Chad Gadya

Chad Gadya (1928 illustration)

As with any work of verse, Chad Gadya is open to interpretation. According to some modern Jewish commentators, what appears to be a light-hearted song may be symbolic. One interpretation is that Chad Gadya is about the different nations that have conquered the Land of Israel: The kid symbolizes the Jewish people; the cat, Assyria; the dog, Babylon; the stick, Persia; the fire, Macedonia; the water, Roman Empire; the ox, the Saracens; the slaughterer, the Crusaders; the angel of death, the Turks. At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel. The recurring refrain of 'two zuzim' is a reference to the two stone tablets given to Moses on Mount Sinai (or refer to Moses and Aaron). Apparently this interpretation was first widely published in pamphlet published in 1731 in Leipzig by Philip Nicodemus Lebrecht.[5] This interpretation has become quite popular, with many variations of which oppressor is represented by which character in the song.[6]

Though commonly interpreted as an historical allegory of the Jewish people, the song may also represent the journey to self-development. The price of two zuzim, mentioned in every stanza, is (according to the Targum Jonathan to First Samuel 9:8) equal to the half-shekel tax upon every adult Israelite male (in Exodus 30:13); making the price of two zuzim the price of a Jewish soul. In an article first published in the Journal of Jewish Music & Liturgy in 1994, Rabbi Kenneth Brander, the co-author of The Yeshiva University Haggadah, summarized the interpretations of three rabbis: (1) Rabbi Jacob Emden in 1975, as a list of the pitfalls and perils facing the soul during one's life. (2) Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschuetz (1690–1764) as a very abbreviated history of Israel from the Covenant of the Two Pieces recorded in Genesis 15 (the two zuzim), to slavery in Egypt (the cat), the staff of Moses (the stick) and ending with the Roman conqueror Titus (the Angel of Death). And (3) from Rabbi Moses Sofer, the Hatim Sofer (1762–1839), in which the song described the Passover ritual in the Temple of Jerusalem – the goat purchased for the Paschal sacrifice, according to the Talmud dreaming of a cat is a premonition of singing such as occurs in the seder, the Talmud also relates that dogs bark after midnight which is the time limit for the seder, the priest who led the cleaning of the altar on Passover morning would use water to wash his hands, many people at the Temple that day would bring oxen as sacrifices, the Angel of Death is the Roman Empire that destroyed the Second Temple, etc.[7] The Vilna Gaon interpreted that the kid is the Birthright that passed from Abraham to Isaac; the father is Jacob; the two zumin is the meal Jacob paid Esau for his birthright; the cat is the envy of Jacob sons toward Joseph; the dog is Egypt where Joseph and his clan were enslaved; the stick is the staff of Moses; the fire the thirst for idolatry; the water the sages who eradicated idolatry; the ox is Rome; the shochet is the Messiah; the Angel of Death represents the death of the Messiah]; the Holy One is the L-d who arrives with the Messiah.[8]

Descriptions of Chad Gadya being "entirely in Aramaic" are in error; the song is mix of Aramaic and Hebrew and indicates that the composer's grasp of Aramaic was limited. For example, the song begins with ḥad gadya, which is Aramaic, instead of the Hebrew form gədi ʾeḥad, and for the cat the Aramaic shunra instead of the Hebrew ḥatul and for the dog the Aramaic kalba instead of the Hebrew kelev, etc., but, towards the end of the song, we find the slaughterer is the Hebrew ha-shoḥet instead of the Aramaic nakhosa and the Angel of Death is the Hebrew malʾakh ha-mavet instead of the Aramaic malʾach mota and, finally, "the Holy One, blessed be He" is the Hebrew ha-qadosh barukh hu whereas the Aramaic would be qudsha bərikh hu.[9] Moreover, the Aramaic grammar is sloppy, for example. "then came the [masculine form] cat and [feminine form] ate".[10] The suggestion that the song was couched in Aramaic to conceal its meaning from non-Jews[11] is also in error, since its first publication included a full German translation.

Versions of the song exist in Yiddish, Ladino (Un cavritico), Judaeo-Italian and Judaeo-Arabic.

The words "dizabin abah" (דְּזַבִּין אַבָּא) in the second line of the song literally mean "which father sold", rather than "which father bought". The Aramaic for "which father bought" is "dizvan abah" (דִּזְבַן אַבָּא), and some Haggadot have that as the text.[12]

Last page of 1919 Had Gadya, hand of God killing the Angel of Death. See full book.

In 1917 and 1919 Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky created two variants of the book Had Gadya.[13] Lissitzky's used Yiddish for the book verses, but introduced each verse in a traditional Aramaic, written in Hebrew alphabet.[14] These two versions differs in style: art historians Dukhan and Perloff called the 1917 version "an expressionist decorativism of color and narrative"[15] and "a set of brightly colored, folklike watercolors",[14] respectively, and 1919 "marked by a stylistic shift ... the treatment of forms becomes essentially more structural and every list reflects a topological invariant of the whole series in Of Two Squares".[15]

Two versions also differ in narrative: "if in the variant of 1917 the Angel of Death is depicted as cast down but still alive, that of 1919 shows him as definitely dead, and his victims (an old man and a kid) as resurrected." Dukhan treats these differences as Lissitzky's sympathies towards the October Revolution, after which Jews of the Russian Empire were liberated from discrimination.[15] Perloff also thinks that Lissitzky "viewed the song both as a message of Jewish liberation based on the Exodus story and as an allegorical expression of freedom for the Russian people." She also noted that "the hand of God is strikingly similar to an image of a hand that appeared on one of the first series of stamps printed after the revolution of 1917. On the stamp, the hand is clearly a symbol of the Soviet people. And the angel of death, who is depicted as dying in the set of illustrations from 1917, is now dead—clearly, in light of the symbolic link to the czar, killed by the force of the revolution."[14]

The cover of 1919 edition was designed in abstract suprematist forms.[15]

Chad Gadya column in Castra center, Haifa

• A controversial anti-war version of Chad Gadya was composed by Israeli singer Chava Alberstein. There were calls for the song to be banned on Israeli radio in 1989, although it became very well-known and is now frequently played during Passover.[16][17][18][19] The soundtrack of the 2005 film Free Zone includes the song.[20]
• In the Season 1, episode 14 of The West Wing "Take This Sabbath Day", the rabbi of Toby Ziegler's temple references this story as a deterrence against capital punishment and mentions that vengeance is not Jewish.[21][22]
• It is source of the title A Kid for Two Farthings, a 1953 novel written by Wolf Mankowitz, the basis of a 1955 film and 1996 musical play.[23]
• It was featured in the American television series NCIS in the season 7 opener "Truth or Consequences" by Abby and McGee, and then was sung jokingly in a scene by DiNozzo in another season 7 episode titled "Reunion". McGee explains that they accessed Mossad's encrypted files, "but they weren't in English, so we had to do a little bit of rudimentary linguistics. It's a Hebrew school nursery rhyme." Chad Gadya (One Little Goat). McGee and Abby start to enthusiastically sing along with the nursery rhyme."[24]
• The recording "A Different Night" by the group Voice of the Turtle has 23 different versions of Chad Gadya in all different languages.[25]
• The Israeli satirical team Latma has created a parody "Chad Bayta" ("One House"), to the tune of "Chad Gadya", which tells the story of a house in the settlements. Instead of a cat, a dog, a stick, and so on,the song features a person who snoops; the newspaper Haaretz, Benyamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni, Barack Obama, Ahmadinejad, and the UN, among others.[26][27][28]
• It is sung in the seder scene of the 1999 film The Devil's Arithmetic, with Kirsten Dunst.
• In Italy the song has become very popular since the 1970s, when the Italian folk singer and composer Angelo Branduardi recorded it with the title of Alla fiera dell'est.
• It is the name of a theatre company based in Toronto, Canada: One Little Goat Theatre Company
• It is the subject of a lesson at the Hebrew school in Henry Roth's 1934 novel Call It Sleep.
• Jack Black sings an English translation of the song on YouTube with his classic heavy-metal flair.[29] He also sings it a capella as a bonus track on the 2021 holiday compilation album Hanukkah + (Verve Forecast/Universal).
• Comedian Gilbert Gottfried mentions it in passing, without naming it, in some of his performances of the infamous joke The Aristocrats.
• A version sung by Moishe Oysher was included in Nina Paley's Seder-Masochism.[30]

• In Yiddish slang, the term "chad gadya" is a euphemism for jail. A prisoner is said to languish in a chad gadya – that is, all alone.[31]
• Chad Gadya was the pseudonym of Marousia (Miriam) Nissenholtz, the only female student at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem in 1912.[32]

• Passover songs

• חַד גַּדְיָא | Ḥad Gadya in Aramaic and Yiddish (Prague Haggadah, ca. 1526) Transcription by Aharon N. Varady of the Aramaic and Medieval Yiddish lyrics of Chad Gadya from the 1526 Prague Haggadah at the Open Siddur Project
• Fonda, Batya One Only Kid at jewishfolksongs.com
• Naor, Amit Is “Chad Gadya” the First Children’s Song in Recorded History? 5 April 2020 at blog.nli.org.il

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