Playlist
* Mazel Tonk Brigid Kaelin 2:32
* Yodel Dreidel Joe Black & the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band 2:25
* The Dreidel Song Julie Silver 3:19
Today is the seventh day of Hanukkah, but in accordance with the ancient Jewish system of time-keeping which is still used for religious purposes, tonight beginning at sundown is the final night of the eight-day Jewish festival, and evening is when most of the festivities take place.
Mazel Tonk was written and is sung here by Brigid Kaelin. Brigid was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and still lives there. Besides being a touring and recording singer-songwriter and storyteller she’s a top-flight musician on the accordion and musical saw, and can do fancy pickin’ on anything with strings. Besides that, she is also a professional writer and illustrator. And those are just her side-gigs! Her real job is as the mother of two young boys. I got this song as a free download from her website.
Yodel Dreidel is from my favourite Hanukkah album, Eight Nights of Joy. It is a live concert recording of singer-songwriter Rabbi Joseph R. Black (who is now the Senior Rabbi with Temple Emmanuel in Denver) presenting a 2008 Hanukkah concert with the Chicago’s Maxwell Street Klezmer Band.
The third song is Julie Silver singing a rocked-up version of the familiar (and frankly otherwise rather boring) The Dreidl Song. It comes from her 2007 album It’s Chanukah Timewhich was recorded for Barns & Noble. That was their first-ever recording of Jewish music. It was also the only Jewish-content album to ever appear on the Billboard best-seller charts, peaking at #5 in 2009.
Julie was born and raised in Massachusetts but now lives in Southern California with her partner the TV producer Mary Connelly and their daughters Sarah and Katie. As a songwriter, many of her songs have become woven into the fabric of American Judaism, with many of them now commonly sung in worship, synagogue schools and camp settings. Like Brigid Kaelin, Julie is also a professional artist. The painting of a hanukkiah at the beginning of today’s post is by her.
The dreidel game
A dreidel (called a s'vivon in Hebrew) is a toy top that is used to play the most famous game associated with Hanukkah. When the top's spinning dies down it will fall with one of its four sides facing up, marked with the Hebrew letters נ (nun), ג (gimel), ח (hay) and ש (shin). Jewish folklore in North America attributes these letters to mean “a great miracle happened there.” However the Hebrew letters on a dreidel are equivalent to those on their German Yiddish counterparts and indicate the same four outcomes - pass, win everything, win half, or add to the pot - and the German letters do not match with that saying.
The same gambling game has roots going back to ancient Greece and Rome. Different versions have been played, or still are played, by many peoples in various languages. It might be more accurate to think of dreidel as a European game that converted to Judaism, perhaps in the 16th or 17th century.
These days dreidels are made from plastic or wood, not clay, and the song itself is nowhere near as ancient as the game. It was written only about 100 years ago. This article and its Wikipedia entry have differing versions of the song’s history. I consider the former to be more authoritative.
