"Lock the doors and close the blinds -- we're going for a ride..."

Decades before there was "Nuestro Himmo," there was another bunch of folks speaking a different language in the United States. These were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, many of whom gave up everything to come to America -- many times for opportunity and many times to escape violent antisemitism in "the Old Country."  They spoke Yiddish, a Judaeo-German dialect which became the vernacular among eastern European Jewish communities as early as the fourteenth century.

Yiddish proliferated the Jewish communities in the United States -- after all, it was a language many knew and kept up.  The Forvertz, or "Jewish Daily Forward" was the premiere Jewish newspaper in the early twentieth century -- and was published in Yiddish. (Now it's a weekly Jewish paper in English.)  There were -- and continue to be on a smaller scale -- Yiddish literature, Yiddish folklore, Yiddish songs and Yiddish theater.  It wasn't a sign of a community refusing to learn the language as much as it was a community celebrating what they were able to bring over.

Nowadays you can find Yiddish as a language in some major universities. There's even a Linux distribution out there which is available in Yiddish! It's not nearly in as common usage as it has been, but it remains alive today.

To celebrate Yiddish and the community which spoke it, Dr. Abraham Asen translated "The Star Spangled Banner" into the language in 1943 to commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of composer Francis Scott Key's passing.  To me, it's a fitting tribute to all who celebrate freedom in this country -- and who have the freedom to express it in different ways.




Just something else to keep in mind whilst you condemn the Spanish version of the song...