How does a 1940 Yiddish theatre song \u2013 probably based on a passage from the Talmud\u2019s Tractate Bava Metzia \u2013 end up becoming a popular piece sung around the world?<\/p>\n
Over a 75-year period, Aaron Zeitlin\u2019s \u201cDona Dona\u201d (in Yiddish, \u201cDos Kelbl<\/em>,\u201d \u201cThe Calf\u201d) has been sung by some of the 20th century\u2019s biggest English-speaking performers, including Joan Baez, Donovan, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Chad & Jeremy, and countless others. It has been sung in Japanese, German, French (in this version, the calf is replaced by a boy trying to figure out his future) Swedish, Hebrew, Russian, Italian, Catalan and Vietnamese. Zeiltin\u2019s original \u201cDos Kelbl\u201d was put to music by Sholom Secunda; in 1956, Arthur Kevess and Teddi Schwartz translated it into English.<\/p>\n \u201cDona Dona\u201d was part of Zeiltin\u2019s Yiddish play Esterke<\/em>, based on the legendary relationship of a Jewish woman named Esther and King Casimir of Poland. Zeitlin first published it in 1932 in Globus<\/em>, the Yiddish literary journal he edited. The play about Esterke and Kazimierz the Great was a Polish-Jewish mystery in four acts. Male and female actors sang \u201cDona Dona\u201d as a solo, as a duet and as a chorus with orchestration.<\/p>\n Zeitlin was invited to New York for the performance of Esterke<\/em>, which is an indication of how influential Yiddish theatre was in the pre-Second World War Jewish cultural world. With the outbreak of the war, however, he was unable to sail back to his family. His wife, two children, father and brother were killed in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n This terrible loss haunted Zeitlin for the rest of his life. Indeed, some maintain that \u201cDona Dona\u201d represents the tremendous suffering and loss of life Jews experienced in the Holocaust. While Zeitlin \u2013 who was living in Poland in the 1930s \u2013 was certainly aware of the growing threat of Nazism, he composed the song before the Holocaust began.<\/p>\n Over time, the song has been interpreted in many different ways. In a 2010 article in The Jewish Magazine<\/em>, Mendel Weinberger understands \u201cDona Dona\u201d as a reference to the struggle between the physical and the spiritual. The calf represents the body, the seat of desire. The body seeks pleasure, wealth and honour, and is a slave to these desires. The calf on the way to the slaughterer is a metaphor for the body\u2019s journey towards death. The calf (i.e. the body) is mournful because it has become attached to life and fears the unknown of the next world. The swallow, on the other hand, represents the soul, in Weinberger\u2019s interpretation. The Divine Soul is a part of G-d\u2019s Being and is not bound by the material limitations of the physical world; it is free to soar in the spiritual realms high above the earthly one.<\/p>\n Baez, who, probably more than anyone else in North America, was responsible for popularizing the English version of the song, has said she was attracted to the \u201cbeauty of the melody.\u201d At the beginning of her long career, she started singing \u201cDona Dona\u201d as a civil rights protest song. It appeared on her first album and became a \u201cstaple\u201d in her performances.<\/p>\n In 1975, Seoul, South Korea, banned the playing of \u201cDona Dona.\u201d The government considered the song to be leftist and violence-inducing. Two hundred and sixty other songs appeared on this blacklist.<\/p>\n Pointing to how times change or perhaps stay the same, in 2018, Liao Yiwu, a Chinese writer in exile, used \u201cDona Dona\u201d to boost the morale of someone under long-term house arrest. He had been trying to get permission for poet Liu Xia (widow of Nobel Prize winner, dissident Liu Xiaobo) to immigrate to Germany. In a phone call that year, the severely depressed widow cried continuously, saying, \u201cIt is easier to die than to live.\u201d Liao Yiwu played \u201cDona Dona\u201d for his desperate friend, who has since been released and allowed to leave for Germany.<\/p>\n Given that Zeitlin had religious training, the Gemara of Talmud Bava Metzia 85a is a likely inspiration of \u201cDona Dona\u201d and, therefore, probably best explains the song\u2019s true meaning. The Gemara tells the story of how Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah, came to endure terrible pains. A young calf, destined for the slaughterhouse, met up with the rabbi. The calf placed its head under the rabbi\u2019s coattails and cried. Yehuda HaNasi said to it, \u201cGo! It was for this that you were created.\u201d Because he should have shown greater mercy to the calf, the rabbi was punished for 13 years with great suffering. Only when he expressed pity for some baby weasels did his pains leave him.<\/p>\n Deborah Rubin Fields<\/strong> is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of T<\/em>ake a Peek Inside: A Child\u2019s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cDona Dona\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n On a wagon bound for market Stop complaining, said the farmer Calves are easily bound and slaughtered How does a 1940 Yiddish theatre song \u2013 probably based on a passage from the Talmud\u2019s Tractate Bava Metzia \u2013 end up becoming a popular piece sung around the world? Over a 75-year period, Aaron Zeitlin\u2019s \u201cDona Dona\u201d (in Yiddish, \u201cDos Kelbl,\u201d \u201cThe Calf\u201d) has been sung by some of the 20th century\u2019s biggest English-speaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[20105,3136,20104,20107,20106,20108,8977,20109,6208,186],"class_list":["post-35915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-aaron-zeitlin","tag-china","tag-dona-dona","tag-esterke","tag-joan-baez","tag-mendel-weinberger","tag-singing","tag-south-korea","tag-theatre","tag-yiddish"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>There\u2019s a calf with a mournful eye
\n<\/strong>High above him there\u2019s a swallow
\n<\/strong>Winging swiftly through the sky
\n<\/strong>How the winds are laughing
\n<\/strong>They laugh with all the their might
\n<\/strong>Laugh and laugh the whole day through
\n<\/strong>And half the summer\u2019s night
\n<\/strong>Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Don\u00a0<\/strong>Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Dona Don <\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Who told you a calf to be
\n<\/strong>Why don\u2019t you have wings to fly with
\n<\/strong>Like the swallow so proud and free
\n<\/strong>How the winds are laughing
\n<\/strong>They laugh with all the their might
\n<\/strong>Laugh and laugh the whole day through
\n<\/strong>And half the summer\u2019s night
\n<\/strong>Dona Dona Dona Dona \u2026 Don <\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Never knowing the reason why
\n<\/strong>But whoever treasures freedom
\n<\/strong>Like the swallow has learned to fly
\n<\/strong>How the winds are laughing
\n<\/strong>They laugh with all the their might
\n<\/strong>Laugh and laugh the whole day through
\n<\/strong>And half the summer\u2019s night
\n<\/strong>Dona Dona Dona Dona \u2026 Don<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"