Jewish Songs. In English.
New music by Walter J. Kin · English lyrics adapted from Olga Anikina · Performed by Riglis Band
The story of a song
Every Hanukkah, the same melody fills kitchens and classrooms around the world. Children spin dreidels, parents fry latkes, and somewhere in the background a familiar tune plays — the one that begins "Oh Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah." Most people who sing it have no idea it was written by a single man, in Yiddish, in a small town more than a century ago.
This is the story of that song. And why we wrote a new version of it for your children.
Why this matters
Hanukkah comes every year. That is the point. Not once, not occasionally — every single December, reliably, the Festival of Lights arrives and families light candles together. This is one of the most powerful forces in cultural transmission: repetition. A song heard at age five, again at eight, again at twelve, becomes part of how a person understands who they are.
Mordkhe Rivesman understood this when he wrote for children in Yiddish. He was not writing for scholars or concerts. He was writing for the kitchen table, for the moment before bedtime, for the youngest person in the room who doesn't yet know what any of this means but is already learning it through the melody.
"The song was written so children would know what Hanukkah feels like — not just what it means. That's still the goal."
— Walter J. Kin, on the project's approachToday, millions of Jewish families around the world speak neither Yiddish nor Hebrew as their first language. Their children grow up in English. And while there are English Hanukkah songs, most of them were written quickly, for commercial purposes, without the warmth and specificity of Rivesman's original.
The latkes on the stove. The dreidel spinning on the table. The frost on the window. The candle that might — just might — be a message from somewhere beyond. These are the images that make a child feel the holiday, not just know it.
To carry these songs — their warmth, their specificity, their cultural depth — into the languages that today's children actually speak. So the songs live. So the tradition continues. So Hanukkah feels the same way in English as it did in Yiddish in 1912.
This version uses original new music by Walter J. Kin — it is not a copy of Rivesman's melody. The title, the spirit, the imagery, and the structure honor the 1912 original, but the composition is new. This is deliberate: we are not trying to replace the original, we are adding a new voice to a living tradition. Every generation gets to write its own version. That is how folk songs survive.
Mordkhe Rivesman deserves to be remembered by name. He wrote one of the most beloved Hanukkah songs in history — and too few people know he existed. This page is, among other things, a small act of remembrance.
Credits
| Music & composition | Walter J. Kin (RIGLI) — original |
| English lyrics | Walter J. Kin — adapted from Anikina's Russian |
| Russian lyrics | Olga Anikina (commissioned, 2021) |
| Production | Walter J. Kin (RIGLI) |
| Performance | Riglis Band |
| Inspired by | "Khanike, Oy Khanike" — Mordkhe Rivesman (1912), music by Pesach Lvov |
| Project | Jewish Songs for All / JewishSong.org |
Lyrics · English version
Еврейские песни. По-русски.
The same spirit, in Russian — with the traditional Yiddish melody by Pesach Lvov. Russian poem by Olga Anikina. Performed by Elechka. For the 12 million Russian-speaking listeners who heard this song in their own language for the first time through this project.
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