Farmington Community Library

A green duck goes in search of noodles to chew on. A soldier leaving for the Russo-Japanese war bids a heartbreaking farewell to his mother, father, and sweetheart. A mysterious stranger enters the shtetl. These are just some of the strange scenarios found in the antiquated but wonderfully alive Yiddish songs that Mikhl Yashinsky, a Yiddish performer who grew up in Farmington Hills, has learned over the past few years as an apprentice to the veteran New York folk singer Ethel Raim.