The stanza begins with an appeal to God (“the rock of my salvation”), affirming that it is only He who should be the proper object of praise and adoration, with the second line perhaps referring to the practice of Jewish martyrs during the persecutions of the twelfth century to recite ״עלינו לשבח״ at the time of their execution. The first and last stanzas are both written in the present tense and complement each other, and thus express the mindset and wishes of the poet at the time of the composition of the hymn. (This, ostensibly, constitutes the official reason for the association of the hymn with the festival of Chanukah.) The four middle stanzas narrate, in the past tense, the events of four persecutions of the Jews: the Egyptian exile, the Babylonian exile, the persecution of the Jews by Haman in the Persian Empire as narrated in the Book of Esther, and finally, the Greek attempt to enforce Hellenistic religion and culture during the Hasmonean period. The six stanzas of the poem are divided into two main units. Quite ironically, even though it has strong anti-Christian elements, its most famous mellow melody derives from a sixteenth-century Protestant Choral. The acrostic formed from the first letters of the first five stanzas give us the name of the author: Mordechai, though little if anything is known about the identity of this Mordechai. Through the centuries the hymn was adopted by the vast majority of Jewish communities, and became the piece of liturgy most associated with the festival of Chanukah. The poem’s style attests to the influence of the literary devices and norms of the Sefardic Piyyut. It was written in late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Ashkenaz. Maʿoz Tzur is the most popular of the Chanukah hymns.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |