Merissa! Sorry I'm so slow to reply. I've been trying to net-search, but it's just about impossible to do a net search in a language you don't speak.
wink What I'd like is to translate the lyrics of Maoz Tzur. Normally they're translated in a fairly free way, so that the English rhymes, but I think that a stricter translation would convey more of the story. Also, I'd like to find a French translation of the Book of Maccabees, which is in the Catholic bible, the Protestant apocrypha, and is part of Jewish literature but not canonized -- if all that information helps you find it. Or even just a little bit about the story of Chanukah, in French.
"Maoz Tzur" (Mighty Stronghold)
Mighty stronghold of my salvation,
to praise You is a delight.
Restore my House of Prayer
and there we will bring a thanksgiving offering.
When You will have prepared the slaughter
for the blaspheming foe,
Then I shall complete with a song of hymn
the dedication of the Altar.
My soul had been sated with troubles,
my strength has been consumed with grief.
They had embittered my life with hardship,
with the calf-like kingdom's bondage.
But with His great power
He brought forth the treasured ones,
Pharaoh's army and all his offspring
Went down like a stone into the deep.
To the holy abode of His Word He brought me.
But there, too, I had no rest
And an oppressor came and exiled me.
For I had served aliens,
And had drunk benumbing wine.
Scarcely had I departed
At Babylon's end Z'rubavel came.
At the end of seventy years I was saved.
To sever the towering cypress
sought the Aggagite, son of Hammedatha,
But it became [a snare and] a stumbling block to him
and his arrogance was stilled.
The head of the Benjaminite You lifted
and the enemy, his name You obliterated
His numerous progeny - his possessions -
on the gallows You hanged.
Greeks gathered against me
then in Hasmonean days.
They breached the walls of my towers
and they defiled all the oils;
And from the one remnant of the flasks
a miracle was wrought for the roses.
Men of insight - eight days
established for song and jubilation
Bare Your holy arm
and hasten the End for salvation -
Avenge the vengeance of Your servants' blood
from the wicked nation.
For the triumph is too long delayed for us,
and there is no end to days of evil,
Repel the Red One in the nethermost shadow
and establish for us the seven shepherds.
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