Universal human stories from Jewish heritage — adapted by Gogol Prize laureate Olga Anikina. 12 million organic streams in Russian. English next.
We Are Sisters We Are Brothers — English version by Walter J. Kin, adapted from Olga Anikina's 2021 Russian setting of Morris Winchevsky's 1890 Yiddish anthem «Ale Brider». Music: traditional Jewish folk melody. Read the story →
"I'm not Jewish, and I have no Jewish relatives — but it brings a lump to my throat. It touches the soul. You can hardly call this just a song — it holds the history, longing, and hopes of an ancient people. Powerful song. I can't stop listening."
— Aleksandra · 161 likes on YouTube
"In all the years of this beloved, joyful song's history, this is the first time I've encountered such a fine translation and performance in Russian — and I've wanted to hear one for a long time. Bravo."
— Joker1000 · 347 likes on YouTube
"You have a stunning voice. Jewish songs turn the whole soul inside out — I sing along and I cry. The genes respond..."
— Natalya · 149 likes on YouTube
These voices are in Russian. The English versions haven't been written yet.
Olga Anikina's Russian adaptations are the heart of this catalog — twelve million streams of proof that the model works. But carrying her poetry into English at the same artistic level is a separate, unfinished body of work. We are looking for translators, adapters, and lyricists in English who can do for the English-speaking world what Anikina did for the Russian-speaking world. If that is you — or someone you know — please write to walter@jewishsong.org.
The Hero Eight
Each song is a journey — from the original Yiddish or Hebrew, through Olga Anikina's Russian poetry, into modern English. See the full chain of authorship on every page.
More from the catalog
Beyond the hero eight, the catalog holds twenty more adaptations — children's songs, holiday songs, wedding songs, Holocaust testimony, sacred and traditional pieces. Available now to listen, share, and use.
And we want to build sixty more pages like these — the full three-layer journey from Yiddish or Hebrew through Anikina's Russian into modern English, for every song in the catalog and beyond. If we had the funding, the team, and the help. That is the work ahead — and it is what JewishSong.org × Reboot Studios is preparing the ground for.
Beyond adaptations
Adaptation is the heart of the project — but it isn't the whole. We also write originals for the upcoming JEWISH musical.
Why we do this
We don't let these songs sink into oblivion.
Yiddish as a living language is fading — and that we cannot stop.
But we know how to preserve and revive our Jewish songs. We are already doing it — thanks to the literary genius of Olga Anikina and the voice of Elechka.
Russian-speaking people on Earth — and there are more than 250 million of them — got lucky. Now they can listen to and sing Jewish songs in their native language. The voices above are real — three of one thousand four hundred and twelve listeners who wrote to us, mostly without ever meeting one of us.
But what about everyone else?
That is where we come in.
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