How a family on Mila Street sang through the destruction of everything they owned, and why the music outlived the men who came for them.

Before the ghetto, before the trains, before Warsaw became a word we say in a lowered voice, there was a table at number 18 Mila Street. And around that table, a family that sang.

The song was “Chiribim Chiribom.” If you have never heard it, the sheet music tells you almost everything you need to know. Where a composer would normally write andante or allegro, the tempo marking on this arrangement simply reads “Cheery-bimily.” It is a playful thing, mostly nonsense syllables, a tune built for clapping and stamping and knocking on the table.

A song with no purpose in the world except joy. That, it turns out, is the whole point.

A song with no purpose in the world except joy. That, it turns out, is the whole point.

Edna was a small girl then, the sixth of eight children. Decades later she could still see the room.

“One playful Yiddish song I adored and will forever cherish is ‘Chiribim Chiribom,’” she said. “We would sing it after dinner, knocking rhythmically on the table, filling the night with laughter.”

Her mother was a trained soprano, the daughter of a rabbi. Her father played the violin. Her brother Mordecai sat at the piano. Every evening after dinner, in an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows over the street, they made music until the children fell asleep. It is the most ordinary scene imaginable. That is exactly why it matters.

Notice one detail Edna slips in almost without comment. In her house, she wrote, Yiddish “was........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)