Yiddish Veršes — a musical journey into the lost poetic heritage of Belarus

Seven Belarusian musicians revive Yiddish poetry in a genre-bending compilation.

29.05.2025

release

Yiddish Veršes is a new music album that breathes life into the nearly forgotten poetry of Jewish authors from Belarus who wrote in Yiddish during the first half of the 20th century. Seven contemporary Belarusian musicians reimagine these texts as original tracks, blending genres like dreamy dub, ambient electronics, art rock, and rap.

Initiated by the Belarusian-Jewish Cultural Heritage Center in collaboration with Radio Plato, the project seeks to uncover a layer of Belarusian cultural history that was silenced for decades. It’s not about reconstructing the past — it’s about letting the past speak in the present.

The compilation features interpretations of poems by Leyb Naydus, Moyshe Kulbak, Izi Kharyk, and Avrom Reyzen — poets whose names are barely known today, and whose language, Yiddish, has largely vanished from everyday life. These works, once marginalized, now find new resonance through music.

The participating artists — Palina, Tok Rukoo, KOOB, WTBSK, Syndrom Samazvanca, Lightowy, and Anastasia Rydlevskaya — each took a personal approach to their chosen poem. Their creative journeys were captured in video diaries that became the foundation for a visual campaign on Instagram, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how the music was born.

The project is guided by expert input from Mikhail Krutikov, Professor of Slavic and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, and Siarhei Shupa, a Prague-based linguist and Yiddish translator.

Yiddish Veršes will be presented live in Vilnius on June 13 as part of the Culture Night Festival, featuring performances by several of the album’s artists.

The title of the project, Yiddish Veršes, deliberately includes the letter “š” — a subtle visual and phonetic nod to both the Lithuanian alphabet and Belarusian Latin script. It highlights the deep-rooted connection between the poets and the region where they lived, wrote, and dreamed.