MY SAY: NIGHTCLUB ZIONISM
When my family first came to New York, in the aftermath of World War 11 ,we went to nightclubs….my parents, my brother Hilel and I. I have the photographs with their covers from the Copacabana and the Latin Quarter and others. They had great brass bands, and Latin American music and dancing, which my parents loved while my brother and I sat embarrassed by their fancy steps. They also had shows and in a hokey example we often heard a Chinese man singing a song in Yiddish. “Wo Soll Ich Geh’n. ” Translation: “Tell Me Where Shall I Go?”
“Where Shall I Go?” was written before WWII by S. Kortnayer & Oscar Strock. Kortnayer, a Yiddish actor and the song’s lyricist, died in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. There were devastating words.
“Where to go, where to go, Every door is closed to me. To the left, to the right It’s the same in every land. There is nowhere to go And it’s me who should know Won’t you please understand.”
A second verse was added by Lazarus ‘Leo’ Fuld a popular Dutch singer who specialized in Yiddish songs in 1948.
“Now I know where to go. Where my folks proudly stand. Where to go, where to go. To that precious promised land.I am proud, can’t you see. For at last I am free.No more wandering for me.”
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