Music Mondays

Music is a significant way contemporary Jewish communities connect to, preserve, and share Jewish languages. These songs engage with a variety of Jewish languages, most endangered, and represent a wide array of musical styles, from traditional to contemporary, from sacred to comedic.

To learn more about the languages of these songs, visit our languages page. For complete playlists, check out Spotify and YouTube.

Viva Orduenya, Charming Hostess

“Viva Orduenya,” a dancing song for Jewish brides, comes from Tangiers, Morocco. The lyrics and movements teach of the labors that go into making bread. It is written in Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino and Judezmo, a Jewish language originating from Medieval Spain. It has continued to be used Jewish populations after Spanish expulsion, notably in the Ottoman Empire and in North Africa, and even in the United States. Judeo-Spanish was historically written in the Hebrew alphabet, but is now more commonly seen in Roman script. Judeo-Spanish is considered an endangered language.

Charming Hostess was founded by Jewlia Eisenberg (ca.1971-2021) in the 1990s in California. The all-female-fronted band’s work focuses on diaspora consciousness, working in various musical styles such as Andalusian melody, Klezmer, doo-wop, Balkan harmony, Pygmy counterpoint, and more. Charming Hostess’s songs utilize a wide variety of Jewish languages, including but not limited to Judeo-Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Ancient Judeo-Aramaic.

Vi a Nes, Levyosn

“Vi a Nes” is a song adaptation of a poem by Zusman Segalovitch, a writer, poet, and journalist born in Bialystock. Segalovitch wrote this poem in Yiddish while in the Warsaw Ghetto, and it was preserved and discovered post-war in the Ringelblum archives. The poem emphasizes finding wonder in small miracles, even as the rest of the world falls apart.

Levyosn is a Boston-Based ensemble, specializing in Yiddish folk song and Klezmer. Their 2023 debut album, Levyosn’s Lullaby, is inspired by the weekly Jewish ritual of havdalah, and features both fresh takes on classic melodies as well as new compositions by the band members.

Lomir Zikh Iberbetn, Les Yeux Noirs

“Lomir Zikh Iberbetn” is a popular Yiddish folk song of unknown origin, first published in 1914 by Solomon Rosowsky of the Society for Jewish Folk Music. Its simple structure has allowed for many new verses to be written over time, but the song generally focuses on someone persuading their partner to make up after an argument with various offers.

Les Yeux Noirs is a French band founded in 1992, specializing in Klezmer/Yiddish and Romani music.

שפל רוח (Shefel Ruach), Berry Sakharof and Rea Moshiach

“Shefel Ruach” is a Piyyut (liturgical poem) composed by 11th-century Al-Andalusian Jewish Poet and philosopher Shlomo ibn Gabirol, using Medieval Hebrew. The text conveys humankind’s humility and powerlessness before God, and is sung by Sephardic communities during Rosh Hashanah, as well as year-round in some Yemenite traditions - notably, as a part of wedding ceremonies.

As the language of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Hebrew is widely considered to be the central unifying language of the Jewish people. Hebrew has been in use since the 10th century BCE as a spoken language, a written language, a lingua franca, and a language of prayer. During the Medieval period, Hebrew had been mostly retired from use as a vernacular language, but remained popular for liturgy, prayer, and study. A wealth of Hebrew-language liturgical poetry (Piyyutim) emerged between the 10th and 12th centuries CE in the Iberian Peninsula, influenced by the surrounding Arabic literary forms and themes.

Berry Sakharof and Rea Moshiach are Israeli musicians and songwriters renowned for synthesizing nostalgic and historical material with a modern rock sound. They collaborated for the 2009 album אֲדֻמֵּי הַשְּׂפָתוֹת (Red Lips), based on the texts of Shlomo ibn Gabirol.

Asfalou, Miléna Kartowski-Aïach, Hnini Shmouyal, and Tawargit Band

This orally transmitted folk song’s text is set in Afsalou, a Moroccan province. Its poetic narrative describes nostalgia longing for several subjects, including the location of Afsalou itself as well as the hand of a woman called Hnuna in marriage. It is sung in Judeo-Amazigh.

Commissioned by JLP for the A Millennium of Jewish Women’s Voices project, this arrangement of “Asfalou” draws from a 2012 oral history recording of Hnini Shmouyal (1931-2014), a Jewish woman from Tinghir, Morocco. Multidisciplinary musician, theatre artist, and anthropologist Miléna Kartowski-Aïach collaborated with Tawargit, an Amazigh musical ensemble from Tinghir, to record a choral version of Shmouyal’s song.

Abyadi Ana, Zohra El Fassia

“Abyadi ana” is a wedding song often sung during the preparation of the bride for the ceremony, especially the intricate ritual of decorating the bride’s skin with henna artwork. The song, sung in Judeo-Arabic, is believed to have originated amongst Western Algerian Jews, before becoming very popular in Morocco.

Zohra El Fassia (1905-1994) is often considered to be the most successful Moroccan-Jewish singer, officially honored as court singer by Sultan Mohammed V. She recorded original compositions as well as Andalusian Algerian traditionals, under popular international labels such as Columbia Records and Pathé Marconi.

Shamak Zabrd Radai, A-WA

“Shamak Zabrd Radai” is on A-WA’s 2016 album, Habib Galbi, which consists of reimagined Yemenite women’s folk chants, sung in Judeo-Arabic. The song’s poetic lyrics speak of patient yearning for one’s absent lover: “I said, give me to drink, and he said not yet/ Oh wrath of God, how can I continue with this thirst?”

A-WA is a Yeminite-Israeli trio consisting of sisters Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim. Their work combines folkloric Yemenite-Arabic music with electronic dance and hip-hop styles, and it has welcomed international admiration ever since their 2015 debut music video, Habib Galbi, went viral.

Geshray of deVilde Kotchke, Mickey Katz

Geshray of deVilde Kotshke” is Mickey Katz’s 1956 Yinglish parody of “The Cry of the Wild Goose” by American singer and songwriter Frankie Laine. Rather than a song of love and longing, as Laine’s version was, Katz’s parody tells a wacky tale of the speaker’s frustration at not being able to afford a duck at the butcher shop, even cursing the butcher at the end.

Mickey Katz (1909-1985) was an American-Jewish singer, musician, and comedian, famous among Yiddish-speaking American Jews for his Yinglish (English and Yiddish fusion) parodies of popular English songs . Having begun his career as a clarinetist and bandleader, Katz also released traditional Klezmer music.

Nanu Ney, Ester Rada

“Nanu Ney” is a popular Amharic folksong with a repetitive structure that encourages new verse creation. It playfully relays a story of love and longing by using various metaphors of closeness and distance. Ester Rada’s version of “Nanu Ney” was the very first Amharic song to be featured on Israeli pop radio.

Ester Rada is a prominent Ethiopian-Jewish singer and actress, raised in a refugee community in Israel. Rada’s unique musical style fuses the religious and traditional Ethiopian music of her early childhood with secular African-American styles, such as Funk. She is hailed as one of the most successful Ethio-Jazz musicians today, a genre that marries Amharic pentatonic music with Western instrumentation, while also incorporating Afrofunk, Soul, and Latin rhythm.

Palotu Palam Taruven (Parrot Song), Sarah Cohen and Ruby S. Hallegua

“Palotu palam taruven (Parrot Song)” is a play song, meaning that it can be sung for fun at social gatherings accompanied with clapping or a circle dance. Its lyrics, composed in Jewish Malayalam, begin by asking a parrot to relay news in exchange for milk and fruit, before transitioning to an allegorical story in which a bird, likely representing the Jewish people, is wounded by a hunter. Seeking safety, the bird flies to the ancient Jewish settlement of Palur, before resting in a high place of safety - likely the port city of Kochi, where this version of the song was sung.

This song was featured as a part of Oh, Lovely Parrot: Jewish Women’s Songs from Kerala. This 2004 album was released by The Hebrew University’s Jewish Music Research Centre and the Jewish National and University Library as the culmination of their ethnomusicological fieldwork project documenting Jewish Malayalam songs of women in Kerala, India. While Keralan Jewish women and men share the tradition of religious Hebrew piyyutim, only women have a secular song tradition in the vernacular language of Jewish Malayalam. The 2004 project aimed to preserve this orally transmitted intangible cultural heritage which was in rapid decline due to most speaker’s emigration and assimilation to Israel.

Bellida, LALA Tamar

In this album, LALA Tamar worked with ethnographic recordings of women’s ancient Haketian hymns from the National Archive of Jerusalem. “Bellida” addresses a woman, Bellida, who converted to Christianity for her husband, Pepe. The speaker comforts Bellida by promising to send her dafina, a Sephardic sabbath stew, and asks Pepe to buy her a tsitsi.

LALA Tamar is a singer, songwriter, poet, dancer, and guimbri player specializing in Moroccan soul and Brazilian beats. She is notably one of few contemporary musicians creating in Haketia, though she has also released work in other languages such as Amazigh, Arabic, and Portuguese. LALA Tamar is also a part of the iconic Andelucious musician collective.

Κίνα Γλώσσα (Kina glossa), Sakis Negrin

Kina glossa is a Romaniote Jewish Purim song from Ioannina that recounts the story of Esther, arranged by Negrin for a chorus. It is performed in Judeo-Greek. Negrin’s album also features a “full” version of this song, which is over 17 minutes long and contains all of the original text’s verses.

Sakis Negrin is a multifaceted professional musician with specialties in Romani, Sephardic, and Judeo-Greek music. Born in Ioannina, Negrin is now the Director of the Cultural Center of the Jewish Community of Athens, and leads a mixed-voice choir that tours internationally.

Ahu Khanem, HULAULA

The inaugural song of the band HULAULA, “Ahu Khanem” is sung in Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Persian/Farsi. It blends biblical imagery with Middle Eastern music, depicting the visions or daydreams of a lovesick shepherd, singing to his beloved, Ahu Khanem.

Band members Adi Kadussi and Alon Azizi founded Hulaula (the name for Northeastern Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages) to share their ancestral language with the world. Their families migrated to Israel after the state was established in 1948, and Kadussi and Azizi have made it their mission to preserve and share their heritage language through music.

Mamane, Nissan Aviv

"Mamane” comes from a traditional nursery rhyme “mamane ay mamane,” sung in Lishan Didan.
Lishan Didan belongs to the family of Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages historically spoken in Northwestern Iran. This song expands this rhyme to a full song. “Mamane” is a term of endearment for young children (compare to the Farsi word “maman-jun”). The song is sung from the perspective of someone caring for a baby while the mother is away, contrasted with the perspective of the new mother speaking to the child. This is evident through the many first-person female verbs in the song, despite the singer being male. In the song’s expansion of the nursery rhyme, it touches on various aspects of Nash Didan (literally, “our people,” meaning the speakers of Lishan Didan) culture, such as the celebration of “simh ilane” (Tu BiShvat).

Nisan Aviv was the face of Lishan Didan music and arts in the 21st century. He is essentially the only artist to have released a significant quantity of music in Lishan Didan.

Judeo-Hamedani Song about Military Service, Galeet Dardashti

According to Dardashti, this song, written in Judeo-Hamendani is about “a family desperate to have their son exempted from the Iranian military draft. Sending their sons to military service was particularly traumatic for Jewish families in Hamadan because Jews lived in a closed community and suddenly in the army young men faced a different world and weren’t able to maintain their religious practices such as Sabbath observance and Kashrut." Now it has become a Persian Jewish American folk song. This song was documented, transcribed, and translated by Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi with the HUR-JIR Jewish Language Project.

Galeet Dardashti is an accomplished vocalist, cantor, producer, anthropologist, and advocate for North African and Middle Eastern Jewish culture. She is the leader and founder of Divahn, an all-female Sephardi/Mizrahi ensemble, and she has also released her own music albums: The Naming (2010) and Monajat (2023).

Dae Ana Izalen, Hadassah Yeshurun

This song “dae ana izalen” (“mother, I am going”) is a heartbreaking song about a mother whose son has passed away. It is structured as a conversation between the mother, who is asking to see her son just one more time, and the son, who is saying that his time has come and he has to go. This particular rendition was released by Hadassa Yeshurun in memory of Lior Hay Sahrai, a paramedic who was killed in a car accident at the age of 21.

It is written in Lishan Didan, a language belonging to the family of Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages historically spoken in Northwestern Iran.

Hadassa Yeshurun is perhaps the only well-known artist who sings in Lishan Didan today. She often covers older songs, especially by Nisan Aviv (the only artist to have released a significant quantity of music in Lishan Didan), as is the case with this song.