Global InformationPapirosn information
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 "Papirosn" by Dudu Fisher, YouTube video |
"Papirosn" (Yiddish: פּאַפּיראָסן, transl. Cigarettes) is a Yiddish song that was written in the 1920s.[1] The song tells the story of a Jewish boy who sells cigarettes to survive on the streets. He depicts his tragic fate; having lost his parents, his younger sister has died on the bench,[2] and eventually he loses his own hope.[3]
The song's author Herman Yablokoff was a member of the Yiddish theater that was active in Lithuania and Poland in the years following World War I. He was inspired by children who tried to make a living selling cigarettes in the streets.[2] The sight of the children reminded him of his childhood in World War I in Grodno, where he tried selling cigarettes to passers-by.[2]
Yablokoff went to the United States in 1924; the song was published in an American radio program in Yiddish in 1932 and became a hit as part of a musical of the same name that premiered in 1935, which interpolated a silent movie in which Sidney Lumet played the Jewish boy.[4] Many music sheets of the song were sold.[5]
The song was not officially prohibited in the Soviet Union but it was usually played at private events—it was seldom allowed to be played in public because it was argued that the lyrics were not about Soviet Jews.[2]
- ^ "Papirosn". web.nli.org.il. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
- ^ a b c d Shternshis, Anna (2006). Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Indiana University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0253218411.
- ^ Adler, Eliyana R. (July 12, 2006). "No Raisins, No Almonds: Singing as Spiritual Resistance to the Holocaust". Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. 24 (4): 50–66. doi:10.1353/sho.2006.0078. ISSN 1534-5165. S2CID 170966198.
- ^ Strom, Yale (2011). The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613740637.
- ^ Jewish Companion Bk Cd. Hal Leonard Corporation. 2002. ISBN 9781928918240.