Jacob Koppel Sandler, the author of the words and music of “Eili, Eili”, the famous Yiddish song describing the fate of the immigrant Jewish masses in the early days of Jewish mass immigration to America, has died here in complete obscurity. Sandler, who was 74 years of age, came to America 43 years ago, acting for a time as a music teacher and a choir-master, He wrote “Eili, Eili” as part of a Yiddish play called “Sons of Moses”, which was a complete failure. The song was lifted by someone afterwards and became a great success. Sandler had not copyrighted it and he went about complaining that other people were making fortunes out of its sale. In 1925 he brought a legal action to establish his claim to the authorship. fixing the value of the song at half a million dollars, but nothing could be done then.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
