"Where can I go?" Yiddish song Steve Lawrence



From the Youtube description:

Where can I go? Lyrics:

1949
Performer Leo Fuld
Title Where can I go
Lyrictext
Wi ahin Zol ich Gein?
Wer can entfern mir
Wi ahin Zol ich Gein?
Fur es sloss jeder tuhr
Siehe auf links, siehe auf rechts
Au te soll im jedem Land
As wi ahin Zol ich Gein?


Tell me, where can I go?
There's no place I can see.
Where to go, where to go?
Every door is closed for 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?
Now I know where to go,
Where my folk proudly stand.
Let me go, let me go
To that precious promised land.
No more left no more right.
Lift your head and see the light.
I am proud, can't you see,
For at last I am free:
No more wandering for me.

A memory from the internet:
"There is a song -- and a question -- that haunts me from childhood: 'Vi Ahin Soll Ich Geh'n?' ('Where Can I Go?'). Some time in the 1940s (probably around 1948 when the State of Israel came into existence) Leo Fuld, the 'King of Yiddish Music', recorded the song in Yiddish and English. We frequently played the record, an old 78 rpm, at our North London home. My mother would sing it with feeling, as if its questions were hers and its answer an answer to her prayers. To the best of my (and her) recollection, the English version of the first verse was as follows: Tell me, Where can I go? There's no place I can see.

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?


Even without the soulful melody, these despairing words ring in my ears; when sung they go straight to the heart. As a young child, the first verse seemed to me as melancholy as Kol Nidre -- the solemn supplication that opens the evening service on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement -- but less obscure. Here was a person in a nightmare: lost, shut out, cut off, set apart, a voice crying in the wilderness. I was a child and I understood crying. I understood lost as well. 'Won't you please understand?' Oh, but I did, to the core. But where to go, where to go? The song itself supplies the answer, expressed in the jubilant second verse: Now I know where to go, Where my folk proudly stand. Let me go, let me go To that precious promised land. No more left no more right. Lift your head and see the light. I am proud, can't you see, For at last I am free: No more wandering for me