Bob Schwartz

The story of the Hanukkah songs written by Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) is a wondrous musical miracle.

In more than 3,000 songs, including the true American national anthem This Land Is Your Land, Woody Guthrie chronicled the struggles of working-class Americans and championed labor rights, social justice, and resistance to oppression.

Then there is the story of Woody Guthrie and Hanukkah:

In 1942, Woody Guthrie moved to Brooklyn and married Marjorie Mazia, a Jewish dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. They lived across from Marjorie’s mother, Aliza Greenblatt, a respected Yiddish poet and activist. Through his close relationship with Greenblatt, Guthrie became acquainted with Judaism, studying Jewish texts and history and sharing songs with his mother-in-law.

In the late 1940s (primarily 1949-early 1950s), Guthrie wrote several Hanukkah songs, some for local Brooklyn community centers where he had bookings for children’s Hanukkah parties, and some for his own children. He identified the Jewish struggle with that of displaced Oklahomans and other oppressed peoples, filling notebooks with lyrics about Hanukkah, Jewish history, and spiritual life.

The remarkable twist came decades later. After Guthrie’s death in 1967, these songs sat forgotten in his archives for almost 30 years until his daughter Nora discovered the Hanukkah lyrics around 1998. Nora asked the Klezmatics, a Grammy-winning klezmer band, to compose new music for her father’s unpublished lyrics. The result was the 2006 album “Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah,” which blended klezmer with American folk and bluegrass.

If you don’t know much or enough about Woody Guthrie, Hanukkah or klezmer music, this is the perfect opportunity to listen and learn.