Mrs Maccabee's Kitchen new Hanukah music program at the Fearrington Havurah

We're doing a show of our new Hannukah music (plus material from the Cabaret Warsaw show) at the Fearrington Havurah on December 9, 2014.

Hey, hey, oy vey! Two concerts of Yiddish music from the Jazz Age December 2013 in North Carolina

So are we crazy to be doing this? Hanukah will be long over and Jews will be languishing in a world of "Deck the Halls" but Mappamundi and friends will be presenting two shows of rollicking high-energy Yiddish music wildly popular in kleynkunst and Yiddish cabaret venues in Warsaw Poland between the wars. Subtitles projected on the wall so you don't miss any of the jokes. Advance tickets and more information at CabaretWarsaw.com.

This fabulous poster courtesy of Roger Lynn Spears, one of our two (!) pianists for the night:

The TJC Hanukah Songbook: Now also available as a pdf digital download

I was music director for the "Cantor Corps" at Temple Judea Reform in Durham and directed the Triangle Jewish Chorale for fourteen years. Before that, I directed a group called the Solstice Assembly which put on many winter shows incorporating music from Jewish traditions. We made three recordings and each included Hannukah music.

Every year for fourteen years, the Triangle Jewish Chorale was expected to present an annual Chanukah concert. So I had to assemble a good collection of Hannukah music arranged in two- to four-part harmony.

After I quit directing the chorale, for sentimental reasons I had to put the songs in a book and here it is! with guitar (piano) chords where appropriate.

The pages are big, the scores are beautiful, the cover is pretty.

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You can click here: The TJC Hanukah Songbook at Amazon's CreateSpace and buy a print-on-demand copy. The book is 8 x 10. They ship very quickly, directly to you or to any address if you're buying it for a gift.

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Or you can buy this songbook as a multi-page pdf file via PayPal: you can print it out yourself, or you can email it to kinko's or take it on a flashdrive and have them print it. Then you can punch holes in the pages and put it in a binder so it sits nicely on your music stand. Click to buy the book for $6.50 and I'll email it to you within two days.

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Contents of the TJC Hannukah Songbook

Banu Chosech

Cuando el Rey Nimrod: "When King Nimrod went out into the fields, he saw a star shining over the Jewish quarter, a sign that Abraham our father was to be born." Perhaps the timeline is a little confused but it's a gorgeous song from the Sephardic tradition.

Drey, dreydele

Drive Cold Winter Away

Hanerot halalu

Hanerot Halalu (Hasidic version)

Hanukah (Frankel)

Hayo, haya

Hinei Ba


Imi nahtna leviva-li

Khanukah iz freylekh

Let Memory Keep Us All: I wrote the lyrics for this one and set them to the English traditional tune called "The Death of Admiral Nelson." We performed it long ago in the annual Solstice Extravaganza,

Ma-oz Tsur (Italian version)

Ma-oz Tsur (Sunday school)

Mi-ymalel

Mizmor xir

Ner-li

Nerot dolkim

Nerotai

Oy, ir kleyne likhtelekh!

Oy, khanukah!

Shnirele perele: An ecstatic song about the coming of Messiah. "A string of pearls, a golden fan: Meshiakh sits making a blessing over the whole world." I learned this at klezkamp. (When the Solstice Assembly made the recording above, in the late 1990s, I hadn't learned Yiddish yet so there are some pronunciation bloopers.)

Simu shemen

Svivon sov sov sov

Time to Remember the Poor

Y'vanim

Yom Zeh l'Yisroel

"What is that strange picture you painted on your Hanukkah Songbook cover?"

The cover for the Triangle Jewish Chorale Hanukah Songbook was inspired by a fragment of pavement from Beth Alpha Synagogue, 500 C.E. I found the peculiar picture of a menorah, bears (?), fruit, birds, and a house at a uga.edu website captioned: From BAR International Series 499, 1989, Unidentical Symmetrical Composition in Synagogal Art, by Rachel Hachlili, pp. 65, Plate XXXIII. I fiddled with it a bit and painted my own version. I find its eccentricity satisfying.

Hannukah (Hanukkah) is VERY EARLY this year! It starts on Thanksgiving!

It's going to be hard for people to get into the mood for lighting the Hanukkah candles at the same time they're stuffing their faces with turkey. But if you're looking for a good Chanukah present, this cd would be an excellent choice. It's not too identified with snow.

Ain't Nobody's Business What I Do

My theme song!

Putting the Mrs. Maccabee concert to bed for the year

We had a great last concert of the Mrs Maccabee's Kitchen cd program last night. We were fed a fabulous dinner and then we got a standing ovation when we were finished! All the trouble it took to figure out how to have the song lyrics up on the wall behind us paid off - people sang along, even though they'd never heard the songs before. Very satisfying.

We'll be presenting our funny Hanukah songs tonight at Beth Israel Congregation in Fayetteville, NC

This was the first of the Mrs. Maccabbee's songs, we premiered it at last year's Hanukkah party at Beth Israel in Fayetteville, NC, and tonight we'll be back there doing the whole show, and also playing for Israeli dancing. They have the biggest menorah in North Carolina, I think, it's right out on the street (2204 Morganton Road). If you're in the area, come watch them throw the first switch at 6 pm!

Hear our new Hanukah music at Beth Israel congregation in Fayetteville, NC

Aviva Enoch and Jane Peppler will be presenting their program of funny, clever, silly, irreverent new Hanukkah songs at the Beth Israel Synagogue in Fayetteville, NC, December 8, 2012. The candle lighting begins at 7 pm and the program is right afterwards.

Temple Beth Israel has the biggest menorah in North Carolina, I bet. It's right out at the road so everybody passing by can see it. I love it. The synagogue is at 2204 Morganton Road.

New Hanukkah music concert at the Levin Jewish Community Center, Durham NC

We'll be presenting a free pre- Hannukah concert of our new Chanukah music at the Durham JCC at 3:30 on Sunday, November 18: Jane Peppler & Aviva Enoch, songs from "Mrs. Maccabee's Kitchen."

The concert will be an hour long and there'll be copies of our Hanukkah cd as well as our two earlier recordings on sale. (That would be "I Can't Complain (but sometimes I still do)" and "Cabaret Warsaw: Yiddish and Polish Hits of the 1920s & 1930s.)

You can listen to all our music, all the way through, at our record label site, Skylark Productions.

And in case that's not enough wonderfulness, right after our presentation, at 4:30, right across the hall, Frank Stasio (The State of Things) and Rabbi Steve Sager will be presenting "A Conversation on the State of Faith." It's happening at the Durham JCC!

Videos from our "Hanukkah in September" concert on YouTube

This is one of the songs we sang on a very hot day in September, the first time we tried doing this music in person so it's a bit rough! The cd is better. Thanks to our videographer Paul Deblinger.

The new Hanukkah music is here! Get your red-hot cds!

You can now purchase these funny new Hannukah songs on an actual cd from our record label site, and if you buy the cd you can also download all the tracks for free. New Hanukkah music from Jane Peppler and Aviva Enoch: Mrs Maccabee's Kitchen.

Animated music video: Pawn Shop Menorah

It's so much fun trying to figure out how to make music videos at http://goanimate.com. For this one I tried to capture moments from the girl band "The Crystals" and make vector drawings of them, then turn them into flash animations. However, I'm not very good at it so they look like jelly girls. The little people are furnished with the program. I wanted the menorah to glow but they don't have a "glow" setting - but at the suggestion of some of the pros at the goanimate forum I was able to set an "energy ball" behind the prop to get a similar effect. You can buy this song for 80 cents: Pawn Shop Menorah.