Working With Het Joodsche Lied Tweede Boek: A Practical Guide
Het Joodsche Lied Tweede Boek is a collection of Dutch-Jewish songs compiled by Louis Ravesteyn and published in the 1930s. It is the second volume in a series documenting Yiddish and Hebrew folk songs as they existed in the Netherlands at the time. The book contains sheet music, lyrics in both Hebrew and Dutch transliteration, and occasional commentary on melody sources. It is not a casual reading book. It is a reference work for musicians and researchers who need accurate transcription of songs that were largely oral before Ravesteyn wrote them down. I ran into this collection when a colleague asked me to source original melodies for a performance piece based on Dutch-Jewish heritage. Most of the songs appear nowhere else in print. The problem is that the notation in the book reflects 1930s editorial choices, not necessarily the way the singers themselves performed them. Ravesteyn standardized rhythm and key in ways that sometimes flatten the actual microtonal shading of the originals.
Where to Find Het Joodsche Lied Tweede Boek
The book is out of copyright and available in several digital formats. The University of Amsterdam's library catalog lists it under its original 1936 publication details. You can access scanned copies through Delpher, the Dutch digital newspapers and periodicals archive, which hosts the full text in high resolution. The Joods Historisch Museum also has digitized copies available through their online reading room. For performers who want printed copies, some used book dealers on Vinted and eBay occasionally list the original edition, usually in Dutch, at reasonable prices since demand is niche. I bought a copy on Marktplaats for fifteen euros a few years ago. Each entry typically follows the same format. You get the title in Hebrew script, a transliteration, the Dutch translation if one exists, the melody written in standard Western notation, and sometimes a brief note about where the song was collected or which community sang it. The musical notation is mostly in common time or compound duple meter, which makes it accessible to anyone who reads standard notation. The range of the melodies usually sits comfortably within an octave, which is practical for choir arrangements. One thing beginners consistently miss is that Ravesteyn sometimes notated the same melody in two different keys across different volumes or even within the same volume. This is not an error in most cases. He was often adjusting for vocal range or instrument compatibility. If you are transposing for a specific ensemble, check whether the key he chose matches your group's voice types before you start rearranging. I spent about forty minutes trying to figure out why a melody kept sounding wrong until I realized he had notated it a step higher than how my baritone section was singing it.
Practical Problems You Will Encounter
The most common issue is that the Hebrew lyrics use pre-reform spelling, which means vowel points and consonant representations do not always map cleanly onto modern Hebrew pronunciation. If you are teaching these songs to singers who only speak modern Hebrew, you need to provide a separate phonetic guide. Ravesteyn himself sometimes provided a Dutch approximation of the Hebrew sounds, but those approximations are outdated even for Dutch speakers today. Another practical problem involves the Yiddish songs. The orthography in the book uses a mix of Hebrew letters and German-influenced spellings that were common in the Netherlands at the time. Some words appear with variants that no longer exist in standard Yiddish. If you are doing scholarly work, you should cross-reference with the Yivo Encyclopedia entries or the collections from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The melodies themselves are generally reliable because they were transcribed by ear from living singers, but the textual variants matter if accuracy is important. I once tried to reconstruct a song from the second book for a documentary and hit a wall when the notation included a melisma that did not appear in any recorded version I could find. The workaround was straightforward once I figured it out. I went to the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and pulled the archival field recordings from the 1930s that Ravesteyn had referenced. One of them, recorded in Amsterdam by a singer named Sara van der Velde, showed the melody without the melisma. The editorial addition was likely Ravesteyn's attempt to make the phrase feel more complete in notation, but it does not reflect the actual performance tradition. You can find the catalog reference on the Sound and Vision website if you need it.
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Using the Music for Performance
If you are arranging these songs for a contemporary ensemble, the melodies are flexible enough to work across genres, but you should be careful about how much you alter the harmonic framework. The underlying chord progressions in many of these songs derive from Eastern European Jewish modal traditions, particularly the Freygish and Ahava Raba scales. When transposers flatten the intervals to fit major or minor harmonies, the songs lose their character almost entirely. I recommend keeping the original modes intact and letting the accompaniment breathe around them instead of forcing them into functional harmony. For choral work, the songs generally sit well in SATB voicing. The tenor and bass parts often carry the modal bass lines while the altos and sopranos handle the melody. A practical tip: some of the slower Lullabies in the collection have wide melodic ranges that challenge lower voices. I usually have the tenors and basses take the melody an octave lower in those cases, which frees up the upper voices for harmonic support without losing the modal color.
Limitations You Should Know About
This collection is not comprehensive. It reflects the Dutch Jewish community of the 1930s, which was already small and increasingly isolated before the war. Many songs that were sung in other parts of Europe but not in the Netherlands simply do not appear here. If you are looking for a complete anthology of Jewish music, this is not the right starting point. It is a regional snapshot, valuable precisely because it documents what survived in one specific community at one specific moment. The notation also has gaps. A few songs are listed only by title with no melody provided. In those cases, Ravesteyn noted that he could not verify the tune. Do not attempt to fill in those gaps with guesses from other sources unless you are transparent about it. I have seen published editions that reconstruct missing melodies from neighboring regional traditions, but those reconstructions are clearly labeled as such, and they should be treated as editorial additions rather than authentic sources. If you need a broader collection, the YIVO Institute holds extensive song manuscripts that cover more ground geographically. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has a larger oral history archive that includes performances not captured in Ravesteyn's volumes. For academic purposes, combining the second book with those other resources gives you a much more complete picture.
Quick Reference for Common Songs in the Volume
Some of the more frequently performed songs from Het Joodsche Lied Tweede Boek include Adon Olam, Mah Nishtana, and various Sabbath zemirot. The Yiddish entries often feature songs like "Mir Zaynen Heynt Tsvishn Daykh" and "Di Chasene-Flinke Sneh." If you are looking for a specific song, the index at the back of the book lists entries by both Hebrew title and Dutch translation, which helps when you only remember the melody and not the name. The volume also contains several mourning songs and pietutim that are less commonly performed today. These are historically significant but require sensitivity if you are planning to present them publicly. The context matters, and the performers should understand the lyrics before attempting them. I always recommend that singers read a translation and discuss the background of each song before including it in a concert program, especially when the material deals with displacement or loss. There is not much else to add about this collection beyond what the book itself provides. It is a straightforward reference work with one major caveat: treat the notation as a starting point, not as definitive. The actual singing traditions these melodies came from are more fluid than what you will find printed on the page. Check the archives, compare versions, and use the book as a bridge to the living sources rather than the final word.
