Helfman, Max
Title |
Time |
Play |
| Di naye hagode | 42:40 | ▼ |
| Narration | 01:40 | |
| Ma nishtano - The Exodus | 05:12 | |
| Gebensht - Chorale | 01:08 | |
| Riboino shel oilom | 03:50 | |
| Narration | 00:21 | |
| Linder april - A mild April | 03:44 | |
| Vet kumen? (Will He Come?) | 01:09 | |
| Vet kumen? (continued) | 01:09 | |
| Narration | 00:14 | |
| Un oib s'vet nor a minyen farblaiben | 01:55 | |
| Di shlacht - The Battle | 00:34 | |
| Zei zenen gekumen - They Came | 04:23 | |
| Narration | 00:31 | |
| Dos Yingle (The Boy) | 02:12 | |
| Narration | 00:26 | |
| Di fon - The Banner | 04:04 | |
| Der Toyt | 04:32 | |
| Narration | 00:24 | |
| Shfoykh khamoskho | 01:52 | |
| Narration | 00:27 | |
| Rum un gevure | 02:29 | |
| Narration | 00:31 | |
| Aza der gebotiz | 04:53 | |
| Ḥag habikkurim | 14:21 | ▼ |
| I. El Hakfar | 02:19 | |
| II. Uru Ahim | 03:04 | |
| III. Salleinu Al K'tefeinu | 01:06 | |
| IV. Atzei Zeitim Omdim | 01:36 | |
| V. Shirat Hashomer (Holem tsa'adi) | 02:21 | |
| VI. Bagalil (Alei giva) | 02:15 | |
| VII. Hazzor'im B'dim'a | 00:33 | |
| VIII. Shir Lanamal | 01:50 | |
| IX. El Hafkar | 02:23 | |
| The Holy Ark (Excerpts for CD Max Helfman) | 12:16 | ▼ |
| Vay'hi Binso'a | 01:31 | |
| Barukh Shennatan Torah | 00:37 | |
| Adonai, Adonai | 04:59 | |
| Va'ani T'fillati | 01:10 | |
| Ki Lekaḥ Tov / Etz ḥayyim / Hashiveinu | 03:57 |
Di Naye Hagode - Ḥag habikkurim - The Holy Ark
Heroic Jewish resistance to German barbarity during the Holocaust was indelibly manifested in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Facing imminent deportation to death camps and preferring, if necessary, to die with dignity in battle, thousands of Jews rose up in armed defiance of their tormentors. Their fierce but doomed struggle—against unimaginable horrors and overwhelming odds—began during Passover, the Festival on which Jews recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt through a canonized narrative, or haggada. After the war, American composer Max Helfman, a legendary champion of Jewish music, immortalized the uprising in his dramatic choral tone poem Di Naye Hagode (The New Haggada), based on Itzik Fefer's epic Yiddish poem The Shadows of the Warsaw Ghetto. For Fefer, who was murdered in Stalin's postwar terror against Soviet Jewry, both Germany's genocide and the episodes of armed Jewish response had become the Jewish people's new, central, and most relevant narrative. Like the Passover haggada, this story must be told and retold, lest a single Jew of the Warsaw Ghetto ever be forgotten. Fefer's poem conveys modern Jewish determination to resist and to remember, and that resolve—to remember forever— is underscored by Helfman's powerful music. Di Naye Hagode is presented here in its world premiere recording.
Reviews and Recognitions:
"Di Naye Hagode is clearly a major work: heartfelt, intelligently crafted and powerful..." —David Mermelstein, The Forward
"Another stride forward in documenting American Jewish music." —Rob Barnett, MusicWeb.uk.net
"...dramatic, compelling, insistent music.... Like the best of American music, it mixes, melds and brings together disparate elements, managing to retain the flavor of each, while combining them to create something completely new.... Bravo, once again, to the Milken Archive for discovering, preserving and presenting this music to all of us." —Sandor Slomovits, Washtenaw Jewish News