51 Once Upon a Hanukkah

'Once upon a Hanukkah/ the children were about to fall asleep/ the classroom was empty/ only the first candle still flickered/ silence, darkness, not a person in sight.../ the pots and pans were alone'. So begins Alterman's poem 'Nes Gadol Haya Poh', which tells about the Hanukkah game the household utensils played at night, after they recovered from their fear and said to the clock that had insulted them 'Shut up, fool. You talk nonsense. You yourself are nothing but a rag'. Primus Yehudah, aided by the Sabra flower pots – that is to say the Maccabim, defeated the Greek chairs and the tea kettle elephants that night.

We heard this wonderful poem in our childhood again and again and even dramatized it and fought, dressed up as a broom, a funnel, a primus and a puppy. Of course we knew it by heart from beginning to end and many of us can even now recite large parts of it from memory. The Hanukkah songs that we sang somewhat later in a choir, in four voices, included 'Here He Comes with His Army' to music from the oratorio 'Yehuda Maccabi' by Handel and 'Maoz tzur yeshuati' – also became part of us, and to this day I can sing the base part without a mistake.

'Once upon a Hanukkah' we would recite for our pleasure even when we were already grown up and would use ironic dramatization and extreme intonation in order to disguise our nostalgia. The photo shows us as we appeared in a 1971 Hanukkah party (at the time we were soldiers on leave) reading the poem. On the right are 'the chairs' Aryeh and Yaron, after them are Nachum 'the broom', Amos 'the primus' and myself 'the tea kettle'. And then Yigal 'the clock' and Amram 'the dreidle'.