Velvel Zbarjer

Velvel Zbarjer (1824–1884 [These dates are given by Bercovici; Liptzin gives a death date of 1883; the "Jewish Encyclopedia" gives a birth date of "about 1812" and a death date of "about 1882".] ), birth name Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkrantz (a.k.a. Velvl Zbarjer, Zbarjur, Zbarzher, etc.), a Galician Jew, was a Brody singer. Following in the footsteps of Berl Broder, his "mini-melodramas in song" were precursors of Yiddish theater.

Born in Zbarj, Galicia, he moved to Romania in 1845. According to Sol Liptzin, this move was occasioned by the offense his townspeople took at his "heresies and scoffing verses". [Liptzin, 1972, 47] He worked briefly as a schoolteacher in Botoşani, but soon became an itinerant singer, singing in the homes of wealthy Jews and in workers' cafes in Botoşani, Iaşi, Galaţi, and Piatra Neamţ, always glad to sing for a glass of wine or a meal. An actor as much as a singer, he variously sang the praises of his own footloose life and made up topical songs about whatever might be going on in the towns he passed through; the latter often described injustices, or made fun of the Hasidic Jews, and occasionally got him tossed out of various towns. [Bercovici, 36-37]

In 1865, having noticed that others were singing his songs without giving him credit, he published them in a Hebrew-Yiddish booklet. As he grew older, he settled down. He lived in Vienna from 1878 to 1889, then lived out his last years in Istanbul, where he married for a second time, to a woman known as Malkele the Beautiful. This end-of-life romance became the subject, in 1937, of a cycle of twelve verse epistles by Itzik Manger. [Liptzin, 1972, 47]

Writing in the "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1901-1906), Singer and Wiernik describe him as "a real folk-poet" whose songs, two decades after his death were "still sung by the Jewish masses of Galicia and southern Russia."

Published works

His first published poem, written in Hebrew and based on a Talmudical parable, appeared in "Kokebe Yizhak," xii. 102-103, Vienna, 1848. His next work, "Hazon la-Mo'ed," a satire on the Hasidim and their rabbis, is also in Hebrew (Iaşi, 1855). His Yiddish songs were published with a Hebrew translation in four parts, under the collective name "Makkel No'am" (Vienna, 1865, and Lemberg—now Lviv—1869–78). A new edition in Roman characters appeared in Brăila, Romania, 1902 (see "Ha-Meliẓ", v. 42, No. 125). His "Makkel Hobelim" (1869) and "Sifte Yeshenah" (1874) appeared in Przemyśl. Gustaf Hermann Dalman's "Jüdisch-Deutsche Volkslieder aus Galizien und Russland," pp. 29-42, 2d ed., Berlin, 1891 reproduces some of Velvel Zbarjer's songs. ["Jewish Encyclopedia" article "Ehrenkrantz, Benjamin Wolf".]

Notes

References

* Bercovici, Israil, "O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România" ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998), pages 36-37. ISBN 973-98272-2-5. "See the article on the author for further publication information."
* Liptzin, Sol, "A History of Yiddish Literature", Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.
* Singer, Isidore and Wiernik, Peter, [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=69&letter=E Ehrenkrantz, Benjamin Wolf] in the "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1901-1906)
* [http://klezmer.hyperlink.cz/bylitu.htm Byli tu anebo spíš nebyli] (in Czech), site about klezmer and its antecedents.