Happy Chanukah!
[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of a previous post.]
This is the first night of Chanukah, and I wish everyone a happy one. Chanukah is about a successful revolt and a miracle of light:
The miracle of the one-day supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days is first described in the Talmud, committed to writing about 600 years after the events described in the books of Maccabees. The Talmud says that after the forces of Antiochus IV had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight days (the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready).
The words of this Chanukah song in Yiddish—written in 1924 before the Holocaust and before the establishment of Israel—are not happy. But I didn’t know that when I first heard it, and I post it anyway because I think it’s very beautiful:
Here are the lyrics, as translated by Theodore Bikel (you can hear an excerpt of him singing it here):
O little lights of mystery
You recall our history
And all that went before
The battles and the bravery
And our release from slavery
Miracles galore.As my eyes behold your flames
I recall our heroes’ names
And our ancient dream:
“Jews were learning how to fight
To defeat an awesome might
They could reign supreme”“They would rule their own domain
When the enemy was slain,
The Temple cleansed and whole.
Once there was a Jewish land
And a mighty Jewish hand.”
Oh, how it moves my soul!O little lights of mystery
You retell our history
Your tales are tales of pain.
My heart is filled with fears
My eyes are filled with tears
“What now?” says the haunting refrain.
Remember: written in 1924.
Bikel translated the song that way in order to make the rhymes come out. But a more literal translation of that last verse might be:
Oh little candles,
your old stories
awaken my anguish;
deep in my heart there
stirs
a tearful question:
What will be next?
Indeed.
A Happy Chanukah, and blessings to all who celebrate this momentous day.
Neo, our adopted church, The Shepherd’s Grove Presbyterian in Irvine, Ca is also the origin of the TV ministry, “Hour of Power”.
The young Pastor preaches very often from the Old Testament, and ties in a good bit of the history of Israel and the Jewish faith and traditions. A week ago he taught a lesson on the significance of Chanukah.
His lessons on these subjects go out around the world. From a Christian minister. How about that?
I love those sermons that bring the Old Testament to life They also flesh out the world in which Christianity was born and survived.
A Happy Chanukah and a meaningful holiday to all!
Happy Chanukah to Neo and all to those who believe in a loving and caring God!
Happy Chanukah to all!!
Thank you so much for sharing this history, the song and the translations with us, neo!
“What will be next?”
Psalm 46:10
Happy Chanukah to all.
In my youth, it never occured to me that Theodore Bikel was Jewish. Nor, if it had been pointed out to me, would it have been of particular interest. Plain and simple, there was just something about the man that I always liked. In retrospect, I suspect it mostly had to do with sensing a basic honesty about the man.
Straightforward honesty, what you see is what you get, has always for me been of far more importance than race, politics or religious persuasion. That even applies to Bernie Sanders, who despite his monstrous political inclinations has at least, always been up front about it.
An honest enemy is always to be preferred to a duplitious enemy.
” Obama blames Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for severing his ‘connection’ with conservatives by abandoning ‘journalistic norms'”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-blames-fox-news-and-rush-limbaugh-for-severing-his-e2-80-98connection-e2-80-99-with-conservatives-by-abandoning-journalistic-norms/ar-BB1bOGF4
Though I find it despicable, I have to acknowledge that Barack Obama has never lacked for Chutzpah.
So much so that he may well be “irredeemable”. As the prerequisite for forgiveness is repentance and repentance rests upon acknowledgement of sin. Given his narcissism, I wonder if he is capable of recognizing and acknowledging his sins?
Happy Chanukah and hope for 2021 regardless.
The Christian New Testament implies that at least a portion of the Jewish Temple will be rebuilt. In time for the end of the age Anti-christ to set himself up in as “ god”. Almost like Antiochus and a later Roman were warmup acts….The last chapter of the Old Testament book of Zechariah has a few things to say about Jerusalem in the future.
There’s an old joke that the long history of the Jewish people can be condensed in one sentence: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” So, naturally, because Hanukkah is a holiday about oil, it is celebrated with piles of fried donuts and potato pancakes!
Thank you for posting this and Happy Hannukah!
Happy Hanuka (Chanuka) to all who celebrate (and even those who don’t).
N.B. Hanuka was Christopher Hitchens’s least favorite holiday (i.e., most despised historical event), at least it was up until his “political conversion” around the Second Gulf War—though it may have continued to have been so as I really didn’t keep up with his holiday preferences…. (the reasons for his dislike of Hanuka should be obvious…. No, it wasn’t the food or the endless gifts or the length… ).
In any event, seeing as Donald J. Trump is truly the Republic’s first “Jewish” president (as I’ve mentioned in previous ramblings), it makes the holiday—and the sinister events currently swirling around us all—that much more significant (hmm, eight times more?)
In any event, Holiday wishes to one and all…
Backwoods religious zealot xenophobes forming militias and armed revolt against foreign influence and arrogant prick elites.
No wonder liberals hate Chanukkah.
Happy [C]Hanukah, Neo.
A great remembrance for those esteeming religious liberty and bold struggle in the face of seemingly impossible odds against a determined and vicious, if somewhat decadent oppressor, and its willing collaborators.
Let us hope that we Americans will not have to face the same choice as the degenerates in our own nation and abroad attempt their own abomination of desolation in precincts both sacred and historically hallowed.
One thing I have never understood though, is the spelling issue …
DNW:
All the spellings are phonetic, and Jews have trouble agreeing with each other on anything 🙂 .
As always, I had an interesting political discussion with my Ophthalmologist this morning. It was more along the lines of who is more angry and frustrated.
Interesting he said he immigrated from Canada because the U.S. was more free. Now, he said his escape route would be Israel. He even said I would be welcome (he doesn’t know I was raised a Southern Baptist; don’t know if that would matter), but I doubt they really want an 85 year old liability.
Perhaps as a caution, he trotted out a version of that old chestnut, “how do you become a millionaire in Israel?”.
I refrained from commenting that my perception is that Israel’s politics are even more tumultuous than ours.
Neo, he was interested in where I get my perceptive insights, and I gladly directed him to this site.
Happy Chanukah to all celebrating! And thanks for posting the song, Neo. It’s lovely.
Bittersweet indeed, written in 1924: “What will be next?”
And thanks, Neo, for the explanation on the spelling. It has always bewildered me, and now you tell me that no matter how I spell it, there will be Jews who think I’m right, so I’m good!
The word Hanukkah is always spelled the same in Hebrew and is pronounced with a ‘het’ sound at the beginning similar to the Scottish ‘loch’ sound.
https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/11/what-is-the-correct-spelling-and-pronunciation-of-hanukkah-7150505/
This is what I figured, but I’ve never noticed anyone saying Hannukah with that “loch” sound.
I wondered, huxley, if it was one of those sounds we just don’t have in English. So it may be that American Jews who don’t really speak Hebrew don’t use the sound.
My impression is that it’s no longer cool to like the sitcom, “Friends,” (if it ever was), however, they did a cute episode in which Ross, who is Jewish, tries to rent a Santa suit to explain to his son the story of Chanukah, but they are out of Santa suits, and he ends up with an armadillo costume instead.
So he calls himself the “Holiday Armadillo.” Merriment ensues.
–“Friends” / “The One With The Holiday Armadillo” (Part 1 and 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH-6u-3qglY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7qqnm7qwI
I wondered, huxley, if it was one of those sounds we just don’t have in English
Kate:
Quite right. Taking college Russian opened my ears to many new sounds, though my tongue couldn’t always keep up.
In Russian the letter for the [C]H sound looks like an X (derived from the Greek Chi) and sounds like “loCH” and is called Kha. Wiki informs me that it is technically the “voiceless velar fricative.”
huxley, I know about some non-English sounds from taking conversational Egyptian Arabic classes in Cairo. There’s a more or less “k” sound, although not quite that; a “kha” sound like what you describe, and then the “ayn” sound, which is a consonant deep in the throat. (My teacher pointed out that English speakers use those muscles only to vomit, and when I practiced it, I did feel a bit ill.) There’s also an “H” which is much more aggressive than the other “h”. Plus glottal stops. English is so easy in comparison, even with weird spelling.
Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report is asked about the Hanukkah Party at the White House, and answers at 9:30m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_VUvBxoltQ
FUN, and sweet!
(Before this, he bumps into Sydney Powell at the hotel, and before that, he exposes Marxist Media lies and hypocrisy on Hunter Biden with, for example, before and after headlines from Politico.)
Kate: I love this language stuff. In another life I’d really like to dive in.
I once read an article about the origin of languages, which argued the proto-language hypothesis that there was one original human language and reasonable attempts could be made to discover it via backtracking from modern languages.
As a vivid teaser it mentioned that “Silent Night” had been reconstructed in that proto-language. One was left with the image of cavepersons singing “Silent Night” over a winter campfire. Lovely!
Apparently the proto-language hypothesis has largely been taboo. I haven’t read enough to know why. It seems a reasonable enough idea given how few humans there once were. My guess is that it gets a little too close to the Bible with Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel. Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps I’ll get to one of the recent books on language…
huxley, there certainly are large language families, showing long-ago connections, for example, the Indo-European group. But I am not sure how we’d research farther back than that.
But I am not sure how we’d research farther back than that.
Kate: It’s a problem.
I’ve got Christine Kenneally’s “The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language” on reserve at the library.
I’ll get back to you.
‘ There’s also an “H” which is much more aggressive than the other “h”. ‘
That’s the one—the aspirated “Het”—beween the “h” and the more guttural “Khaf” (which is the Scottish “loch” sound).
Hoewever, most Israelis don’t / can’t pronounce the Het as sound distinct from the “Khaf” (i.e., most Israelis pronounce the Het and Khaf the same), so that it has pretty much been erased from the general pronunciation.
Only Israelis from Arab lands (and perhaps Ethiopia, not sure about this) and Hebrew-speaking Arabs pronounce the Het as it “should be” (or was intended to be) pronounced.
Some Israelis not from Arab countries make an effort to do so, but this is not common and considered a bit contrived.
http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2020/12/the-chanukah-underground.html
I love this man!
Seriously, should be cloned.
Happy (C)hanuk(k)ah, y’all.
As Greenfield makes clear, not all Jews are Tikkunolamists. Many of us aren’t, and have nothing but contempt for those who are. Contempt which is cordially reciprocated, by the way. The rift is as deep and as bitter as the rift between (say) Candace Owens and Ibram X. Kendi.
People like Greenfield’s mother, who experienced communism directly, or people who know people who experienced communism directly, bring an extra degree of determination to this business.
Geoffrey Britain:
Agree with you about Bernie “Three Dachas” Sanders, and leave him off my personal blacklist of perfidious Tikkunolamists for that reason. He’s a deeply dangerous political moron, but he’s an honest deeply dangerous political moron who has never made a secret of where he stands. If his side were ever to win, he’d wind up like Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin: with his brains blown out in a tiled cellar room with a drain in the corner. And he’d be screaming about his devotion to the Party all the way down the corridor. Incorrigible.
Thanks, Barry Meislin. I so often learn things on this blog!
My heart was warmed today to see the news of a menorah being lit and the Burj Khalifa turned blue for the first Chanukah celebration in the UAE. This is a great testimonial to the Trump peace efforts. I pray the Biden crowd won’t be able to reverse them.
I love that song and I’m pretty sure it was I who introduced too to it several years ago.