"Bei Mir Biz Du Sheyn" was written in 1932 by the renowned Yiddish lyricist Jacob Jacobs and the even more renowned composer Sholom Secunda (who also wrote "Dona Dona," among others). It premiered in the Yiddish musical comedy "I Would If I Could," starring the great Aaron Lebedeff. The Yiddish title was more poignant — "Men Ken Lebn Nor Men Lozt Nisht," "You Could Live, but They Don't Let You." I have no idea what the plot was, and the show was not a big hit on Second Avenue.
Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin provided English lyrics in 1937, leading to the Andrews Sisters first big hit under the Germanized title "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen."
As the story goes, Secunda first offered the song to Eddie Cantor, who turned it down as "too Jewish." In contrast, the Greek-Norwegian Andrews Sisters first attempted to record it in Yiddish, but couldn't get it right and had to turn mostly to English. To this day, it is probably the most popular mainstream Yiddish-inspired song, though only the title and a single line remain of the original.
"Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" has become a jazz standard, with countless covers. Don't miss the origin story, by Jacob Jacobs's granddaughter, at the bottom of the post.
Here is the Andrews Sisters original, audio only:
The original Yiddish lyrics were humorous, originally sung as a duet between lovers, each explaining how they would adore the other no matter how they looked. Here it is with translations:
Audio only:
Don't let the first screen fool you, this is a live video clip:
A Yiddishe torch song:
Audio only:
This one is pretty strange. Zarah Leander was an immensely popular Swedish vocalist in the 1920s and '30s, recording mostly in Germany from about 1936-43. It says something about her star power that she was able to release a Jewish derived song in 1938, shortly before Kristallnacht. Even if the lyrics were in German rather than Yiddish, the song was obviously known to have been written by Sholom Secunda and Sammy Cahn. My German isn't very good, but I can tell that her lyrics are more or less translated from the English version. Leander was strongly criticized after the war, but she is not known to have associated herself with Nazis or Nazism, and she did leave Germany for her native Sweden in 1943 (how she managed that, I do not know). AFAIK, she never commented on having sung a Jewish song in Hitler's Germany. (H/T Alex Lubet)
The Barry Sisters were a Yiddish institution, but even they had to record the English lyrics as well (although not on this clip; their English version is blocked on Youtube).
UPDATE (h/t Cory Franklin)
The origin story (h/t Alex Lubet)
Nu? Gehnug?