Eliakum Zunser
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Eliakum Zunser (Eliakim Badchen, Elikum Tsunzer) (October 28, 1840 – September 22, 1913) was a
Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
n
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ish
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-language poet, songwriter, and ''
badchen A ''badchen'' or ''badkhn'' (, pronounced and sometimes written batkhn) is a type of Ashkenazic Jewish professional wedding entertainer, poet, sacred clown, and master of ceremonies originating in Eastern Europe, with a history dating back to at ...
'' who lived out the last part of his life in the
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A 1905 article in ''
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'' lauded him as "the father of Yiddish poetry". About a quarter of his roughly 600 songs survive. He influenced and was influenced by Brody singer
Velvel Zbarzher Velvel Zbarjer (1824, Zbarazh – 1884), birth name Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkrantz (a.k.a. Velvl Zbarjer, Zbarjur, Zbarzher, etc.), a Galicia (Central Europe), Galician Jew, was a Brody singer. Following in the footsteps of Berl Broder, his "mini ...
, although it is not believed that they ever met. Born in
Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
, he grew up poor and first worked braiding
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in
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, where he was associated with the devout, moralistic Musar movement of
Rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...
Israel Salanter Yisrael ben Ze'ev Wolf Lipkin, also known as "Israel Salanter" or "Yisroel Salanter" (November 3, 1809 – February 2, 1883), was the father of the Musar movement in Orthodox Judaism and a famed Rosh yeshiva and Talmudist. The epithet ''Salante ...
. Later, he was drawn to the
Haskalah The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...
, or Jewish Enlightenment, and adopted a more modern
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that renounced superstition. Forcibly conscripted into the
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Army just before his twentieth birthday, he was soon released due to Czar Alexander II's revocation of the harsh conscription law. The plight of Jewish draftees, or "
cantonist Cantonists (; more properly: , "military cantonists") were underage sons of conscripts in the Russian Empire. From 1721 on they were educated in special "cantonist schools" () for future military service (the schools were called garrison school ...
s" would be a major subject of his early poetry and songs. Sol Liptzin describes Zunser's songs as having "simple words and catchy tunes", singing of the "melancholy fate and few joys of the inarticulate masses" and writes that "his songs spread by word of mouth... until all Yiddish-speaking Jews were familiar with them". iptzin, 1972, 48 In 1861 he published a booklet of songs entitled ''Shirim Khadoshim'', the first of about 50 publications in his lifetime. At this time, he was, in Liptzin's words, "primarily a Maskil"—a propagator of the Haskalah—"interested in instructing and aiding his people". However, his life took a tragic turn: not only did his wife die of cholera in the next decade, but all of their nine children as well, and he became, again quoting Liptzin, "a prophet of doom, admonishing his co-religionists not to venture too date along the alluring road of western enlightenment and assimilation..." iptzin, 1972, 49When that doom came, in the form of the
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reaction and
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after the assassination of Alexander II, he became again a comforter, as well as a
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, affiliated with the
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and
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pioneers, writing songs such as ''"Die Sokhe"'' ("The Plough") and ''"Shivath Zion"'' ("Homecoming to Zion"). Zunser emigrated to
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in 1889, and worked as a printer. However, life in New York was not conducive to his muse, and he wrote little in the years after his arrival in America, mostly poems rather than songs. ''En route'' to the New World, he wrote the hopeful "Columbus and Washington"; once there, he followed this with the far more disillusioned ''"Dos Goldene Land"'' ("The Golden Land") and ''"Der Greener"'' ("The Greenhorn"). His Zionism continued in a song urging the Jewish people to give up peddling and become farmers. Zunser was saved from penury in his final years by a benefit performance on his behalf held at
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on March 30, 1905, which raised enough money to give him a pension. He died on September 22, 1913, and was buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn.


Works

*''The Works of Elyokum Zunser: A Critical Edition'', in two volumes, edited by Mordkhe Schaechter,
YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...
, 1964.


Notes


References

* Liptzin, Sol, ''A History of Yiddish Literature'', Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, , 47-49, 90. * Liptzin, Sol, "Eliakum Zunser: poet of his people", Behrman House Publ., 1950.


External links

* Free song lyrics in Yiddish and sheet music by Eliakum Zunser http://ulrich-greve.eu/free/zunser.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Zunser, Eliakum 1840 births 1913 deaths Jewish writers from Vilnius People from Vilna Governorate Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian folklorists American folklorists Russian folklorists Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Yiddish-language poets Yiddish-language folklore Badchens Hovevei Zion Yiddish-language singers of Lithuania Yiddish-language singers of the United States