My name is King Cyrus, my order I give,
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You Jews can go back to your home
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To build your holy temple again
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In the land of Palestine.
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We¡¯ve sung and danced o¡¯er the hot rocky roads
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Back to Eretz Yisroel¡¯s land
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We worked with plow and rake and hoe
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And we blessed the works of our hands
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My name is Ezra the Teacher man
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I brought my scroll book along
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I brought my flock to Yisroel
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From that land called Babylon
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I¡¯ll read you my Talmud Torah book
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And the prophet¡¯s dreams to you
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And you¡¯ll be fertile and multiply
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If you keep your Torah true
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My name is Alexander the Great
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More than half of this wide world is mine
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Come stand around, my servants all
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I¡¯m wrapped on my bed here to die
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As the King of Syria and Palestine
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Antiochus the Fourth, you¡¯ll stand
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To kill the Jews if they refuse
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To worship our idols and gods
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My name is Hannah, my first born son
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Now stands before this king
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Guilty of keeping the Sabbath laws
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By the soldiers I see him slain
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It¡¯s one by one my seven sons
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In front of my eyes cut down
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For keeping to the Torah laws
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I pay with my warm blood now
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My name is Mattathias, I¡¯ve got five sons
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In Modin City we dwell
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They tried to make me bow down to their gods
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Two of the King¡¯s flunkeys I killed
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A hundred or more who¡¯ll fight to be Jews
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Did come to these hills with me
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On my death bed your leader I¡¯ll name
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¡®Tis Judah, the Macabee
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My name is Judah, the Macabee
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By the name of the hammer I¡¯m called
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We¡¯ll pray to God before every fight
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Till all of our enemies fall
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Appolonius, the Governor, this day I killed
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And his army we did bust
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Some few of his soldiers run away in the wind
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But most we¡¯ve dropped dead in the dust
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Syron is my name, from Syria came
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To destroy that fool Macabee
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My army was great, his army was small
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But he somehow did win over me
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To deliver the many to the hands of his few
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For God this is no trick at all
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In a few short hours my army did break
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And we flooded this valley with blood
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My name is Lysias, I dreamed up a plan
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To burn the Jews tents as they slept
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When I got there, their tents were all bare
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And the Macabee¡¯s army had left
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He stormed my own camp as my soldiers did sleep
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And he killed several thousand in fear
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My elephants, my horsemen, my footsoldiers, all
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Judah hammered them down from the rear
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My name is Jerusalem where Judah came back
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To build up my Temple once more
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To cut down the weeds and thorny brush
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That grows ¡®round my windows and doors
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Whole stones, whole stones, we¡¯ll build and pray
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To God as a wholehearted Jew
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God¡¯s love the hateful many did place
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In the hands of a God loving few
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We found in our temple a little oil jug
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Just enough for the lamps for one night
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That one little jug burned Eight whole days
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And it kept our new temple in light
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Eight candles we¡¯ll burn and a Ninth one too
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Every New Year that comes and goes
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We¡¯ll think of the many in the hands of the few
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And thank God we are seeds of the Jews
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The Many and the Few
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Woody Guthrie |