The Many and the Few

My name is King Cyrus, my order I give,

You Jews can go back to your home

To build your holy temple again

In the land of Palestine.

We've sung and danced o'er the hot rocky roads

Back to Eretz Yisroel's land

We worked with plow and rake and hoe

And we blessed the works of our hands

My name is Ezra the Teacher man

I brought my scroll book along

I brought my flock to Yisroel

From that land called Babylon

I'll read you my Talmud Torah book

And the prophet's dreams to you

And you'll be fertile and multiply

If you keep your Torah true

My name is Alexander the Great

More than half of this wide world is mine

Come stand around, my servants all

I'm wrapped on my bed here to die

As the King of Syria and Palestine

Antiochus the Fourth, you'll stand

To kill the Jews if they refuse

To worship our idols and gods

My name is Hannah, my first born son

Now stands before this king

Guilty of keeping the Sabbath laws

By the soldiers I see him slain

It's one by one my seven sons

In front of my eyes cut down

For keeping to the Torah laws

I pay with my warm blood now

My name is Mattathias, I've got five sons

In Modin City we dwell

They tried to make me bow down to their gods

Two of the King's flunkeys I killed

A hundred or more who'll fight to be Jews

Did come to these hills with me

On my death bed your leader I'll name

'Tis Judah, the Macabee

My name is Judah, the Macabee

By the name of the hammer I'm called

We'll pray to God before every fight

Till all of our enemies fall

Appolonius, the Governor, this day I killed

And his army we did bust

Some few of his soldiers run away in the wind

But most we've dropped dead in the dust

Syron is my name, from Syria came

To destroy that fool Macabee

My army was great, his army was small

But he somehow did win over me

To deliver the many to the hands of his few

For God this is no trick at all

In a few short hours my army did break

And we flooded this valley with blood

My name is Lysias, I dreamed up a plan

To burn the Jews tents as they slept

When I got there, their tents were all bare

And the Macabee's army had left

He stormed my own camp as my soldiers did sleep

And he killed several thousand in fear

My elephants, my horsemen, my footsoldiers, all

Judah hammered them down from the rear

My name is Jerusalem where Judah came back

To build up my Temple once more

To cut down the weeds and thorny brush

That grows 'round my windows and doors

Whole stones, whole stones, we'll build and pray

To God as a wholehearted Jew

God's love the hateful many did place

In the hands of a God loving few

We found in our temple a little oil jug

Just enough for the lamps for one night

That one little jug burned Eight whole days

And it kept our new temple in light

Eight candles we'll burn and a Ninth one too

Every New Year that comes and goes

We'll think of the many in the hands of the few

And thank God we are seeds of the Jews