Here Come the Hanukkah Videos
By Dan Friedman December 13, 2011
UPDATED DEC 15
“Dreidel’s my hobby / Don’t let it get wobbly”
As Amy Klein feared the season of Hanukkah videos has begun. The new Maccabeats video featuring Mayim Bialik and Barack Obama is out (see below). Surely their boy band glow, Noah Jacobson jollities and Uri Westrich video mavening is really just a one year thing, allowing the boys to finally call it a day and go to accountancy school — but both Bialik and Obama are sexier than anyone on last year’s video, so maybe not.
The Fountainheads are always good for happiness in the face of despair and this dark festival season is no exception. They are still dancing on mountaintops as they “Light Up the Night” but their cute Matrix dress-up is either 10 years out of date or brilliantly prophetic.
Over at Heeb Dan Sieradski is appalled at Jew-Z’s Hanukkah production: “Jew-Z’s Groove”. Sieradski doesn’t specify which of the stereotypes offend him but clearly it’s both the song AND the video that are guilty because he wants to punch people responsible for either, “in the f–king face.”
But I know — because I know what you’re like — that you’ve been waiting to see what the JNF could come up with. Because if any Jewish organization has a phat beat and an uncanny instinct for what the kids love, it’s the (Canadian?) JNF. So, below, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Latkes of all sizes, it’s the JNF and the Magen Boys.
Here’s the JNF and Magen Boys getting, umm, hip?
Here’s the new Maccabeats video with the shout-out from President Obama at the end.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
