Though (Khotsh)
Lyrics by: Zelik Barditshever
Composer: Zelik Barditshever
Language: Yiddish
Recorded by Ben Stonehill, Hotel Marseilles, New York, summer 1948
The song was written by Zelik Barditshever (1898–1937), an itinerant teacher, poet, and playwright from Belts, Bessarabia (present-day Bălți, Moldava). Collected by the Yiddish writer Leibu Levin, it first appeared in a volume of Barditshever’s works published in Czernowitz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) in 1939.
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Lyrics in English
What are you singing? What is this song called?
“Khotsh” (Though).
Very good.
Though I have no home, no land to live in,
The whole world hunts me, yet I don’t give in.
I live. Oh, I live.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I live. Oh, I live.
Though I have no feet, no hands, no part of me intact,
Yet I want to wildly dance.
I dance. Oh, I dance.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I dance. Oh, I dance.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I dance.
Though I have no voice left, no way to make a sound,
Yet I want to wildly sing.
So I sing. Oh, I sing.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I sing. Oh, I sing.
And so I live!