Louis, Mo., in 1923 - as her intellectual mentor. Over the years, Baez has credited educator and bookseller Ira Sandperl - a self-taught Gandhi scholar who was born into a leftist Jewish household in St. Incidentally, that debut album - which achieved gold status (which at the time meant earning $1 million in retail sales) - was produced by Brooklyn-born Fred Hellerman, a member of the folk music supergroup the Weavers (alongside Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Ronnie Gilbert), and whose Jewish-immigrant parents hailed from Riga, Latvia. The song, about a calf being led to slaughter, became a staple of BaezвЂ™s concerts and entered the canon of folk-protest (and summer-camp) songs of the 1960s.

Later on, Sekunda translated the song into English, along the way changing the title to вЂњDona Dona.вЂќ In the mid-1950s, Arthur Kevess and Teddi Schwartz retranslated the song into English, and it was their version - now spelled вЂњDonna DonnaвЂќ but still pronounced with a long вЂњoвЂќ - that Baez included on her eponymous debut album. Y concert were treated to BaezвЂ™s English-language rendition of a song that, while often assumed to be a traditional Yiddish folk song, was in fact written for the Yiddish theater in the early 1940s by the same composer responsible for вЂњBay Mir Bistu Sheyn.вЂќ BaezвЂ™s hit song вЂњDonna DonnaвЂќ began life as вЂњDana Dana,вЂќ also known as вЂњDos Kelbl,вЂќ or вЂњThe Calf,вЂќ written by Sholom Sekunda and Aaron Zeitlin for the latterвЂ™s stage show. Almost two years to the day after that, at age 21, Baez appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, an astonishing feat for a 21-year-old folksinger who had only just released her third album, a live recording entitled вЂњIn Concert,вЂќ which included two songs written by a complete unknown from northern Minnesota - a Jewish guy named Robert Allen Zimmerman who had adopted the pseudonym Bob Dylan - alongside her rendition of вЂњKumbaya.вЂќД¬hances are good that the audiences at the Jewish retreat and the 92nd St. Just a couple years after that, having made quite a stir on the then-vibrant Boston folk-music scene after moving there from the Bay Area with her family in 1959, Baez gave her New York City concert debut at the tender age of 19, in November 1960, at the 92nd Street Young MenвЂ™s and Young WomenвЂ™s Hebrew Association - the 92nd Street Y, for short.

She caught the folk-music bug, and within a few years, while still a teenager, she gave one of her earliest public performances in Saratoga, Calif., at a retreat for a Jewish youth group from Congregation Beth Jacob of Redwood City. On her remarkable rise to the top of the folk-music heap in the late 1950s and early 1960s, singer-activist Joan Baez - who, at age 77, is currently saying goodbye to audiences on a worldwide вЂњFare Thee Well TourвЂќ - had some help from a couple of Jewish organizations Jewish songwriters, teachers, and producers as well as one obscure Yiddish theater song that she made famous.Д«aez first picked up the guitar and opened her mouth only to discover she boasted a gorgeous soprano at age 13, after having attended a Pete Seeger concert.

Dona dona jewish folk song