It's Chanukah!
And I've got a song I want to teach you!
So it's DOWN the rabbit hole we go!
♪ (intro) ♪
Welcome to Jewish Music Toronto!
I am Eli.
Remember that all of our lesson and sing-along videos are closed captioned, so if you want
to follow along, all you have to do is click the CC button at the bottom of the YouTube player.
In case you were wondering, I wasn't kidding about that rabbit hole comment.
This week's song is Y'vanim (or The Greeks), and in researching this song...
This SEEMINGLY SIMPLE SONG...
I spent hours poring over page after page, version after version, until finding the melody
and a tiny bit of extra information in a song book I'd borrowed from a neighbour.
Thank. YOU. Sy!
So let's just get into it and bring up the board!
What?
What's that?
We can't use the board anymore?
No more annotations on YouTube...
Ah...
(Crinkling paper)
(Paper smacking into the ground) (Technical Difficulties Static)
(Technical Difficulties Static)
(Beep)
Alright! Well, at the moment it seems there's nothing I can do about that.
So, from now on, until some other solution comes along, these lessons are just going to run straight through...
Like this!
Let's get into it!
Here comes the Background!
Y'vanim is not an original song unto itself.
(Then again, loads of other Jewish songs aren't either...)
Rather, it's one of the verses of the well-known Chanukah song Ma'oz Tzur.
As noted in our original video on Ma'oz Tzur, each verse of the full song tells a different
story of salvation from throughout Jewish history.
You've got the Egyptians, the Persians, the Romans, the Babylonians
and, of course, the Greeks!
Also, given the last verse's focus on being delivered from a "wicked nation", and the
treatment Jews were getting at the time the song was thought to be written (see: the Crusades...),
the last verse is probably about Christianity as a whole.
(I've included a link to the Wikipedia entry on Ma'oz Tzur, if you're interested in reading a little bit more about that.)
But THIS verse specifically focuses on the Greeks!
Heck, it's the first word in the verse, and, likely because of THAT as well, the name of this spinoff song.
Outside of the first verse of Ma'oz Tzur, it's also the only other verse to actually be about Chanukah itself.
That may well also explain WHY it became a spinoff song.
As you'll see when we get to the lyrics, it does a great job of condensing the elements
of the story into a single verse.
You've got Greek rule, the defiling of the Beit Hamikdash (the Temple),
the miracle of the oil, and the declaration of the holiday!
The only thing that isn't in there is the conflict within the Jewish world that was raging during those years.
Though you wouldn't exactly expect a song celebrating victory over assimilation
(both pushed from without and within) to include that darker chapter...
It's not unlike some of the Jewish people who fell into Persian ways in the Purim story.
I've got a couple of links below if you want to do a little more reading on that.
So let's move on to the author!
We covered this, in short, in the original Ma'oz Tzur lesson video.
But let me just provide a quick refresher with a tad more added information.
This is the same information you could pull up on Wikipedia or any other article about
the song, but you ARE already here.
Ma'oz Tzur is believed to have been written by a Mordechai, mainly because the name appears
in the acrostics within the lyrics.
Which Mordechai it was, though, is between the author of the Shabbat song "Mah Yafit",
Mordechai ben Yitzchak HaLevi,
the scholar Mordechai mentioned in a Tosafot in Masechet Niddah of Talmud Bavli (the additional
commentary in the Tractate of Menstrual Cycles in the Babylonian Talmud)
Yep! That's a thing!
If you didn't know -
...and another Mordechai, who, frankly, I'm not sure should have been considered,
given the expected timing of the song's authorship.
Again, links are down in the description if you want to learn more!
On to the composer!
Here's where I fell down the rabbit hole!
There are so very many versions of this one spinoff song's melody, that I wound up jumping
from song to song, version to version, just to get as close as I have to the little information
that I have now.
And even STILL, I'm left with "It's a traditional folktune".
If you're familiar with why I started this channel, you'll know that's not particularly
satisfying for me (as I'm sure it's not for you either).
That's not to say that the search wasn't informative.
What I found explained why I had so much trouble getting to this conclusion.
I started with Sy's book - a copy of Edward Kalendar and Velvel Pasternak's
"The Ultimate Jewish Piano" book - paired with my usual sources.
Zemereshet?
No luck.
HebrewSongs.com?
Sure, it has the words, but the only link it has to sheet music is behind a login page
exclusively for music retailers.
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music?
Not even close.
So I dug in further, into a couple of University databases which have kindly granted me access
for just such research!
First, Florida Atlantic University's Recorded Sound Archive.
I started finding tracks titled "Yevanim" here and there, but every track I heard...
it was always the wrong melody.
Surely there must be some older recording somewhere!!!
And then!!!
There it was...
Sitting on the server at the Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive...
On an album from the early 60's...
Y'vonim...
This track on "Chanuko Sing with Seymour" featuring Seymour Silbermintz and The Boys
followed the book's sheet music PRECISELY!
That cleared up some major confusion I had regarding this particular melody, because
I had heard something so similar to it time and time again, but something was off every
time I looked at the sheet music.
Every version I've heard of it was altered from the original!
One specific example is on Shalhevet Orchestra's Ha'Neshama Lach Vol. 9, which, itself, features
FOUR versions of Yevanim!
I knew the melody of "Yevanim 4", as it's listed on the CD, sounded almost identical
to what I was reading on the sheet music, but other versions also had similarities
to it, so maybe it, too, was a different version.
But, finally, on hearing the 1963 version, I got my answer!
The Shalhevet version, the approximate melody I'd grown up knowing, is just a spiced-up
take on the original!
No, I didn't learn who the original composer was in the end - it's still just
"A traditional Chassidic folktune melody" - but getting as far as I did was eye-opening nonetheless.
We'll be doing the original melody today, so once you're finished up here and have it
in your head, why not follow the links to other versions below, and see if you can spot
the variations.
Let's get into the lyrics!
The lyrics go:
Y'vah-nim Neek-b'tzoo Ah-lai Ah-zai Bee-may Chash-mah-nim
The Greeks gathered to attack me in the days of the Chashmanim (the Hasmoneans).
Oo'far-tzu Cho-mot Mig-dah-lai V'tee-moo Kol Hash-mah-nim
They demolished my towers and defiled all the oils.
A lot of translations use the word "polluted" instead of "defiled", but, given that word
is tah-mei, which means impure, and that the act itself was making the oil, and everything
in the Temple impure, it just makes more sense to me.
Oo'mee-no-tar Kan-kah-nim Na'ah-sah Neis Lah-sho-shah-nim
And from the last of the pitchers (of oil) came a miracle for the Shoshanim
(a name for the Jews typically used in celebration, like in the song Shoshanat Yaakov)
B'nei Vee-nah, Y'mei Shmo-nah Kav-oo Shir Oo-rih-na'nim...
Men of wisdom, designated eight days of song and praise.
And, boom!
You've got Chanukah!
Finally, it's time for the melody!
The melody goes:
♪ Y'vah-nim, Y'vah-nim Neek-b'tzoo Ah-lai ♪ ♪ Ah-zai Bee-may Chash-mah-nim ♪
♪ Oo'far-tzu Cho-mot Mig-dah-lai ♪ ♪ V'tee-moo Kol Hash-mah-nim ♪
♪ Oo'mee-no-tar Kan-kah-nim ♪ ♪ Na'ah-sah Neis Lah-sho-shah-nim ♪
♪ B'nei Vee-nah, Y'mei Shmo-nah ♪ ♪ Kav-oo Shir Oo-rih-na'nim ♪
♪ B'nei Vee-nah, Y'mei Shmo-nah ♪ ♪ Kav-oo Shir Oo-rih-na'nim ♪
That's it for this week's lesson.
Check back soon for our sing-along to Y'vanim!
If you're enjoying our videos, be sure to subscribe and share.
We really appreciate the support.
Feel free to leave any comments or questions below!
I always try to get back to them.
Also, if you're looking to purchase some Chanukah music, I've included a couple of links below.
One is to a recently released album of Chanukah classics.
The other is to Mostly Music's complete Chanukah section!
Enjoy!
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I'm also occasionally on Twitter, under @jewishmusicto.
Thanks for watching, and bye for now!
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