Children of the Martyr Race

This afternoon, we walked up to Reed for the Portland Gay Men's Chorus holiday show. They did several Chanukah songs, including Rock of Ages -- not the "cleft for me" version that my husband the goy grew up with, but a translation of the Hebrew one called (well, transliterated as) Ma'oz Tsur. We sang it every year at this time when I was a kid growing up in a marginally-observant Reform Jewish family.

I was surprised, and intrigued, when the Chorus sang "children of the Maccabees," where I clearly remembered the line as "children of the martyr race." Surely this wasn't a 50-year-old Mondegreen? "Maccabees" works, and I thought it a masterful re-edit, if that's what it was. If you're unfamiliar with "Maccabee," Google "story of Chanukah" for the basics.

I did some Googling when we got home from the concert, enough to convince me that I hadn't hallucinated the memory. "Martyr race" is obviously un-PC, not because of "race," although that gives one pause also, but because of Zionism and the bloody intractable mess of Middle East politics since 1948. Interesting. I think I'd better leave it at that. But don't get me started on the spelling of Chanukah.