Approaching the Festival of Chanukka,
I remember all the other Festivals,
the songs of which have not yet been recorded
in my 2007 Song-Game.
Had
Gadia - one little kid
This is the most famous, so-called "funny",
but horrendous Pesach-Song
about a chain of cruel killing.
It seems, that
most people are not at all aware,
what they are singing.
It was the singer Hava Alberstein,
popular for the last 40 years,
who has modified
the text in a way,
that one has no choice but to become aware!
Still, "The New Psalm of Israel", which I prefer,
and which we have been singing
ever since I've been celebrating Pesach (since 1964),
is a total turn-around of the chain,
instead deteriorating from killing to killing
it grows from a singing shepherd on a hill
into a full-fledged agricultural farm,
on which a song is sung
to celebrate a new life in the land of Israel.
Simply fantastic!
Another traditional song,
"ve-hi-shae-amdah",
which is a central part of the Pesach-Hagada,
is not less horrendous in my eyes:
It expresses total surrender to the "fact",
that "in every generation"
we are meant "to be wiped out",
and only the Holy-one-Blessed-be-he
"saves us from their hands".
What makes me mad,
is not only this claim,
which is sheer denial of the Holocaust,
but the self-victimization,
which is proclaimed not in a moment of despair,
but sung amidst a joyous celebration.
When I happen to celebrate Pesach
in other people's houses,
I never can keep quiet, when it comes to
"ve-hi-shae-amdah".
I shall not even record it on this page.
