Plum Crazy

Or Chanukkah, Hanukkah, Hanukah, Hannukah, or however you spell it. What with everything that is going on these days, I'm going to do something I've never done before - Recycle blog posts. For the eight days of Chanukah 2004, I will recycle the posts I did for Chanukah 2003. After all, cool animated menorah plus Yiddish songs. Could I improve?

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. As is usual for me at this time of year, I started singing Jewish folk songs in my head. This reminded me of a time a few years ago when I was in shul on Rosh Hashanah. I was davening away, when suddenly I saw over to my left my favorite singer of folk songs - Theodore Bikel. I could not believe I was davening with Theodore Bikel. And of course the rabbi, knowing who he was, called him up to lead the congregation in a song. Not only was I davening with Theodore Bikel, but I got to hear him sing a song live. This was like a shul dream come true. Suddenly the long hours of stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down melted away. So in honor of that, I am going to share with you a few Jewish folk songs. The first two are actually performed by the Klezmer Conservatory Band (a fine klezmer band and my personal favorite). The last three are sung by Theodore Bikel. Click on the menorah to bring up the page with the songs, and then choose the song you wish to listen to.

Happy Chanukah to all! And a special thanks to BT for introducing me to this fabby program, Soundnails, which allows you to convert MP3s to flash files. No copyright concerns.

UPDATE: It occurs to me I should probably translate the Yiddish for those who have no idea what the song titles mean. Oy Chanukah, Oy Chanukah is pretty obvious. A Freiliche Nacht in Gan Eden means A Joyous Night in the Garden of Eden. Lomir Zich Iberbeten means Let's Make Peace. A balalayka is a Russian musical instrument. Lomir Alle Zingen means Let's All Sing.