Chad Gadya! What's the story behind the lyrics?

Does the singing of "Chad Gadyo" feature among your earliest and most powerful childhood Pesach memories? That beloved song -- now rebranded "Chad Gadya" -- remains eternally young even we we grow old. Here's Max Stern's arrangement of Chad Gadya for unaccompanied female voices. It's a real treat -- and it sounds much like the tune this blogger learned when he was a small child.  If you want to know more about the lyrics, read on. The information below is taken from Wikipedia.

Chad Gadya (Aramaic: חַד גַדְיָא, "one little goat", or "one kid"; Hebrew: "גדי אחד,  gedi echad") is a playful cumulative song in Aramaic and Hebrew. It brings to an end the Passover Seder. Curiously this song first appeared in print in a Haggadah compiled in Prague in 1590, which makes it the most recent inclusion in the traditional Passover seder liturgy.

As with any work of verse, Chad Gadya is open to interpretation. According to some modern Jewish commentators, what appears to be a light-hearted song is deeply symbolic. One interpretation is that Chad Gadya refers to the different nations that have conquered the Land of Israel:

·       The kid symbolizes the Jewish people;

·       the cat, Assyria;

·       he dog, Babylon;

·       the stick, Persia;

·       the fire, Macedonia;

·       the water, Roman Empire;

·       the ox, the Saracens;

·       the slaughterer, the Crusaders;

·       the angel of death, the Ottomans.

At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel. The recurring refrain of 'two zuzim' is a reference to the two stone tablets given to Moses on Mount Sinai (or to Moses and Aaron themselves). This interpretation, first widely disseminated in a pamphlet published in 1731 in Leipzig by Philip Nicodemus Lebrecht, has become quite popular, with many variations of which oppressor is represented by which character in the song.

Though commonly interpreted as an historical allegory of the Jewish people, the song may also represent the journey to self-development. The price of two zuzim, mentioned in every stanza, is (according to Targum Yonatan to I Shmuel 9:8) equal to the machtzit hashekel tax upon every adult Israelite male (in Shemot 30:13); making the price of two zuzim the price of a Jewish soul. 

Also, we have these explanations:

Rabbi Yaakov Emden: a list of the pitfalls and perils facing the soul during one's life.

Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschuetz: a highly abbreviated history of Israel from the Covenant of the Two Pieces recorded in Bereshit 15 (the two zuzim), to slavery in Egypt (the cat), the staff of Moses (the stick) and ending with the Roman conqueror Titus (the Angel of Death).

Rabbi Moshe Sofer (the Chatam Sofer): a description of the Passover ritual in the Temple of Jerusalem. There the goat is purchased for the Paschal sacrifice. The cat is an allusion to the Talmudic notion that dreaming of a cat is a premonition of singing such as occurs in the seder. Likewise, dogs bark after midnight which is the time limit for the seder. The Kohen who led the cleaning of the altar on Passover morning would use water to wash his hands; many people at the Temple that day would bring oxen as sacrifices, and the Angel of Death is the Roman Empire that destroyed the Second Temple.

The Vilna Gaon: the kid is the birthright that passed from Avraham to Yitzchak; the father is Yaakov; the two zumin is the meal Yaakov paid Eisav for his birthright; the cat is the envy of Yaakov’s sons toward Yosef; the dog is Egypt where Yosef and his clan were enslaved; the stick is the staff of Moshe; the fire the thirst for idolatry; the water the sages who eradicated idolatry; the ox is Rome; the shochet is the Messiah; the Angel of Death represents the death of Moshiach; the Holy One is God, who arrives with Moshiach.