Transformation of Ukrainian Folk Songs in Hasidic Folklore Culture: The Song “Rose, Rose, how far away are you” / Nigun “Rojs, Kojs, Wi Wajt Bisstu?” (On the Occasion of a Centenary of the Jewish Culture Department of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences)

Author

Shevchuk Tetiana

a Ph.D. in Philology, a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4856-4430

Transformation of Ukrainian Folk Songs in Hasidic Folklore Culture:
The Song “Rose, Rose, how far away are you” / Nigun “Rojs, Kojs, Wi Wajt Bisstu?”
(On the Occasion of a Centenary of the Jewish Culture Department
of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

The influence of Ukrainian folklore on the Hasidic religious repertoire is investigated in the article exemplified by the song (nigun) «Rojs, kojs, wi wajt bisstu?». The nigun (a religious song or melody) has constituted an important component of the traditional musical culture of Eastern European Jews; however, it has not been thoroughly analyzed from the perspective of the Ukrainian cultural context yet. The article is an attempt to address several fundamental questions formulated by scholars within the Ukrainian–Israeli research project «Hasidic Nigun in the Right-Bank Ukraine and Eastern Galicia: Between Indigenous and Influx Sound Landscapes» (M. Lukin, Ya. Mazor, E. Seroussi, O. Kolomiiets). The focus lies on the modes of functioning of the nigun «Rojs, kojs, wi wajt bisstu?» in Hasidic practice. Various versions of its origin are discussed, along with hypotheses concerning the Ukrainian ethnographic regions where the nigun may have emerged (Podillia, Lemkivshchyna). The methodological framework of the study is informed by the concept of cultural configurations proposed by American anthropologists in the early twentieth century. Borrowing from other cultures and adapting their elements to one’s own value systems is considered to be one of the mechanisms underlying changes in cultural configuration. This process is clearly demonstrated by the history of the nigun «Rojs, kojs, wi wajt bisstu?». Its Ukrainian folkloric basis has been noted by prominent performers and researchers, including Menachem Kipnis, Moisei (Moshe) Beregovsky, Liudmyla Sholokhova. Authorship of the song is attributed to various Hasidic tzaddikim: Leib Sarah (Sores, Leib Sarah’s, 1730–1791, Podillia), Yitzchak Isaak Taub (1744–1821, Hungary, Nagykálló), and Menachem Mendel (1745–1815, Rymanów, Poland) ^[1]. Notably, Jewish legends associated with these spiritual leaders have been published by the philosopher and writer Martin Buber (1878–1965, Hasidic Tales: Later Masters). A shared motif in these legends is the figure of the shepherd as a metaphor for the spiritual guide. In most oral narratives, the tzaddik adopts the Ukrainian shepherd’s song «Rose, Rose, how far away You are» and radically transforms it in accordance with Jewish religious values. The Ukrainian folkloric foundation of the nigun, reworked in a Hasidic mode, acquires mystical meanings: the rose (either the flower or the beloved Rosa) becomes associatively linked with the Shekhinah – the Divine Presence – while the forest symbolizes exile (galut). Analysis of the nigun’s text in the context of Hasidic oral prose and Ukrainian rose-themed folk songs leads to the conclusion that Jewish mystical worldview was shaped not only by Kabbalistic, Persian, and Neo-Greek sources, but also by Ukrainian folklore. The central idea of the distancing of the Shekhinah from people, articulated in «Rojs, kojs, wi wajt bisstu?», finds resonance in the poetry of Paul Celan (the collection Die Niemandsrose (The Nobody’s Roses)), often interpreted as a mystical prefiguration of the Holocaust. The nigun remains popular among Jewish communities in Israel, Western Europe, and the United States, as evidenced by the online Yiddish song anthology compiled by Eleanor Hana Mlotek and Yosl Mlotek, Songs of Generations: New Pearls of Yiddish Song.

^[1] The names of tzaddik are spelled differently in various sources, for example: Leib Sores, Leib Sures, Leib Sara.

Keywords

Ukrainian folklore; nigun; Hasidic legends; mysticism.

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