Dona, dona

After immigrating to America in 1908, Sholom Secunda (1894-1974) composed for the Yiddish theater. Many of his songs – like Bay mir bistu sheyn and Dona, dona, which he wrote in 1940 with fellow immigrant Aaron Zeitlen (1898-1973) for Zeitlen’s play Esterke – became part of American popular culture.

In a wagon lies a crying calf bound securely with a rope. In the heavens flies a swallow, full of song and full of hope. “Hush,” says the farmer, “No one told you to be a calf. You could be that bird up yonder, free to fly and free to laugh." Calves are bound and dragged to slaughter without hope that they might be saved; birds are free to fly unfettered, never to become enslaved.