This week I was asked to spend a half hour with the cast of Transcendence Theater Company of Sonoma. This talented group were busy rehearsing their annual Christmas show and had settled on performing the Chanukah song, Ma’oz Tzur – “Rock of Ages.” They asked me to come and speak with the cast about the song.

I’ve done things with the Transcendence cast before. It’s always a thrill and an honor to be in a room of such talent and energy. But my heart sank a little bit. Ma’oz Tzur? For me, Maoz Tzur was just an obligatory song, not especially interesting, sitting alongside other arguably tired fare, such as “O Chanukah, O Chanukah” and “I Had a Little Dreidl.” It was too familiar to be of interest and not deserving of my curiosity.

But now I had the job of saying something intelligent about it. So I had to give it a second look, which really was, I’m ashamed to say, my first look. What I found was something much richer than I’d ever noticed; older and slyer than I’d given credit. As it unfolded, it threaded itself with elements of my own story, as is always the case once I give something my full attention. So at the risk of geeking out unmercifully, I’d like to unpack Ma’oz Tzur with you, because I am now filled with excitement and it is my life’s work to make sure you are as excited as I.

First off, the basic bio. Ma’oz Tzur is a medieval piyyut from the Rhineland in old Ashkenaz, from the 12th or 13th Century. Its formal tricks are probably familiar to you from other piyyutim that I have brought here. It is six stanzas long. The first letter of the first five stanzas spell out the name Mordecai, the poet, who left his fingerprint on the poem in this way, but maybe not quite enough of one, because there is much disagreement among scholars about what Mordecai it is.

The poem has a strict and very appealing rhyme scheme that goes like this: A-B-A-B-B-B-C-C-B. That might go easier if we try it with the actual words. So, the first stanza:

Ma’oz tzur yeshuati. – That’s A.
Lekha na’eh l’shabeach. – That’s B.
Tikon beyt tefilati. – That’s A again.
V’sham todah n’zabeach. – B again.
L’eyt takhin matbeach. – Again B.
Mitzar ham’nabeach. – And B again.
Az egmor b’shir mizmor. – This is new: a quick internal rhyme like in the middle of a limerick.
Chanukat hamizbeach. – And one last B rhyme for good measure.

Each of the stanzas maintains this strict rhyme scheme, each stanza identical in terms of its formal structure and constraints.

But the content of the stanzas varies and builds. Together they bring us on a tour of the persecutions of Jewish history and of our survival in each case. The first stanza, with the lyric Chanukat Hamizbeach, “the dedication of the altar,” is clearly about Chanukah. The second verse, with its reference to Pharaoh and the Kingdom of the Calf, is about our bondage in and liberation from Egypt. The third verse is about the Babylonian Conquest in 586 BC. The fourth verse references the story of Purim, referring to Haman as “the son of Hammedata the Agagite.” And the fifth verse returns us to the Chanukah story, talking about the defilement of the oil for the Temple, and the miracle that was “wrought for the lilies” – the shoshanim, a poetic nickname for the Jewish people.

Then there is this cryptic sixth verse that was only published in the 1700s. It is uncertain whether it is original and had been passed along only orally, or whether it is a later addition. It brings the listener from the persecutions of the past into the persecutions of that present moment, the Middle Ages in Christian Europe. This is a poet who knew exiles and persecutions. He might have lived through the first Crusade in 1096 when, filled with fervor to “liberate” the Holy Land from Muslim rule, Crusaders swept through the Rhineland, massacring Jewish communities on their way. This was a time when Jews lived in frequent terror. The sixth stanza is both a lament and a plea for vengeance. If this stanza is original, it is no wonder that it did not officially go to print.

Okay, so the poem is so much more than I’d realized. So why else did I never pay close attention to this song?

Maybe it was the music. Maybe because of the music I’d discounted the poem. Too sweet, too simple, almost a children’s melody. Like a Christmas song. Not Jewish sounding at all! Not a minor chord in it! It’s like cooking without salt!

As it turns out, the reason it feels old-fashioned is because it is very old-fashioned. A melody from the 1400s, a German folk song. A tune that others put words onto as well, including Martin Luther himself. The Ma’oz Tzur poem has been sung to other melodies in the Jewish world, but this is the one that caught on in Germany, and this is the one that was transplanted has rooted itself so firmly in America. For many of us this is the Ma’oz Tzur of our childhoods – and our entire lives.

The next layer of the story takes place in America, and it has to do with the English translation called “Rock of Ages.” The word Tzur of Ma’oz Tzur does mean “rock” but the phrase doesn’t mean “Rock of Ages.” So why use that phrase? When this translation first appears, there’s already an Anglican hymn with that name, popular since the 1770s: Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee...

And looking closely at this three-stanza translation, we realize it isn’t a translation at all, but really a new poem altogether. It covers similar themes, and has a similar meter and rhyme scheme, but written in an exalted anthem style.

It turns out this “Rock of Ages” version was written by two 19th-Century Prussian-born Reform rabbis, who were also scholars, semiticists, and somewhat controversial figures in America: Gustav Gottheil and Marcus Jastrow. As any rabbinical student can attest, Marcus Jastrow wrote the definitive dictionary of Talmudic Hebrew, still in use. If you’re reading Talmud, you’re also reaching for the Jastrow. My own copy has never been more than arm’s distance in over 40 years. For me, Jastrow was only ever a dictionary, not a person. But I was wrong. With Gottheil, he set about remaking American Judaism in many ways. And before he came to America in the 1860s, he’d spent several years as the chief rabbi of Worms, the city that has always captured my imagination, and where I took my sabbatical last year.

“Rock of Ages,” unlike the original Ma’oz Tzur, does not ask for vengeance. Instead, in lofty words that my teacher Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan compares to the “Star Spangled Banner,” it calls for an end not only to Jewish suffering, but to all tyranny. Its final stanza identifies a prophetic role for the Jewish Diaspora, who have suffered and been martyred in history, to instead lead a call for true and universal freedom:

Children of the martyr race
[Alt: Children of the holy God]
whether free or fettered,
wake the echoes of that song
where you may be scattered.
Yours the message cheering
that the time is nearing
which will see all set free,
tyrants disappearing.

So when we gather next week around the candles and begin to sing Ma’oz Tzur, we can notice how we are reaching back not only to the dark times described in the Chanukah story but further, to Egypt and Babylonia, and forward to the Rhineland, and the Crusades; and then through the great Reform synagogues of New York and Philadelphia; pointing toward a return of the light, pointing toward a dream – an old-fashioned American-style dream – of a land where Jews can live without fear and where all tyranny will one day be just a memory.

May it be so.

Rock of Ages

Rock of Ages let our song,
Praise thy saving power;
Thou amidst the raging foes,
Wast our sheltering tower.
Furiously they assailed us,
But Thine arm availed us
And Thy word broke their sword,
When our own strength failed us.

Kindling new the holy lamps,
priests, approved in suffering,
purified the nation’s shrine,
brought to God their offering.
And His courts surrounding,
hear, in joy abounding,
Happy throngs, singing songs
with a mighty sounding.

Children of the martyr race
[Alt: Children of the Holy God],
whether free or fettered,
wake the echoes of that song
where you may be scattered.
Yours the message cheering
that the time is nearing
which will see all set free,
tyrants disappearing.

(Marcus Jastrow & Gustav Gottheil, 19th Century, US)