Yelena Shmulenson remarks on Facebook that a highlight of this year's Olympics is "the Russian ice-skating pair's using Ikh Hob Dikh Tsufil Lib in the middle of their routine (even though their music selection says Tchaikovsky)." In fact, on Twitter and Facebook, people from Australia to Israel are asking 'Can that really be the Yiddish song? Maybe it's a Russian folk melody repurposed for the Yiddish stage, like Papirosn?' And those of us who were in the air last night and missed it all are wondering 'What are they all talking about? What happened?'

Well, the actual Olympic routine isn't easily accessible online, but you can check out an earlier version of it right here, and it seems that yes, folks, it really is Yiddish figure-skating time. Heck, they even placed third, vi zey hobn zikh gedreyt un geglitsht afn ayz dort.

Lovely, ain't it? But there's an interesting story behind the song itself, one that most people don't know and probably bears recounting. It had some crossover success in Don Raye's English translation, so who knows where Zabiiako and Enbert got it from--the Barry Sisters, Dean Martin, Helen Forrest, or even Santana!  On the team's set list, they give it as I Love You Much Too Much, by Bob Zurke, but that's not entirely correct. Bob Zurke was indeed the first to record it in English, but he's neither composer nor lyricist (not in Yiddish and not in English), and he certainly didn't cut the recording they use in the act, which is a solo piano.

The original Yiddish song was composed by Alexander Olshanetsky with lyrics by Chaim Tauber, and it was originally sung by Luba Kadison in the 1934 Second Avenue musical Der Katerinshtshik (The Organ Grinder).  Just see the sheet music here:

 

Luba Kadison used to talk about the show, how she was playing a fortune teller in love with a man about to marry someone else, and how she had to express her love for him. Olshanetsky and Tauber presented her with a pretty standard love song that she felt didn't fit her character, so she told them to give her a night to work on it, and she returned the next day with an outline, including the not-often-sung verse, where the fortune teller uses the cards she has laid out to tell of her unrequited love, and how she can't be angry at the man for marrying another woman. And from that outline grew one of the most popular Yiddish theater songs ever. People get song writing credits for a lot less than that, but Luba was happy to have a season of work and her picture on the Yiddish sheet music.

Anyway, there's a little secret history of the Yiddish world. Maybe you'll think of Luba or even tell the story next time you hear Ikh Hob Dikh Tsufil Lib!

mit Yidish-grus,

Shane Baker