Oy Vey, Tateh!

Oy vey, Tateh!

When our words fail us we sometimes will hum,
showing our faith through our voices in song.
Perhaps we forget, or the mem'ries aren't strong,
but we offer up praise with a ya b'ba-bum.

Singing these sounds with a trust they become
(on their path to God's ear, be it fleeting or long)
rearranged and transformed from a mess that was wrong
into unrivaled psalms far surpassing their sum.

We use the word tateh as heartfelt we pray
to the almighty "Daddy" who watches and hears.
And then taken by spirit we sing and we sway
as we ya-ba-ba-bum and we try to convey,
past our everyday worries and hunger and fears,
how we savor the blessings that come each new day.




I must say that what little Yiddish I know is only a few phrases and the rough translations of some songs I learned way back in my camp-counselor days. When prompted by Totally Optional Prompts to write a sonnet, and by the Monday Poetry Stretch to write a poem with words from two languages, one particular song came to me.

This song from the Hasidic Jewish tradition begins with the words, "Oy vey, Tateh!" For those who don't know all that the Yiddish expression "oy vey" can mean, I will send you over to Wikipedia. It is "Tateh" I want to introduce you to. This means "Daddy". It is what a little child might use when addressing his father. It is close to the heart.

Yet the song is not something sung to an earthly father. The daddy in the song is God. The Hasidic philosophy includes the idea that prayer should be fervent. It is more important for your feelings, your intent, to be conveyed than for you to "get the words right".

In fact, there are a lot of songs where the words are some variation on "ya-ba-bum" or "bim-bom" or "birri-birri bum." Those are not Yiddish words that mean anything - they are just sounds like tra-la-la or doo-doo-doo. And this song has very few other words, it is mostly ya-ba-bum.

Thanks for reading this mini-essay.