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 They are still dancing on mountaintops as they “Light Up the Night” but their cute Matrix dress-up is either 10 years out of date or brilliantly prophetic.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.

Dan Friedman is the former executive editor and whisky correspondent of the Forward, and is the author of a book about Tears for Fears, the ’80s emo rock band.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

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