The Nechama Lifshitz Yiddish Song- Workshop — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

The Nechama Lifshitz Yiddish Song- Workshop/By Roza Litai

Nechama Lifshitz established the workshop for the study of Yiddish song and poetry in 1998. The aim of the workshop was not only to teach students how to be proficient in performing the songs, but also, and specifically, to be used as a tool whereby they could pass on to future generations the substance of Jewish history and preserve the heritage that existed over the course of 1,000 years of Yiddish culture. And the preservation of this wondrous legacy with its content of such great significance – a legacy that Hitler tried to utterly destroy physically and Stalin both spiritually and physically, attempting to leave no trace thereof – this is what Nechama wanted to restore and include as an integral part in the revival of Jewish-Israeli culture today.

Nechama did not rest on her laurels… at every stage of the half-year workshop programs, Nechama, with her own efforts, put together a new program and a new topic. This was because she felt a huge responsibility on her shoulders to accomplish as much as she could during her life, to preserve and inspire in order to enrich future generations with this fine culture, one that might well be lost to us, slipping through our fingers unawares… as language evolves and time moves on.

There was so much left for her to do, but she was taken from us, and so was no longer able to continue with this tremendous undertaking, one that is now up to us to take upon ourselves to ensure that we carry on with this mission of preserving and transmitting to future generations, thus maintaining the ideal, the dream and the legacy of Nechama Lifshitz.

We could say that with this final enterprise, the late Nechama Lifshitz left us a solid foundation and an impressive tool that opens a window into the wonderful Jewish cultural world spanning 1,000 years – a world that must not be allowed to disappear!

Let us hope that we will be fortunate enough to realize Nechama’s dream.

To begin undertaking this monumental task, the first thing that must be done is to catalogue all the material Nechama left in her workshop folios in an organized fashion. All the notes and programs of the concerts written and edited by Nechama during the years in question can be found in the Nechama Lifshitz Yiddish Song- Workshop. As her long-time devoted assistant we would like to ask Ms. Regina Dricker, the present director of the workshop, to take upon herself an additional, separate project (for payment): to catalogue and scan the musical notes and programs so that all the material can be used for purposes of study and enrichment, in the unique style of the late Nechama Lifshitz, which I would like to officially name “The Curriculum of Yiddish Song According to the Nechama Lifshitz Method". In addition, I have a large amount of material left by the late Nechama Lifshitz that should also be consolidated into a comprehensive archive of Yiddish song, together with other topics she dealt with.