A Holiday Tradition of Their Own : Hanukkah: Jewish families find that the annual concert, now in its fifth year, provides music, fun and cultural meaning.

On Sunday, Steven and Bobbie Black of Northridge and their four children will attend a Hanukkah event that has become a part of the social fabric of their lives.

“The Children’s Hanukkah Concert is special to all of us,” Bobbie Black says, “because the music and fun and cultural meaning is something we all look forward to every year.

“With our children being bombarded with Christmas traditions during the holiday season, it is wonderful for them to have a Hanukkah tradition for their own,” adds Black, whose family has attended the annual concert since its inception five years ago and will arrive at this year’s with 11 of their friends.

The Hanukkah program is produced by Darlene Daniel of Pages Books for Children and Young Adults in Tarzana, and Sharon Hearn of Children’s Book World in West Los Angeles.

“About six years ago, Sharon and I were talking about the annual Christmas performances of ‘The Nutcracker’ and that there really should be something like it, a program, that would celebrate the Hanukkah holiday, especially for the young,” Daniel says.

“We wanted to get the best children’s entertainers we could find and decided to let them come up with the program,” she says.

The two women called upon professionals--known through children’s recordings, tapes and live performances--including Uncle Ruthie Buell, Dan Crow, Marcia Berman, Fred Sokolow and J. P. Nightingale (a k a John and Pamela Wood of Reseda).

“We all admired and knew, or knew of, one another, so to have the opportunity to put on a show together was very exciting,” Ruth Buell recalls.

Buell says she got the name Uncle Ruthie from a character she once performed in a satire on children’s programming for radio station KPFK. Her present KPFK program, “Halfway Down the Stairs,” (10:30 a.m. Saturdays) involves the sly telling of children’s stories that is as popular, she says, with adults as with kids.

The six performers--who have been involved in the Hanukkah program since its inception--have such different, but complimentary talents, that once they got the idea for how the program should go, everyone just went out and did their part, Buell says.

Only two members of the group are Jewish, which didn’t matter to concert producers Daniel and Hearn, or to the performers, according to Buell.

She says everyone who works with children understands the spirit of the program with their heart.

“There are songs in the program that are funny or traditional or serious, but they all work together to make up parts of a whole,” Buell says.

Because the program, according to Daniel, touches on the timeless themes of family unity and freedom from oppression, many of the songs touch the heart.

“I think ‘Kindle a Candle of Light’ and ‘Light One Candle’ are very poignant,” Daniel says, “as is ‘ Hob Ich Meer a Mantl ,’ known as ‘I Had a Little Coat’ in English, that tells the story of how people helped one another by passing along what became a very threadbare coat.”

Some of the funnier songs have become so well known to the children, who come to the program year after year, that the performers are almost drowned out when they sing.

This is a certainty when Dan Crow and Uncle Ruthie sing “I Like Latkes, (I REALLY like Latkes),” a song about a woman who never saw a latke she didn’t like. As the humor gets broader, and the entertainers’ stomachs grow with every verse, the children, according to Buell, rock with delight.

The annual Children’s Hanukkah Concert will be performed at 11 a.m. and 1, 3 and 5 p.m. Sunday at the University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel-Air. Advance tickets are $8.50 (no children’s price break) and can be bought at either Pages, Books for Children and Young Adults, 18399 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, or at Children’s Book World, 10580 1/2 W. Pico Blvd . , West Los Angeles. Tickets at the door (if the performance is not sold out) are $9.50. Call (818) 342-6657 or (310) 559-2665.