Exploring Brooklyn: Rokhl Kafrissen's Visionary Yiddish Community
Rokhl Kafrissen, a renowned figure in the klezmer scene of New York, has released a heartfelt Yiddish adaptation of Jimmy Buffett's "Come Monday" titled "Kum tsu mir." This new song, produced by the Congress for Jewish Culture, marks Kafrissen's foray into songwriting, adding to her impressive oeuvre of articles and bi-lingual plays.
"Kum tsu mir" is more than just a translation; it's a creative cultural translation that bridges the gap between American and Jewish musical cultures. The relationship between the original and the adaptation lies primarily in how Kafrissen reimagines Buffett's laid-back, English-language beach ballad within the context of Yiddish music.
The song employs the Volokhl and Freygish scales or modal concepts, which have historical and cultural significance in Yiddish music. Volokhl, also known as Ukrainian Dorian or Mishebeirach, a Hebrew prayer for healing, and Freygish, associated with popular melodies such as Avinu Malkeinu or Hava Nagilah, lend a unique flavor to the song.
In "Kum tsu mir," Kafrissen expresses a complex vision of Yiddish as a creative language. The song touches upon themes of nostalgia, satire, women's romantic and erotic experiences, and the importance of Jewish heritage languages and musics. It's intentionally lighthearted yet invokes multiple worlds and makes room for female desires and agency.
The song rewrites the original's gender narrative, presenting a story about a Jewish woman initiating a sexual encounter with her husband on the eve of the Sabbath. This advances Kafrissen's larger project of celebrating Yiddish modernist culture through new creative productivity.
Notable klezmer musicians, including Lorin Sklamberg, Sasha Lurje, and Craig Judelman, feature in the song. "Kum tsu mir" is part of a growing body of recent Yiddish translations of American popular songs, showcasing how universal themes like love and longing can resonate across different languages and cultures.
Kafrissen is critical of American Jews trying to grapple with a traumatic history, stating that they should know they are not alone and that there is an ocean of experience from a century ago in Yiddish art. For a discussion of the gendered language politics of Yiddish, readers can refer to Naomi Seidman's book, "A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish."
Josh Kun's book, "Audiotopia: Music, Race and America," discusses Volokhl and Freygish as Yiddish terms used to describe scales or modal concepts. For further insight into the modes in klezmer music, readers can refer to Josh Horowitz's article, "The Main Klezmer Modes," and Walter Zev Feldman's book, "Klezmer: Music, History and Memory."
Rokhl Kafrissen released "Kum tsu mir" on August 20, 2021. Her body of work includes articles such as "Make Bilingualism Great," "The 'Revival is Over, Let's Talk Continuity," "Yiddish: The Living Language of the Jewish People," and "How the Jewish-American Elite Has Manufactured the Intermarriage 'Crisis.'"
- Rokhl Kafrissen's artistic exploration extends beyond just articles and plays, encompassing fashion-and-beauty through her creative cultural translations, such as the Yiddish adaptation of Jimmy Buffett's "Come Monday."
- In the realm of education-and-self-development, readers interested in gender language politics in Yiddish can refer to Naomi Seidman's book, "A Marriage Made in Heaven."
- For those seeking a deeper understanding of the Volokhl and Freygish scales or modal concepts in music, Josh Kun's book, "Audiotopia: Music, Race and America," and Walter Zev Feldman's book, "Klezmer: Music, History and Memory," are recommended.
