Did you know the Internet was not actually created in order to drive people insane and make them hate each other? It’s true.
Back in the nineties, most of us thought of the Internet as a bigger, better version of your local library. It was a research tool with the additional perk of email. Plus a few zany websites that you could either chuckle at or ignore.
Nobody thought it would turn into The Machine That Ruined the World. Well, I did, but I say that about every new thing so no one paid attention to me.
Recently I found something that reminded me of why anyone ever thought the Internet was a good idea: the database of Yiddish Penny Songs.
In the olden days, say 1980, if you saw one of these songs mentioned in a book or heard about them from your Grandpa, and you were interested, you’d think, “Maybe I’ll hear one of those someday…” and then years would go by. You might bump into one in the sheet music section of a used book store. That’s nice, but do you understand Yiddish? If not, you won’t get much out of it. You could buy it and hope that someday you’ll meet someone who can sing and translate it for you. But the most likely outcome, unless you get out the phone book and start calling random synagogues to ask if anyone there is (1) able and (2) willing to come to your house to sing a song in Yiddish and translate it for you, is that it will sit around in a box, unsung and uncomprehended.
With the Internet, all it takes is one dedicated scholar to fix that whole problem for everyone. Please visit her website and look at her YouTube playlist where she sings the songs and provides excellent English subtitles, and say to yourself: truly, this is what the Internet is for.