Sivivon: A Song History
Sevivon is the Modern Hebrew name for the dreidel, the spinning top of Chanukah; Rabbi David Golinkin writes that the revived spoken Hebrew tried more than one name for the toy, and sevivon is the one that lasted.[1] According to some sources the word was coined in 1887 by Itamar Ben-Avi, then five years old and the son of Hebrew revivalist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a story ISRAEL21c presents as legend; the word’s first appearance in print, it reports, came on December 24, 1897, from the journalist David Isaiah Silberbusch, who claimed to have invented it himself.[2] In Israel, dreidels bear a pe, so that their letters stand for “a great miracle happened here,” while elsewhere the fourth letter is a shin, for “there.”[1][2]
Utagawa Yoshiharu, Acrobats Beneath Cherry Trees: Spinning Tops and Balancing, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 1857. Spinning tops rather than a dreidel, shown in fun; it has no connection to the song.
Israel’s Ministry of Education includes the song in its Hanukkah repertoire for young children, crediting the Hebrew words to Levin Kipnis and listing the tune as a folk melody.[3] A 2023 profile in Maariv says Kipnis is regarded as the first to write the Hebrew holiday songs that everyone now knows, and names Sevivon among them.[4] A 2022 Maariv feature tells a more tangled story, in which several composers set the words and Kipnis also tried an existing folk tune, so sources differ on where the melody came from.[3][5] Judy House arranges Sivivon in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a DAD-tuning book of Chanukah and Passover songs, Israeli folk songs, prayers, psalms and rounds that gives each song a page on its history and meaning and adds a pronunciation key for the Hebrew lyrics.[6]
Sources
- My Jewish Learning: "The Surprising Origin of the Dreidel".
- ISRAEL21c: "Everything you want to know about the Hanukkah dreidel".
- Israel Ministry of Education, Early Childhood Division: Hanukkah musical repertoire for early childhood (Hebrew).
- Maariv: "The truth behind the beloved children's songs: the stories Levin Kipnis didn't tell" (Hebrew).
- Maariv: "Al Hanissim ve'al Hanifla'ot: the stories behind the beloved Hanukkah songs" (Hebrew).
- Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Utagawa Yoshiharu, Acrobats Beneath Cherry Trees: Spinning Tops and Balancing, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 1857. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.