Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Check Out 8 of the Greatest Jewish Christmas Albums of All Time

Eydie Gormé and the Trio Los Panchos — Navidad Means Christmas

Steve Lawrence’s better half went south of the border for this festive 1966 collection of Spanish-language Christmas songs.

David Grisman — Acoustic Christmas

Folk/jazz mandolinist Grisman and his string band serve up swinging instrumental renditions of secular and traditional Christmas carols on this 1983 LP.

Gershon Kingsley — Silent Night, Bloody Night In 1972, electronic music pioneer Kingsley composed and conducted the gothic orchestral soundtrack to the first-ever holiday-themed slasher film.

Klezmonauts — Oy to the World An upbeat and irreverent 1998 collection of traditional and original Christmas songs, perfect for decking the halls with boughs of challah.

The Moog Machine — Christmas Becomes Electric A charming souvenir from the moog synthesizer craze of the late sixties, Christmas Becomes Electric features the talents of Jewish keyboard whiz Kenny Ascher.

Mel Torme — Christmas Songs Forty-seven years after writing “The Christmas Song” with Robert Wells, Tormé finally got around to recording an entire album of Christmas tunes in 1992. It was more than worth the wait.

Lennie Weinrib — Have a Jewish Christmas? A 1967 comedy album written by Ray Brenner and Barry E. Blitzer, featuring eight hilarious sketches about the conflicts faced by Jews as they try to get into the Christmas spirit.

John Zorn — Dreamers Christmas Avant-grade composer and saxophonist Zorn plays it more “straight” than usual on this atmospheric and addictive collection of Yuletide classics and originals from 2011.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.