"Dona, Dona" was a song in the 1940 musical pay Esterke. You'll find interesting information about the historic character Esterke in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe:
Esterke
Heroine of a Polish and Jewish folk legend about a Jewish woman's relationship with Casimir the Great, King of Poland (r. 1310–1370). According to the chronicle of Jan Długosz (1415–1480), Esterke was Casimir's mistress who persuaded him to invite Jews to Poland; he also granted them extensive privileges. The story claims that the couple had four children, two boys raised as Christians and two girls raised as Jews. In 1334, Casimir did, in fact, extend privileges that had been first granted by Bolesław of Kalisz.
The earliest written version of the Esterke legend by a Jewish author appears in David Gans's sixteenth-century chronicle, Tsemaḥ David. Ganz wrote that "Casimir, King of Poland, took as his concubine a Jewish girl named Esther, a maiden whose beauty was unparalleled in the entire country, and she was his wife for many years. The king performed great favors for the Jews for her sake, and she extracted from the king writs of kindness and liberty for the Jews." Oral versions also note that she lobbied on behalf of her people. Although marital relations between a Jew and a non-Jew are forbidden in Jewish law, they were considered justified here, as in the biblical story of Esther, as essential for the survival of the entire Jewish community. The heroine's conduct is interpreted as an act of self-sacrifice.
The Esterke legend was transmitted orally, each community adding local color. In Radom, the tale was used to explain the name of the town: the king built a residential area around the house he erected for Esterke and the people there called the quarter rad-dam, "happy about this house." In Lublin, Esterke was said be buried in the community's old cemetery. In Kazimierz Dolny, the story claimed that the town's Great Synagogue itself was a gift from Casimir to Esterke. She was also supposed to have personally embroidered the synagogue's parokhet (ark curtain), the central motif of which was a fire-breathing monster. Jews in that town interpreted the creature as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and magical qualities were attributed to its rendering. Both the folk and the written versions are replete with associations from the biblical book of Esther; in addition, the purim-shpil that was customarily presented in Kazimierz related the Esterke story.
In the modern period, the legend inspired many literary works in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew; examples include Shemu'el Yosef Agnon's "Esterkes Haus," in German and in a Hebrew version. Today, a house in Kazimierz Dolny, supposed to be that of Esterke, remains a tourist attraction.
Also in the Jewish Virtual Library
ESTERKE, Jewish woman from the village of Opoczno, Poland, said to have been a mistress of the Polish King *Casimir the Great (1310–1370). Reports claim that her outstanding beauty caught the king's eye while he was passing through her town. Her two sons, Pelka and Niemera, were given grants of land from their father and were raised as Christians. The names of her daughter (or daughters) were never recorded, but with the king's approval, they supposedly remained Jewish. Alternate endings to Esterke's story include the king's severing his relationship with her; Esterke's death while they are still together; and Esterke's suicide either immediately after the king's death or several years later. Although a house in Opoczno was designated as her family home, and her grave was believed to be in Lobzow Park, near Cracow, there is no historical basis for any of the Esterke legends, and there is no mention of her either in court documents or in Jewish sources. Written mention of Esterke appears in the late 15th century in a history by Polish cleric Jan Dlugosz (1415–1480). The first Jewish source to mention Esterke is Ẓemaḥ David by David Gans, written in 1595. Gans believed in the historicity of the report and gave a Christian source for it. The relationship of Esterke and Casimir, with its obvious parallel to the Book of Esther, was appealing; the theme was used by Jewish writers as late as the 19th century. Versions of Esterke's story in Polish antisemitic literature attempted to undermine customary Jewish privileges granted to Jews by King *Boleslav V (1221–1279) and continued by King Casimir, suggesting that they were promulgated to please a lover rather than for the good of the nation. A 16th-century priest alluded to Esterke in his book Jewish Cruelties, claiming that her "gentle words induced him [Casimir] to devise by scheme this loathsome law under the name of the Prince Boleslav.…" Such negative allusions to Esterke continued in Christian writings until the 19th century; the belief that this Jewish woman actively interceded for her people gave Casimir the nickname "the Polish Ahasuarus." Despite confirmations by modern historians that Esterke is best regarded as an example of a literary trope of the seductive Jewish woman, popular from the early Middle Ages, and despite the fact that her name was used to further antisemitic claims, her sentimental appeal persists among Jews.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
E. Aizenberg, "Una Judia Muy Fermosa: The Jewess as Sex Object in Medieval Spanish Literature and Lore," in: La Corónica, 12 (Spring 1984), 187–94; Ch. Shmeruk, The Esterke Story in Yiddish and Polish Literature (1985); E. Taitz, S. Henry, and C.I. Tallan (eds.), The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E.–1900 C.E. (2003), 84.
[Emily Taitz (2nd ed.)]
Source: Encyclopaedia
Judaica
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