Oh Chanukah: A Song History

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"Oh Chanukah" comes from a Yiddish Hanukkah song, "Khanuke, Oy Khanuke," whose words are credited to Mordkhe (Mark) Rivesman.[1] Rivesman (1868–1924) was born in Vilna, taught in Yiddish schools there, and later moved to St. Petersburg, where he wrote for the Jewish press, worked in Jewish cultural organizations and, in 1912, joined the board of the Society for Jewish Folk Music.[1] The song first appeared in print in Lider-zamlbukh, the Yiddish songbook edited by Susman Kiselgof and published in St. Petersburg in 1912.[2][3] The Israeli song archive Zemereshet credits the tune simply as a Yiddish folk melody.[4]

Ornate silver Hanukkah lamp with scrolling decoration, a row of small cups and two raised lights

Pietro Borrani, Hanukkah lamp, silver, ca. 1830. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The Hebrew "Yemei HaChanukah" is not a separate song but a Hebrew rendering of Rivesman's text by Avraham Avronin (1869–1957), sung to the same melody.[4][5] Zemereshet's sources for the Hebrew words include Nashira, a 1932 songbook for kindergarten and school, and the earliest dated recording it lists, from December 1950, belongs to the Kol Israel radio broadcast collection.[4]

The University of Pennsylvania's Freedman Jewish Sound Archive catalogs the song under many alternate names in Yiddish, Hebrew and English, among them "Latke Song."[6] Judy House includes it in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a book of Jewish songs, prayers, psalms and rounds arranged in DAD tuning, with a page on each song's history and meaning.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Oh Chanukah"

Sources

  1. Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization: "Mark Rivesman".
  2. Open Siddur Project: "Ḥanukkah oy Ḥanukkah".
  3. Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "Haynt Iz Purim, Brider".
  4. Zemereshet: "Yemei HaChanukah".
  5. National Library of Israel: "Yemei ha-Chanukah Chanukat Mikdashenu" (catalog record).
  6. Penn Libraries, Freedman Jewish Sound Archive: "Gladys Gewirtz".
  7. Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  8. Image: Pietro Borrani, Hanukkah lamp, silver, ca. 1830. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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