“Fuck the police,” begins the resounding chorus of the Yiddish song In ale gasn/Hey, hey, daloy politsey. But despite its resonance with N.W.A.’s 1988 release “Fuck Tha Police”, this song actually dates back to the early 1900s.
Yiddish culture, in fact, is no stranger to such authority-defying sentiment. The main speakers of the language, Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, have historically existed in resistance to state oppression, persecution, and exile. This was often coupled with living in poverty, in part due to antisemitic laws that prevented them from full access to socio-economic life.
