During our week in New York at the end of May, we did a song workshop with Sarah Gordon of Yiddish Princess. Sarah, when she is not rocking out to Yiddish music, is an elementary school teacher, and those methods bled through when doing a call and response style of leading us through new songs in a language most of us were only partially familiar with. We did songs some of us knew, such as אין אַלע גאַסן [In Ale Gasn, In All the Streets] and songs that were completely new, including a song Sarah had done with Yiddish Princess called װער װעט בלײַבן [Ver Vet Blaybn, Who Will Remain]. Those songs quickly became favorites of our group and made their way onto the Yiddish playlist we made on Spotify (called yidn, it is a masterpiece if I do say so myself).

In contrast, once a week during the Naomi program, we did a song workshop with Yasmin Garfunkel. It was more professional, with vocal warmups and breathing exercises, focusing on our tone and our singing ability rather than the songs’ fun-ness, it had a completely different vibe. We sang more lullabies with Yasmin, slow and melodic, and listened to the recordings from which the nigns (melodies) came; we got the history behind the songs and the feeling of the people who created them.

With Yasmin, we got the feel for the generations that existed to create the songs we sang. With Sarah, we got to enjoy the way that Yiddish music has been adapted and modernized. These two completely different experiences have helped me to understand the importance of music in the study of not only a language but also of a culture.