Zelig Bardichever

Bardichever was born into a poor family in Bessarabia. His father, Ayzik-Duvid Haskelevich Bardichever (1851–?), was descended from Mogilyov on the Dniester of Podolsk province. From there his family moved to the Bessarabian Jewish agricultural colony of Aleksandrena of Iasi county no later than 1854. His mother, Haya-Rivka Berkovna Bardichever, was a native of Beltz.[3] As a melamed, he wandered around the towns and villages of Bessarabia and neighboring Moldova in search of a living. In the 1920s, he began to compose and perform songs to his own poems in the tradition of wandering Jewish folk singers ( broders ) and badhenes (Velvl Zbarzher, Elyakum Zunzer, Berl Broder, and others).

By the 1930s, he had gained extraordinary popularity, despite the lack of publications in Jewish publications. He also wrote melodies to poems of other poets, for example, to the popular elegy "Fun shheinishn Dorf" ( From a neighboring village ) by Hertz Rivkin . At one time he was a member of the creative organization "Kultur-League" ( League of Culture ), he wrote and staged amateur plays. It was only in the last years of his life that he began to publish in the "Chernovitser Bleter" ( Chernivtsi leaflets ) and "Ufgang" ( Sunrise, Siget ).

Bardichever led a vagrant lifestyle and died from acute tuberculosis in Iasi. After his death, the efforts of singer and composer Leib Levin and writer Hersh Segal in Czernowitz was a collection of songs Bardichevera notes "לידער מיט ניגונים" (Leader mit nigunim – Poetry and music, 1939), reprinted in Montevideo in 1948 and Rehovot in 1980 .

The songs of Zeylik Bardichever were performed by various performers and continue to be performed by Leibu Levin, Chava Alberstein, Arkady Gendler, Mikhail Aleksandrovich and others.

• לידער מיט ניגונים (Лидер мит нигуним — Стихи и мелодии). Черновицы, 1939 (Монтевидео: Фарлаг "Зрие", 1948).
• Летящие тени: Стихи еврейских поэтов Бессарабии в переводе с идиша Рудольфа Ольшевского. Кишинёв, 2000.
• Сара Шпитальник. Бессарабский стиль. Кишинёв: Ruxandra, 2005.

• Грамзаписи Зелика Бардичевера в каталоге Фридмана (Пенсильванский университет)
• DVD "פֿרײען זיך איז גוט" ("Фрейен зих из гит!" — Радоваться — хорошо!): Аркадий Гендлер поёт песни Зелика Бардичевера. СПб.: Еврейский общинный центр Санкт-Петербурга, 2009 (рецензия Валерия Дымшица, рецензия Александра Иванова)