This work was commissioned by Red Wierenga in honor of Kate Maroney’s 40th birthday. The text is a birthday greeting from Alexander Harkavy’s 1902 Amerikanisher brifen-shteler (American Letter Writer), a bilingual letter writing manual for Yiddish immigrants. Harkavy’s Yiddish is in a Germanized style that was thought to be elevated in his time. Later Yiddish standardization looked down on this style as an unnatural affectation called daytshmerish. The text used for this song has been gently updated to more standard Yiddish. Thanks to Dovid Braun for assistance in making these updates.
The version used for this song has also been adapted as to be gendered to a female recipient and from a male writer. The genders can be reversed by alternating between fraynd and frayndin (male and female friend), and liber and libe (male and female dear/beloved).
