А грехи а грехи отпоем отпляшем ("Хава нагила" по-русски)

Hava Nagila, sung at last in a language people understand

Hava Nagila is the most famous Jewish song in the world. Its handful of Hebrew words mean, roughly, let us rejoice and be glad. The melody comes from a Hasidic nigun, a wordless prayer tune from Eastern Europe, and is often credited to the musicologist Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, who set words to it around 1918. Since then the whole world has sung it at weddings and celebrations, almost always without knowing what the words say.

Olga Anikina did not translate the old Hebrew line by line. She wrote a new, singable Russian poem in the spirit of the song, so that a listener feels its meaning in their own language. Get up on the right foot so it is easier to sing and dance. Life is not given to us in vain, so do not shed tears. Our shirt has two pockets, it is too early to think of death, and our sins we will simply sing and dance away. It is the joy of Hava Nagila given back its meaning.

Why bring it into English

Everyone can hum the tune. Almost no one can sing what it means. Bringing Hava Nagila into Russian, where it has already reached an audience of hundreds of millions, and then into English, lets people finally sing the sense and not only the sound. That is the whole mission of Jewish Songs for All: to carry the great Jewish songs to the world in the languages people actually speak.

The words, line by line

Russian lyrics by Olga Anikina. The English is a literal, line by line rendering for meaning, prepared for review, not a singing version.