Makh Tsu di Eygelekh - "Close Your Little Eyes". The poignant melody for this lullaby is by David Beigelman, and the poem by Isaiah Shpigl. Beigelman lived from 1887 to 1945, and was a violinist, conductor, composer, and theatre critic from Lodz, Poland, who toured Europe and even came to the U.S. In 1940, part of Lodz was cordoned off, to become the ghetto for Jews and Gypsies. Throughout Europe during World War Two, as many Jewish communities were eradicated, these ghettos were established in order to confine and segregate the population for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. Even as he and others were surrounded by bleakness, Beigelman took an active role in the cultural life of the ghetto. Secret diaries discovered underground after the war cite Beigelman conducting the first symphonic concert in the ghetto in March, 1941. Beigelman was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and died of exhaustion in a slave labor camp in February 1945.

Isaiah Shpigl, born in 1906 in Lodz, survived the war, moving first to Warsaw in 1948 and to Israel in 1951. After retiring as a clerk in 1964, he returned to Yiddish literature, and passed away in Israel in 1991. The soloist in Makh Tsu di Eygelekh is Estelle Nadel, and it is arranged for chorus by Joshua Jacobson. Here is an English translation of the Yiddish poem:

Close your little eyes,
Soon little birds will come and hover over the head of your crib.
Bags in hand, our home—ashes and fire,
My child, we must seek our fortune.
‮.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
G-d has closed the world down,
Night is everywhere.
They're waiting for us with shudders and shrieks.
You and I will endure very difficult times.
We have no idea where our paths will lead us.

Stripped bare, we have been driven from our home,
Chased into the dark woods through storm, hail and wind
We have been led, my child, led to the abyss of the world.

Close your little eyes,
Soon little birds will come and hover over the head of your crib.
Bags in hand, our home—ashes and fire,
My child, we must seek our fortune.
‮.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Music Director Carol Kozak Ward
Pianist Travis Yamamoto
Soloist Estelle Nadel

Performance at Anythink Library, Thornton CO, March 2014

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