Lazar Weiner (1897–1982) is most widely remembered today as the supreme exemplar and advocate of the Yiddish art song genre. Through his oeuvre of more than two hundred songs composed over a span of more than fifty years, he elevated that medium to unprecedented artistic sophistication. The Jewish art song was born only in the first decade of the 20th century, and though originally it was fashioned out of authentic folk material, the composers increasingly turned to modern Yiddish and Hebrew poetry as sources for inspiration. Ultimately, it was Lazar Weiner under whose pen the American Yiddish art song attained its most profound expression and reached its fullest and richest bloom.