Velvel Zbarjer (1824,

Zbarazh Zbarazh ( uk, Збараж, pl, Zbaraż, yi, זבאריזש, Zbarizh) is a city in Ternopil Raion of Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is located in the historic region of Galicia. Zbarazh hosts the administration of Zbarazh urb ...

– 1884), birth name Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkrantz (a.k.a. Velvl Zbarjer, Zbarjur, Zbarzher, etc.), a Galician

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

, was a

Brody singer The ''Broderzinger'' () or Broder singers, from Brody in Ukraine, were Jewish itinerant performers in Austrian Galicia, Romania, and Russia, professional or semiprofessional songwriters and performers, who from at least the early 19th century sang ...

. Following in the footsteps of

Berl Broder Berl Broder (1817–1868), born Berl Margulis, was a Ukrainian Jew born in Podkamen,https://archive.org/details/nybc207372 Dray doyres̀: lider fun Berl Broder (Margulies), feliṭonen fun Yom Hatsyoni (Yitsḥaḳ Margulies), poemen un lider fun ...

, his "mini-melodramas in song" were precursors of

Yiddish theater Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic rev ...

. Born in

, Galicia, he moved to

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

in 1845. According to Sol Liptzin, this move was occasioned by the offense his townspeople took at his "

heresies Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

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 Neamț, 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 song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetiti ...

s about whatever might be going on in the towns he passed through; the latter often described injustices, or made fun of the

Hasidic Jews Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contem ...

, and occasionally got him tossed out of various towns. In 1865, having noticed that others were singing his songs without giving him credit, he published them in a

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

booklet. As he grew older, he settled down. He lived in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

from 1878 to 1889, then lived out his last years in

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

, 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 Itzik Manger (30 May 1901, Czernowitz, then Austrian-Hungarian Empire – 21 February 1969, Gedera, Israel; yi, איציק מאַנגער) was a prominent Yiddish poet and playwright, a self-proclaimed folk bard, visionary, and 'master tailo ...

. 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

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

ical parable, appeared in "Kokebe Yizhak," xii. 102-103,

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, 1848. His next work, "Hazon la-Mo'ed," a satire on the

Hasidim Ḥasīd ( he, חסיד, "pious", "saintly", "godly man"; plural "Hasidim") is a Jewish honorific, frequently used as a term of exceptional respect in the Talmudic and early medieval periods. It denotes a person who is scrupulous in his observ ...

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 Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...

—1869–78). A new edition in Roman characters appeared in Brăila, Romania, 1902 (see ''

Ha-Meliẓ ''Ha-Melitz'' or ''HaMelitz'' (Hebrew: ) was the first Hebrew newspaper in the Russian Empire. It was founded by Alexander Zederbaum in Odessa in 1860. History ''Ha-Melitz'' first appeared as a weekly, and it began to appear daily in 1886. From ...

'', 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 Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, 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. . ''See the article on the author for further publication information.'' * Liptzin, Sol, ''A History of Yiddish Literature'', Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, *
Byli tu anebo spíš nebyli
(in Czech), site about klezmer and its antecedents {{DEFAULTSORT:Zbarjer, Velvel 1824 births 1884 deaths People from Zbarazh People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Ukrainian Jews Romanian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Yiddish theatre Badchens Broder singers 19th-century Romanian singers