On the Ruins | The Bashevis Singers | International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023

On the Ruins is the fourth piece on the album Kaddish by the Ruins by the Bashevis Singers. The album is a 20-minute all-Yiddish song cycle based on the poems of Aaron Zeitlin, spanning liturgy, theology, music, song, spoken word and commemoration.
The Bashevis Singers are the children of generations of people who lived their lives in Yiddish. Husky Gawenda and his cousin Gideon Preiss are renowned Australian musicians and award winning song-writers. They are the core members of the critically acclaimed band HUSKY. Husky’s sister (and Gideon’s cousin) Evie is a playwright and theatre director who is known and loved for the beauty and warmth of her voice.
When they sing in Yiddish, the past, the present and the future are rendered timeless. In Yiddish, the thousand year old language of the Jews who lived in the shtetls and towns and cities of Eastern Europe. They sing songs of hope and of fear, songs like prayers and songs like arguments with God. Eternal songs. In Yiddish, which the Nobel prize winning Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer described as the language of a frightened and hopeful humanity.
00:00 The Bashevis Singers speak about their work
03:02 On the Ruins
This video was created by the Australian Holocaust Museums Association for International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023.