Life

Eighth Night Yid Vid: What Is This Hanukkah Thing All About?

By Daniel Treiman December 29, 2008

So we’ve had seven nights of Hanukkah videos. We’ve watched singing cowboys, rapping Jewesses, will.i.am impersonators, melodious philosemitism, a comic spilling the beans on George Clooney, Adam Sandler dropping names, and Lipa Schmeltzer doing his thing. But, a viewer might fairly complain, we still don’t have any better sense of what this holiday is all about than when we began. Fair enough.

Fortunately, Rabbi Laura Baum can explain what Hanukkah is all about — and in only three minutes:

The rest of her video series is pretty good, too. Rabbi Baum also examines the Hanukkah blessings, takes a deeper look at the “myth” of the miraculously long-lasting oil, makes some edible Hanukkah art, explains that “real women eat cheese, or at least they feed it to their men before they kill them,” teaches us that there are many ways of lighting Hanukkah candles, and offers a little bit of historical perspective on the Festival of Lights.

Of course, this may raise hackles from those who look to Eight Nights of Yid Vid not for educational content but rather for a little lighthearted diversion. For those who feel this way, I found this video of a woman performing a very nice dreidel dance.

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