Mi Y'Malel: A Song History

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Mi Y'Malel, known in English as Who Can Retell?, is a Hebrew song for Hanukkah.[1] Its words are by Menashe Ravina, a composer and music educator born in 1899 in Pereyaslav, in present-day Ukraine, who studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and settled in Tel Aviv in 1924.[2] The opening plays on Psalm 106:2, which asks who can tell of the Lord's mighty acts, but shifts the praise from God to the deeds of the people of Israel.[3]

Woodcut of three standing heroes labeled Josue, Rex David and Judas Machabeus, with shields at their feet

Hans Burgkmair, The Three Jewish Heroes (Die Drei Guten Juden), from "Heroes and Heroines", woodcut, 1516. Judas Maccabeus stands at right; the print has no connection to the song.

According to the Hebrew University's Jewish Music Research Centre, Ravina wrote his lyrics to a folk melody.[2] The research centre also lists a 1948 recording, titled Mi Yemalel, by the International Choir under Avraham Wolf Binder.[2] Judy House includes the song, labeled a traditional Jewish round, in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a book in DAD tuning that gathers Passover and Chanukah songs along with Israeli folk songs, prayers, psalms and rounds.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Mi Y'Malel"

Sources

  1. My Jewish Learning: "Mi Yimalel (Who Can Retell?)".
  2. Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "Menashe Ravina".
  3. Beth Tzedec Congregation: "Who Can Recount the Balance of Israel".
  4. Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  5. Image: Hans Burgkmair, The Three Jewish Heroes (Die Drei Guten Juden), from "Heroes and Heroines", woodcut, 1516. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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