Handel's oratorio "Messiah" with the audience joining in the choruses -- is a musical highlight of the Christmas season. Christians, Jews and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music.The high point is the "Hallelujah" chorus, familiar from its use in strange surroundings, from Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part 1," where it signified the origins of music among cavemen, to television advertising for all-terrain vehicles.
So "Messiah" lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the "Hallelujah" chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel's day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God's promised messiah.
While Handel scholars and enthusiasts say that significant numbers of Jews attended the original performances of Handel's oratorios, they offer no compelling evidence. Most Jews in 18th century London were too poor to attend such concerts, and observant Jews would in any event have balked at the public use of the sacred, unutterable name of God in the oratorios, even though "Jehovah" was a Christian misunderstanding of the prohibited name.
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