THE RADIO SHOW THAT MEANS HANUKKAH TO L.A. LISTENERS.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Music Writer

Ruth Seymour remembers the first time she went on the air with the Hanukkah special ``Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools.''

The year was 1979, and her full-fledged salute to the then-vanishing culture of Eastern European Jews had been on the air at KCRW-FM (89.9) - then a tiny outlet operating out of a two-room studio on the playground of a junior high school - for the duration of three hours.

She says the switchboard had never been so dark.

``I was convinced I had killed,'' Seymour says with a big laugh, because just then, she recalls, the phone started ringing off the hook. And it kept on ringing even as the stunned general manager was locking up the place several hours later.

Today the show has become a part of the holiday landscape at the station, now a national powerhouse based out of Santa Monica College and with an audience of half a million.

In fact, before lighting menorahs on Friday night, the first night of Hanukkah, many of those people will be tuning in to Seymour's 25th-anniversary salute to all things Yiddish.

It's a tradition Jews and non-Jews alike have come to expect and ask for.

``Around the beginning of December they call and say, 'When is she doing her Hanukkah show?' And the poor volunteers answering the phone, who may have worked there all of three days, are trying to figure out who 'she' is, and what the Hanukkah show is because it has a title,'' Seymour says.

With the exception of new material, little about the program - a mix of music and storytelling - has changed since its inception.

It opens with folk music, followed by a Holocaust memorial, a short story and a hit parade of Yiddish popular culture. For the story segment, this year Seymour has selected ``Androgynous'' by the late Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.

The gender-bending tale about a widowed rabbi who marries a hermaphrodite, with whom he lives happily ever after, had previously been available only in Hebrew until Sept. 29, when an English translation of the story appeared in the New Yorker.

``It's a typical Singer story in many ways,'' says Seymour, herself, a celebrated torchbearer of Yiddish - in 1999, she was recognized for her ``service to Yiddish language and culture'' by the Workmen's Circle.

Having studied with the great Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich as a 16-year-old girl in New York, Seymour carries on those teachings with the broadcast of stories like Singer's, as read by actor Theodore Bikel.

``It illustrates a particular attitude toward God, toward life and, I must say, in this particular story, about sex,'' Seymour says with another big laugh. ``It reflects an aspect of Judaism that isn't terribly well understood - and that is a sense about God, which is quite interesting.

``The narrator is saying to God ... 'Why do I, a speck of dust, have to bow down before you? It's no great accomplishment if you're the Almighty,' '' she continues. ``So I think it's a mixture of comedy and seriousness - and certainly of great faith. And a belief, I think, in erudition and scholarship.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

PHILOSOPHERS, FIDDLERS AND FOOLS

Where: KCRW-FM (89.9) or www.kcrw.com.

When: Noon to 3 p.m. Friday.

Description: A three-hour radio Hanukkah special that celebrates Yiddish language and culture through music and storytelling.

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``It's a mixture of comedy and seriousness - and certainly of great faith,'' says ``Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools'' host Ruth Seymour.