Hodu: A Song History

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"Hodu" ("Give thanks") sets words from Psalm 118, a psalm that opens and closes with one and the same verse of thanksgiving.[1][2] Psalm 118 is the last of the six psalms, 113 through 118, that together make up the Hallel, recited in full on festivals that include the opening of Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot and Hanukkah.[3] At the Passover Seder the Hallel is divided, with one portion read in the Maggid, the Haggadah's central narration, and the remainder after Grace After Meals.[4]

Illuminated psalter leaf with a large decorated letter B framing a scene of King David

Leaf from a Psalter with Historiated Initial (B): King David, ink, tempera, and gold on parchment, c. 1450. A psalter page, shown because the song's words come from a psalm; it has no connection to the melody.

The early twentieth-century Jewish Encyclopedia, in its article on the Hallel, explained that because the opening verse was familiar even to worshippers who knew little Hebrew, congregations in public recitation answered the leader's second, third and fourth verses with that first verse alone, a custom it described as still observed in its day.[5] The same article said the older chants for the Hallel had been lost, leaving no common tradition, so that synagogue composers of the time each wrote their own music for it.[5] It also reported that in its day the main hymn tune of each festival had become bound up with the opening verses of Psalm 118, listing "Adir Hu" as the Passover theme.[5]

Judy House includes "Hodu" in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a book of Passover and Chanukah songs, Israeli folk songs, prayers, psalms and rounds arranged in DAD tuning, where the listing describes its tune only as a traditional Pesach melody.[2]

Our book that contains the song "Hodu"

Sources

  1. Sefaria: "Psalms 118".
  2. Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  3. Encyclopaedia Judaica, via Encyclopedia.com: "Hallel".
  4. Chabad.org (Menachem Posner): "What Is Hallel?".
  5. Jewish Encyclopedia (Cyrus Adler, Lewis N. Dembitz, Francis L. Cohen): "Hallel".
  6. Image: Leaf from a Psalter with Historiated Initial (B): King David, ink, tempera, and gold on parchment, c. 1450. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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