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.