{"id":37849,"date":"2021-11-19T01:17:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T09:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=37849"},"modified":"2021-11-18T16:56:46","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T00:56:46","slug":"a-story-of-hava-nagila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/a-story-of-hava-nagila\/","title":{"rendered":"A story of Hava Nagila"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Among Intergalactic Afikoman\u2019s newest\u00a0picture books is <em>I Am Hava: A Song\u2019s Story of Love, Hope &amp; Joy<\/em>, written by Freda Lekowicz and illustrated by Siona Benjamin. It tells the story of the song \u201cHava Nagila,\u201d from its birth as a <em>niggun<\/em> (melody without words) in Ukraine, to Jerusalem, to when it received its name and lyrics (though exactly from whom is still a mystery), and its journey around the world to popularity well beyond the Jewish community.<\/p>\n<p><em>Hava Nagila<\/em> means \u201cCome and Rejoice,\u201d explains the book, and this story \u2013 told by the song herself, personified as a blue-skinned Indian-Jewish girl in a sari \u2013 is full of movement and colour. It boldly celebrates the diversity of the Jewish people and our culture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, Hava\u2019s story is a story of universality and multiculturalism,\u201d Benjamin, who grew up as a Bene Israel Jew in India, writes at the end of the book. \u201cUniversality is always born from the specifics. The specifics for me are my Jewishness, my Indianness and my Americanness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany blue-skinned characters populate my paintings,\u201d she continues. \u201cHava is blue because blue is the colour of the sky and the ocean. Blue is the colour of the globe. Blue is also such a Jewish colour. It\u2019s in the tallit. It\u2019s in the tzitzit. It\u2019s in the Israeli flag.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Montreal-born Lekowicz also connects personally with the story. She shares that her parents, after the Holocaust, were in a displaced persons camp in Germany. \u201cLike other Holocaust survivors,\u201d she writes, \u201cthey were broken and in mourning. Yet the joyful sounds of Hava Nagila sometimes echoed in the camp. \u2018Let us celebrate,\u2019 it urged. The song symbolized hope and resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This lovely and imaginative book does joyous justice to this well-known song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among Intergalactic Afikoman\u2019s newest\u00a0picture books is I Am Hava: A Song\u2019s Story of Love, Hope &amp; Joy, written by Freda Lekowicz and illustrated by Siona Benjamin. It tells the story of the song \u201cHava Nagila,\u201d from its birth as a niggun (melody without words) in Ukraine, to Jerusalem, to when it received its name and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[21030,7599,21033,21031,4242,9637,3036,21034,21029],"class_list":["post-37849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-childrens-book","tag-diversity","tag-freda-lekowicz","tag-hava-nagila","tag-history","tag-intergalactic-afikoman","tag-music","tag-siona-benjamin","tag-songs"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}