Originally written by Aaron Zeitlin for the Yiddish play “Esterke” in 1940, ‘Dona Dona’ is a popular song the world over, having been adapted to many languages — often not preserving the original, deeply Jewish context. The gist of the original lyrics, which never state their metaphor outright, is: a calf is bound to a wagon being dragged to the slaughterhouse. It looks up and sees a swallow flying around. The farmer shouts at it, saying “it’s your own fault for being a calf and not a bird!” The implication being: the people telling the Jews it’s our own fault we’re persecuted are the ones driving the wagon. Gentiles will murder Jews, the song implies to us, and then say Jews are to blame because of how murderable our Jewish face is, so maybe we should get a less murderable and more goyish face. But the whole time they’re the one with the knife. Here included is the original Yiddish text (in the Ukrainish theatre dialect), as well as new translations into Ladino and Aramaic.