30 | JULY 23 • 2020 

L

ike so many other musical stage 
entertainers sidelined by the pan-
demic, Daniel Kahn has turned to 
YouTube. 
 Kahn, who launched his career while 
growing up in Farmington Hills, has 
developed a video centered on the Yiddish 
song “Mentshn-Fresser” (“Devourer of 
Mankind”), written by Solomon Small 
(Smulewitz) in 1916 to communicate the 
brutal environment brought about by 
tuberculosis. Kahn has revived the song to 
comment on COVID-19.
Kahn, working with a small group of 
singers and musicians, joins the new pre-
sentation with English subtitles and archi-
val film footage. While the clothing can 
be recognized as vintage, the masks come 
across as age-ambiguous.
The recurrence of pandemics and the 

resulting common hardships and tragedies 
are dramatized to go along with the lyrics. 
“Microbes, bacilli, what do you want?” the 
song asks in its refrain, which punctuates 
descriptions of what communicable 
diseases take.
“In making the video, we all are part of 
a community that sees in Yiddish culture, 
music and language a way, not only of 
engaging with the past, but also a way of 
engaging with the present and the future,
” 
said Kahn, who has built a career based in 
Germany. 
“We look to these old songs to better 
understand our world today. There’
s no 
nostalgia in singing this song, but there is 
a respect for the past and fierce yet playful 
engagement with the future.
”
The idea for the video came during a 
Shabbat dinner shared by Kahn (vocals 

DANIEL KAHN

TOP: Sveta Kundish and Daniel Kahn appear in 
the video about pandemics. Each takes off a mask 
when not singing. ABOVE: Original sheet music of 
“Mentshn-Fresser” shows a different spelling.

Arts&Life

music

Yiddish artist repurposes a 1916 Yiddish song
that speaks to today.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

that speaks to today
that speaks to today

Yiddish artist repurposes a 1916 Yiddish song

th t
k t
t d
Pandemic Song

