The contemporary dawning of Hebrew song can be traced to the last decades of the nineteenth century, when Jewish poets in Europe began to write Hebrew poetry. However, with new Hebrew educational systems being established in the cities and moshavot in Eretz Yisrael during the first quarter of the twentieth century – a time that spanned the Second (1904-1914) and Third Aliyah (1919-1923) – many teachers discovered, much to their dismay, that there were virtually no Hebrew songs appropriate for kindergarten and early childhood students.
The songs taught in schools at the time were primarily songs imported from the Diaspora, which were deemed no longer suitable because they were sung in a foreign language, rather than the reborn Hebrew language that was becoming the language of the Yishuv, and because they failed to promote Zionism and the love of Eretz Yisrael to the children. In response, some of the teachers began to develop a repertoire of shirei Eretz Yisrael (“the songs of the Land of Israel”), prominent among them Levin Kipnis (1894?-1990), who was known as “the King of the Children” and “The Father of Children’s Hebrew Literature.”
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Kipnis’s work, which included poetry, songs, fairytales, riddles, and stories, influenced the perception of generations of Jewish children about the chagim, with his holiday stories usually set in a beautiful utopian Eretz Yisrael and evoking Zionist sentimentalities. The prolific author published over 100 children’s books, 800 stories, 600 poems, and many songs, often incorporating scripture. Much of his work, characterized by a light and happy artistic style and beloved by children everywhere, has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, and English. He was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in 1978 for “devoting his life to the development of children’s literature in Hebrew.”
Portrait of Kipnis and his first-born son.
In the early 1950s, Kipnis began writing in Yiddish for various publications, including Kinder-tsaytung (“Children’s newspaper”) in New York and Yisrael Shtime (“Voice of Israel”) in Tel Aviv, but he published only one volume of Yiddish holiday tales, Untern taytlboym (“Under the Date Palm,” 1961). He also translated several works from other languages into Hebrew, including works by Tolstoy, Gorky, Gibran, and Hugo.
Kipnis was a leading pioneer of the Diaspora-negating Zionist narrative and one of its most active proponents, and much of his work was purposely designed to replace Diasporan poems, stories, narratives, culture and traditions. Nonetheless, in a radical move for his time and place, he strove to engender his readers’ empathy by including non-Zionist Jews and portraying them sympathetically. Particularly at the dawn of World War II and the eve of the Holocaust, Kipnis sought to set aside divisive national and political ideologies that were being promoted by contemporary Jewish children’s literature in favor of promoting Jewish solidarity.
Kipnis communicated regularly with teachers throughout Eretz Yisrael, who served as his “proving ground” to test out his work in the field, and his success is evident given that so many of his poems and songs are still sung more than a century after they were written. However, although many people are familiar with his work, few are aware that he is the author of many of these familiar Israeli songs, including particularly classic children’s songs for the chagim (Chanukah, Purim, Pesach, and Shavuot). He is credited with not only laying the foundation for Israeli children’s literature, but also for having a formative influence on the way in which Jewish festival traditions have been taught to children throughout the elementary education system in Eretz Yisrael and Israel for over a century.
For example, consider three Chanukah songs by Kipnis:
Chanukah, Chanukah, chag ya’feh kol kach, Or chaviv, misaviv, gil leyeled rach. Chanukah, Chanukah, sevivon sov sov, Sov sov sov, mah na’im vatov!
Chanukah, Chanukah, such a nice holiday,
pleasant light all around, for a child of tender age.
Chanukah, Chanukah, spin, dreidel, spin,
Spin, spin, spin, how pleasant and good!
Second:
Mi zeh hidlik nerot dakim, kakochavim baron? Yod’im gam tinokot rakim, ki Chanukah hayom. Kol ner aliz, kol ner chaviv, dolek romez notzets, hatinokot omdim saviv, v’lasimha en ketz
Who is it who lights the delicate candles, like stars from above?
Even babes in arms are aware, that today is Chanukah.
Every happy candle, every dear candle, burns and winks and sparkles,
the children stand around, and their joy is boundless.
Like other Chanukah songs with lyrics or music originating in Eretz Yisrael, the broad dissemination of Chanukah, Chanukah and Mi ze hidlik in the United States as children’s songs well before Israel’s birth as a Jewish state evidences the Zionist-oriented Hebrew cultural influence in the United States that often flourished separately from the political cause of the Zionist movement. Outside of specifically Zionist circles in the United States, few people, if any, were even aware of the origin or association of these songs as they sang them.
Third, yet another instantly recognizable children’s Chanukah song by Kipnis:
Sevivon, sov sov sov, Chanukah hu chag tov Nes gadol haya po/sham…
Dreidel, spin spin spin, Chanukah is a good holiday
A great miracle took place here/there.
S’vivon, Sov, Sov, Sov has become one of the best-known Chanukah songs in Israel and throughout the Diaspora, despite it having two sets of lyrics (one for within Eretz Yisrael, one for outside Israel). Kipnis not only wrote the original text, but he also set it to an anonymous folk melody. The song appears in the collection titled Machrozet (“The String”), published by Omanut in Frankfurt am Main in 1923.
These two well-known Purim songs were also written by Kipnis:
Chag Purim, Chag Purim, Chag gadol hu layehudim! Masechit, raashanim, shir v’rikudim! Hava narisha, rash, rash, rash, barashnim.
Purim, Purim, is a great holiday to the Jews!
Masks and noisemakers, song and dance.
Come, let us make noise, rash, rash, rash, with the graggers.
Soon after its publication, Chag Purim spread worldwide and it appeared in the United States in 1928 in a collection edited by Harry Coopersmith and in Germany in the Zionist songsters Shirei Erez Yisrael. The song became one of the seminal canonical staples of the Purim song repertoire in Israel and the Diaspora, and it is still sung in kindergartens, schools, and Purim festivities every year.
Second (only the first paragraph is cited here):
Ani Purim, ani Purim, sameach umvadeyach. Halo rak pa’am bashana, avo lehitareyach.
La la la – la la
I am Purim, I am Purim, happy and comical.
After all, it’s only once a year that I come to visit.
La la la – la la
In 1929, Kipnis wrote this well-known Shavuot song (only the first paragraph is cited here):
Laden baskets on our shoulders, floral circlets around our heads,
We have come from the edges of the earth, bringing the first fruits,
From Judea and Samaria, from the valley and the Galilee.
Clear a path for us, first fruits we bear,
Beat, beat, beat the drum, blow the flute!
This song, which Kipnis wrote in honor of the decision by the Ministry of Education and the Jewish National Fund to resume the custom of bringing first fruits during Shavuot, was based upon the famous Mishna dealing with Bikkurim (First Fruit, Chapter 3). Moreover, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the poem had strong political Zionist undertones; note the verse “From Judea and Samaria” at a time when those regions were outside the armistice line border between Israel and Jordan.
We could easily go on citing Kipnis songs for hundreds of pages but, as a final example known to generations of Jewish children, consider this famous Tu B’Shevat song (again, only the first paragraph is cited here):
Hashkediyah porachat, v’shemesh paz zorachat, Tziporim merosh kol gag, mevasrot et bo hachag. Tu B’Shevat higiya, chag la’ilanot.
The almond tree is blooming, and the golden sun is rising,
Birds atop every roof, herald the coming holiday.
Tu B’Shevat has arrived, the festival of trees.
While Tu B’Shevat is, according to the Talmud (Tractate Rosh Hashana), the new year for all trees, the festival has become particularly associated with the almond tree. Noting that that the original Hebrew word for almond tree was “shaked,” the Hebrew Language Academy credited Kipnis with coining the word shkediya in 1919, thereby facilitating a linguistic distinction between an almond (shaked) and an almond tree (shekediya).
According to one oft-told story, perhaps apocryphal, the young Kipnis began writing his Jewish holiday songs when, on his way to his art studies at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem, he walked past a kindergarten and was asked by the teacher to write a Chanukah song and, when his effort proved enormously successful, he was asked to write songs for all the Jewish festivals. His songs were immediately adopted by kindergarten teachers and sung by children all through Eretz Yisrael and, after periodically publishing some of them, he gathered them in Maharozet (1923), which he published in Germany during his short stay there.
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In 1923, Kipnis wrote the text for Alef-Bet, which became one of the most beloved and beautifully illustrated and produced “alphabet books” and is considered by many critics to be the most magnificent children’s book ever published. Published in Berlin because Eretz Yisrael then lacked the facilities necessary to produce such a fine illustrated book, he structured it with small alliterative rhyming poems accompanying each Hebrew letter, which was gilded with detailed illustration of items starting with the same featured letter. For example, the letter “mem” was shown with a menorah, which begins with that letter (see exhibit).
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The book’s striking and brilliant graphics are by Zeev Raban, a leading painter, decorative artist and industrial designer of the Bezalel School in Jerusalem and one of Eretz Yisrael’s most renowned artists. Kipnis and Raban, both passionate Zionists, infused Alef-Beit with Israeli iconography such as camels, palm trees, and pomegranates and they encouraged readers to make aliyah.
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Kipnis and Raban also combined to create Chageinu (“Our Holidays,” 1928), a beautiful book that includes fourteen richly-colored plates featuring gorgeous color illustrations of the various Jewish holidays with accompanying text by Kipnis. As a sample, exhibited here is a Raban’s Lag B’Omer plate accompanied by Kipnis’s text (only the first paragraph is cited here):
Our bows are on our shoulders,
our flags are raised in hand!
To our beloved forest,
we will go big and small.
Today is Lag B’Omer!
In this December 31, 1989, correspondence to singer, pianist, and choral conductor Ora Zitner, Kipnis writes instructions regarding Zitner’s orchestration of various songs, which he would like to hear as soon as possible. These include The Drinking Fish, The Stranger, The Stork, The Girl and the Doves, The Bird Nest, The Chirping Bird in the Forest, Bow and Arrow (for Lag B’Omer), etc.
In the final paragraph, he further advises that “The book Chageinu, all fourteen poems composed in this work, have been set to music through different composers – it is desirable to perform them at different occasions.”
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Exhibited here is The Flag of Israel, a very rare original handwritten poem by Kipnis that evidences his Zionist sensibilities and, much like Dr. Seuss’s doggerel for English-reading children, manifests a unique ability to communicate with Hebrew-speaking children:
This is the day on which Israel was victorious,
to it we will sing a song of praise!
This is the day on which we will celebrate and be joyous,
white fabric we will cut.
Like this, like this, like this, in this manner,
white fabric we will cut,
a flag for freedom’s flag!
All that we have here,
will sing today!
For all the industrious and those who crave it,
a blue thread to be woven.
Like this, like this, like this, in this manner,
a blue thread will be woven,
a flag for peace!
Whoever knows how to fix,
he will insert a stick,
smooth and shiny as a tooth, beautiful for praise.
Like this, like this, like this, in this manner,
beautiful for praise –
the flag of Israel.
Born in a flimsy shack in Ushomyr (then part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire and now part of Ukraine) to a family of ten children, Kipnis’s father, Pesach, was a cantor and community leader who sent him to study in a local cheder. Resisting the strict discipline of the cheder system, the young Kipnis displayed an early passion for the arts, particularly painting and woodcarving. His father, who saw his son’s artistic potential but sought to keep him within the strict Orthodox fold, encouraged him to learn Hebrew calligraphy and to become a sofer stam (a religious scribe), and the boy wrote mezuzot to help supplement his family’s income.
Shortly after his bar mitzvah, Kipnis read Harachim (“the flowers”), a Hebrew children’s magazine and, determined to become a writer, he submitted one of his stories, The Sick Child, which the magazine published in 1910. He also wrote, illustrated and produced Perakhei Levi, his own magazine. After completing his education in Warsaw, he returned to his hometown and founded a Cheder Metukan (an “improved cheder”), established a Hebrew library, and wrote and directed various plays. In 1913, he made aliyah and studied art at the famed Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
Concerned about the lack of substantive materials for young Jewish children in Eretz Yisrael, he began a lifelong dedication to the education of Jewish youth through his poetry and songs, beginning with his establishment of the “Little Library for Children” publisher in Yaffo. This remarkable output was generated while simultaneously performing forced agricultural labor for the Ottoman military during World War I. In 1918, after the war, he founded the influential journal Gilyonot Leganeot (“Pages for Kindergarten Teachers”), in which he regularly published stories and songs, and he taught Jewish Yemenite children in Chadera before accepting Bezalel’s invitation to return to Jerusalem to write and edit content for preschoolers. He published his first Hebrew children’s book, Chanukah: Children’s Books of the Histadrut, in 1920; published story and song collections for children; and published Ganeinu (“our kindergarten or, literally, “our garden”), the first magazine for Hebrew preschool teachers.
After managing an orphanage in Safed in 1921, Kipnis traveled to Berlin for advanced studies in art and craftsmanship and published three books in German before returning to Eretz Yisrael in 1923 to commence teaching at the Levinsky Teacher’s College in Tel Aviv, where he also wrote educational materials for teachers. He maintained a lifelong professional relationship with the Levinsky College, which is the repository of his archive.
In 1924, Kipnis married Miriam Lubman, the daughter of Zeev Jabotinsky’s brother, Dov Hoz, who was one of the founders of the Haganah and a pioneer in Israel aviation. The couple and their two children lived in Tel Aviv for about ten years before building a house in Rishon LeZion but, after Miriam’s death in 1935 from pneumonia, Kipnis moved back to Tel Aviv, where he married Deborah Kresnov, a kindergarten teacher, and had two more children.
In 1928, Kipnis founded a children’s theater in Tel Aviv, which became known as Teatron Hagananot (“the preschool-teacher theater”). He managed the theatre for 25 years, producing numerous plays and stories while continuing his prodigious production of children’s literature. His stories are far too voluminous to facilitate any meaningful discussion in these pages and, as such, I have focused my attention in this article on some of his better-known poems and songs. Nevertheless, the interested Hebrew reader will find it most illuminating to read some of these excellent stories – and to read them to his or her children!
Before his one hundredth birthday, Kipnis modestly looked back on his long life as one of unearned privilege:
Headstone of Devorah and Levin Kipnis.
I was privileged enough to plant trees in Israeli soil. I was privileged enough to see Israeli children bring first fruit while singing: Saleinu al Ktefeinu [see above]. I was privileged enough to write books for children and infants… I was privileged, I was privileged, and I have been privileged.
This 1995 stamp issued in honor of Kipnis by the Israeli Postal Authority features the author’s Father’s Big Umbrella: “The rain is pouring down, the rain is torrential, who will get wet under the umbrella?”
In 1982, Kipnis’s family had established the Levin Kipnis Center for Education at Tel Aviv University dedicated to children’s literature and serving researchers, students, teachers, and literature enthusiasts and providing access to archival collections and research material. A collection of essays examining Kipnis’s influence on Hebrew children’s literature was published under Iyyunim bi-Yẓirat Levin Kipnis in 1982.
Kipnis was buried at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in northern Tel Aviv, and streets are named after this important, but largely unknown, writer and poet, in Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva.
In this December 31, 1989, correspondence to singer, pianist, and choral conductor Ora Zitner, Kipnis writes instructions regarding Zitner’s orchestration of various songs, which he would like to hear as soon as possible. These include The Drinking Fish, The Stranger, The Stork, The Girl and the Doves, The Bird Nest, The Chirping Bird in the Forest, Bow and Arrow (for Lag B’Omer), etc.
