Folk Hero

I was never particularly blessed where zaidys are concerned; I was too young when both my grandfathers were niftar to remember them well. Nevertheless even though I’ve heard it ever so many times I still can’t listen to Moshe Yess’s song “My Zaidy” without reaching for the tissues. It’s an unassuming nostalgic song about a boy’s love for his zaidy whose death leads to the collapse of the family’s last ties to Yiddishkeit. But Yess somehow manages to condense the entire tragedy of American assimilation into the space of a few simple lyrics and then shoot it with an archer’s precision straight into the heart.

My Zaidy was also the title of the first album produced by Megama the duo of Yess and his partner Shalom Levine. This January marked two years since Yess’s passing at the too-young age of 65 and Levine passed away but a few weeks ago — shortly after making his contribution to a new double CD featuring 25 of Moshe Yess’s most beloved songs. Entitled The Yess Legacy and produced by Gershon Veroba and Yerachmiel Ziegler it offers fresh yet faithful takes on many Yess standards performed by an all-star lineup who largely performed for free in honor of Yess.

But who exactly was the real Moshe Yess? Who was this guitar virtuoso who composed and sang so many Jewish classics and influenced an entire generation of singers and songwriters?

A New Direction Yess was able to appeal to all segments of the Jewish spectrum from the nonreligious to the chareidim because he had known both lifestyles himself. Born Morris Arthur (Moshe Aharon) Yess in Canada in 1945 his own zaidys were born inRussia. His parents were born inCanada and his mother was a cousin of the novelist Mordecai Richler.