The Zionist Yiddish song’s title is “Ikh For Aheym” (English translation: “I’m going home”). There is an English-subtitled video of a performance of the song in 2014 by singer Jane Peppler and pianist Roger Spears that includes the chorus and first and fourth of the four stanzas. The words and music were written by David Meyerowitz a.k.a. Meyerovitz (1867-1943), who emigrated from Latvia to New York City in either 1880 or 1890. The lyrics whose translation is the title of Roth’s novella are the first line of the final stanza: “Zay gezunt, Kolumbes.” Translation of some of the other lyrics of this song: “The Exile has ended, and now I’m going back....as my grandfather wanted to do....I don’t want to be a foreigner anymore....I’m not staying anymore at someone or other's place....What have I got to lose?...If you’re talking about girls, you can take my word: All you get here is cute skirts; but real fabric/merchandise is gotten there....Keep drinking ice cream soda; I will drink the wine of Mount Carmel.” The flair, high-hattiness and bite of some of the lyrics—especially, the line that became the title of the novella—would have appealed to Neil Klugman and the very young Philip Roth. We can safely assume that when Roth decided on a title for it, he realized that the percentage of the subscribers to the Paris Review (in which the novella came out in 1958) and the percentage of the readers of any book in which it would later be published who had heard the Yiddish song—which isn't quoted or mentioned in the novella—in 1926 or later and also remembered its fourth stanza would be a very small minority of the novella’s audience. We can safely assume that he expected them to feel privileged or self-congratulatory at the expense of readers the title would perplex.[citation needed]
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The Zionist Yiddish song’s title is “Ikh For Aheym” (English translation: “I’m going home”). There is an English-subtitled video of a performance of the song in 2014 by singer Jane Peppler and pianist Roger Spears that includes the chorus and first and fourth of the four stanzas. The words and music were written by David Meyerowitz a.k.a. Meyerovitz (1867-1943), who emigrated from Latvia to New York City in either 1880 or 1890. The lyrics whose translation is the title of Roth’s novella are the first line of the final stanza: “Zay gezunt, Kolumbes.” Translation of some of the other lyrics of this song: “The Exile has ended, and now I’m going back....as my grandfather wanted to do....I don’t want to be a foreigner anymore....I’m not staying anymore at someone or other's place....What have I got to lose?...If you’re talking about girls, you can take my word: All you get here is cute skirts; but real fabric/merchandise is gotten there....Keep drinking ice cream soda; I will drink the wine of Mount Carmel.” The flair, high-hattiness and bite of some of the lyrics—especially, the line that became the title of the novella—would have appealed to Neil Klugman and the very young Philip Roth. We can safely assume that when Roth decided on a title for it, he realized that the percentage of the subscribers to the Paris Review (in which the novella came out in 1958) and the percentage of the readers of any book in which it would later be published who had heard the Yiddish song—which isn't quoted or mentioned in the novella—in 1926 or later and also remembered its fourth stanza would be a very small minority of the novella’s audience. We can safely assume that he expected them to feel privileged or self-congratulatory at the expense of readers the title would perplex.[citation needed]
The Zionist Yiddish song’s title is “Ikh For Aheym” (English translation: “I’m going home”). There is an English-subtitled video of a performance of the song in 2014 by singer Jane Peppler and pianist Roger Spears that includes the chorus and first and fourth of the four stanzas. The words and music were written by David Meyerowitz a.k.a. Meyerovitz (1867-1943), who emigrated from Latvia to New York City in either 1880 or 1890. The lyrics whose translation is the title of Roth’s novella are the first line of the final stanza: “Zay gezunt, Kolumbes.” Translation of some of the other lyrics of this song: “The Exile has ended, and now I’m going back....as my grandfather wanted to do....I don’t want to be a foreigner anymore....I’m not staying anymore at someone or other's place....What have I got to lose?...If you’re talking about girls, you can take my word: All you get here is cute skirts; but real fabric/merchandise is gotten there....Keep drinking ice cream soda; I will drink the wine of Mount Carmel.” The flair, high-hattiness and bite of some of the lyrics—especially, the line that became the title of the novella—would have appealed to Neil Klugman and the very young Philip Roth. We can safely assume that when Roth decided on a title for it, he realized that the percentage of the subscribers to the Paris Review (in which the novella came out in 1958) and the percentage of the readers of any book in which it would later be published who had heard the Yiddish song—which isn't quoted or mentioned in the novella—in 1926 or later and also remembered its fourth stanza would be a very small minority of the novella’s audience. We can safely assume that he expected them to feel privileged or self-congratulatory at the expense of readers the title would perplex.[citation needed]
