One of the most renowned poems by the Yiddish poet Binem Heller is one he wrote for his older sister Khaye who perished in the Treblinka concentration camp.
In the poem, “Mayn shvester Khaye” (“My sister, Khaye”) he describes how, before the war, she would look after him and his brothers as their mother worked:
And Khaye remained at home with her brothers. She fed them and looked after them. And she’d sing them beautiful songs often sung in the evening. As little children grow sleepy.
After the war, Heller returned to Poland, hoping to help revive its Jewish cultural life, but he became disillusioned and moved, first to Paris and then to Brussels. In 1956, he visited Israel, which was then a hotbed of Yiddish creativity, thanks to a number of poets who, having survived the Holocaust, had settled there. Heller was warmly received and ended up staying in Israel until his death in 1998.
The acclaimed Israeli singer Chava Alberstein befriended him and other Yiddish poets in Israel, and in 1995, she and film director Nadav Levitan released a documentary film about them. The film, Too Early to Be Quiet, Too Late to Sing, includes a moving video clip of Heller’s wife Hadassah Kestin reciting “My Sister Khaye, ” as Heller sits in the background, listening solemnly:
In 2001, Alberstein set the poem to music and recorded it with The Klezmatics, bringing Heller’s words to a much wider audience.
Musicologist Jane Peppler also performed it on the album “Rag Faire,” accompanied by English subtitles.
Rukhl Schaechter is the Yiddish editor of the Forward and the producer of the YouTube series, “ Yiddish Word of the Day.” She loves cooking, Israeli folk-dancing and talking to her grandchildren.
In the poem, “Mayn shvester Khaye” (“My sister, Khaye”) he describes how, before the war, she would look after him and his brothers as their mother worked:
And Khaye remained at home with her brothers. She fed them and looked after them. And she’d sing them beautiful songs often sung in the evening. As little children grow sleepy.
After the war, Heller returned to Poland, hoping to help revive its Jewish cultural life, but he became disillusioned and moved, first to Paris and then to Brussels. In 1956, he visited Israel, which was then a hotbed of Yiddish creativity, thanks to a number of poets who, having survived the Holocaust, had settled there. Heller was warmly received and ended up staying in Israel until his death in 1998.
The acclaimed Israeli singer Chava Alberstein befriended him and other Yiddish poets in Israel, and in 1995, she and film director Nadav Levitan released a documentary film about them. The film, Too Early to Be Quiet, Too Late to Sing, includes a moving video clip of Heller’s wife Hadassah Kestin reciting “My Sister Khaye, ” as Heller sits in the background, listening solemnly:
In 2001, Alberstein set the poem to music and recorded it with The Klezmatics, bringing Heller’s words to a much wider audience.
Musicologist Jane Peppler also performed it on the album “Rag Faire,” accompanied by English subtitles.
Rukhl Schaechter is the Yiddish editor of the Forward and the producer of the YouTube series, “ Yiddish Word of the Day.” She loves cooking, Israeli folk-dancing and talking to her grandchildren.