Ma'oz Tzur: A Song History
Ma'oz Tzur is a Hebrew hymn that Ashkenazi Jews sing, in the synagogue and at home, once the Hanukkah lights have been kindled.[1] The opening letters of its first five stanzas spell out the name of its poet, Mordecai, but beyond that name his identity is uncertain.[1][2] The Encyclopaedia Judaica says the poem probably arose in Germany in the thirteenth century,[1] and the older Jewish Encyclopedia reports that the scholar Zunz was inclined to date its author to the middle of that century, adding that the hymn was at first sung only at home.[2]
Johannes van der Lely, Hanukkah Lamp, silver, 1706. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the hymn.
Accounts of where the familiar melody came from differ.[1][2] The Jewish Encyclopedia, following the cantor Birnbaum, calls it an adaptation of an old German folk song, So weiss ich eins, the same tune Martin Luther set to his chorale Nun freut euch lieben Christen gmein.[2] The Encyclopaedia Judaica instead describes it as a West European Ashkenazi melody perhaps dating from around the early fifteenth century; it notes that Birnbaum and Idelsohn linked some of its motifs to early Protestant chorales and a German soldiers' song, but finds the whole tune far closer to the church melody Patrem omnipotentem.[1] Both that encyclopedia and a 2000 Jewish Telegraphic Agency article put the earliest known evidence of the tune being used for this poem in a manuscript of 1744, which the encyclopedia identifies as that of Judah Elias of Hanover.[1][3]
The hymn's English version, Rock of Ages, is credited to Marcus Jastrow and Gustav Gottheil and dates from the nineteenth century.[1][3] Sources differ on how far it strays from the Hebrew, whose stanzas include a fierce call for vengeance: the Encyclopaedia Judaica calls the difference slight, while the JTA article describes a much softened text.[1][3] Gottheil, who served at New York's Temple Emanu-El from 1873 until his retirement in 1899, compiled in 1886 what the Jewish Encyclopedia calls the first Jewish hymnbook printed in America, and it became the foundation of the Union Hymnal, later taken up widely by American Reform congregations.[4] The Jewish Encyclopedia lists his Rock of Ages in that hymnal among the texts sung to the Ma'oz Tzur melody, and Reform and Conservative congregations use the English words either alongside the Hebrew or in its place.[2][1] Judy House includes Ma'oz Tzur in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, which gathers holiday songs, Israeli folk songs and liturgical pieces in DAD tuning, with notes on the background of each song.[5]
Sources
- Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica): "Ma'oz Ẓur".
- Jewish Encyclopedia: "Ma'oz Ẓur".
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency: "More than meets the eye in 'Maoz Tsur'".
- Jewish Encyclopedia: "Gottheil, Gustav".
- Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Johannes van der Lely, Hanukkah Lamp, silver, 1706. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.