I thank You, for You have answered me

This yotser (a poem recited in the blessing “who creates (yotser) light” in the morning service) is found in Ashkenazic prayer books for the second Sabbath of Hanukkah, an occasion that comes up only rarely, when the holiday both begins and ends on the Sabbath. It is not clear whether the poet intended the poem for this rare occurrence or simply for the regular annual Sabbath of Hanukkah, but the universal tradition throughout Ashkenaz (and northern France and northern Italy) was to recite “I give thanks to You” by Joseph bar Solomon as the yotser on the regular Sabbath of Hanukkah, so Menahem’s poem had to be assigned to the second Sabbath when there was one. Menahem starts the poem with the few biblical texts that predict the events of the post biblical Hasmonaean revolt, namely Zechariah 9:13 and various visions of Daniel. After this section, he begins to tell a story of Hanukkah, based on Midrash Hanukkah literature (this section has been elided in this translation) but then goes of in his own direction, gathering facts about the Hasmonaean wars preserved in various places in talmudic literature. He concludes with the famous story of the miraculous oil-cruse, rare in Ashkenazic liturgical poems for Hanukkah and, significantly, not found in “I give thanks to You.”