

By the way, when you search for a Yiddish song online be sure to search for alternative spellings. Ikh is often ich. Hob is sometimes hab. Dikh is sometimes dich and some versions use dir instead of dikh. Tsufil can be tsufiel, tsi fil, sifeel, tzufil, tsufeel, etc. and lib is often lieb or leib.

In Russian I saw it this way: Их хоб дих цу фил либ