Nightingale Behind the Iron Curtains

 Nehama Lifschitz

By Zanna Linskaia

She was often called “The Jewish Nightingale” for her beautiful soprano voice, the voice of the “silent Jews” who were denied the right to learn or speak their own language and who longed to emigrate to Israel. Her songs in Yiddish and Hebrew became symbols of hope, identity, and the revival of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. Her name was Nehama Lifschitz.

Born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1927 to a Zionist Jewish family with a rich intellectual and artistic lifestyle, Nehama grew up singing Yiddish songs. She studied music at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Kaunas. When the Nazis invaded, her family fled to Uzbekistan. After returning to Kaunas in 1946, they discovered that none of their relatives or friends who had remained in Lithuania had survived the ghettos.

She later studied at the Vilnius Conservatory and, after graduating, was invited to perform as a soloist at the Kaunas Opera, also appearing with the Vilnius Philharmonic Orchestra.

Her first solo concert in 1956 included, alongside classical music, works by Jewish composers Lev Pulver, Lev Kogan, Shmuel Senderei, who had just returned from the Gulag, and Vladimir Shainsky. It was a dangerous artistic choice because Jewish culture was heavily restricted under the Soviet regime.

In 1958 Nehama Lifschitz won first prize in a major Moscow competition and toured throughout the USSR and Europe as a Yiddish folk singer.

Her concerts drew enormous Jewish audiences, and she became an icon for Soviet Jewry, expressing through her music their longing for a homeland. At one concert she performed several Hebrew songs, which were forbidden by the authorities. Afterward she was surrounded by widows and children of Jewish writers and actors executed under Stalin. They told her, “Keep singing in the name of our fallen fathers and husbands.” She never forgot that moment.

In March 1959 UNESCO celebrated the 100th birthday of Sholom Aleichem. Nehama was included in the Soviet delegation to perform in Paris, where the USSR hoped to show the world that there was no antisemitism under communism. Her triumph at the Olympia was undeniable.

She was later permitted to tour Strasbourg, Paris and Brussels, but at home the authorities demanded she add Russian patriotic songs to her repertoire. During this time Nehama secretly collaborated with the Israeli embassy in Moscow, passing along the names of Jewish dissidents and “refuseniks” who wished to emigrate to Israel and were under KGB surveillance or arrest.

I remember attending one of her concerts. My cousin took me to the Moscow Choral Synagogue. Tickets sold out within hours, and the surrounding streets were filled with people, even young people who did not know Yiddish. The hall was packed, people stood in the aisles and on the balcony. It was more than a performance by a great artist, it was an encounter with the heart and soul of a woman who kept Jewish culture alive under a totalitarian regime. She stood on stage in a black dress, draped in a striped white and black scarf like a tallit. When she sang “Lullaby to Babi Yar” with lyrics by Yiddish poet Shike Driz, the hall fell silent. Then people began to cry, and the standing ovation seemed endless. Nehama cried too.

Soon after, Soviet authorities began banning her concerts. Her last performance in the USSR was in Moscow in 1967, just before the Six-Day War. In 1969 she and her family received exit visas and emigrated to Israel. Her arrival became a national event. Concert halls in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were filled to capacity, and her first sold‑out concert was attended by Prime Minister Golda Meir. She received numerous prestigious awards for her contribution to Jewish culture.

After 1990 the legendary singer returned to Vilnius to perform and to open the Vilnius Gaon Museum of Jewish Heritage. In Israel she established master classes and workshops for young singers devoted to Yiddish song and poetry. Nehama Lifschitz opened a window for them into a beautiful Jewish world that must not disappear. Every year on August 12, the day when 13 members of the Jewish Anti‑Fascist Committee were executed by Stalin, she held memorial concerts in Jerusalem.

She passed away in April 2017, just before her 90th birthday. The “Jewish Nightingale” often said, “I have nothing to regret. I had a very interesting life.”

PS: You can watch her perform “A Nigundel” (Yiddish song) on YouTube. The song “A Nigundel” is a Yiddish folk song performed by Nehama Lifschitz YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa3l1xlC-58