The Wandering Review: Have a Happy Hollywood Hanukah

By Laurie Baron

SAN DIEGO– Now that the candles have been lit, the blessings recited, the latkes eaten, the dreidels spun, and the gifts exchanged, it’s time to sit your touchas down in the couch and watch a movie about Hanukah.  The problem is that there just aren’t many major films about the holiday and the historical events which inspired it.  I don’t think most Jews were looking forward to the epic about the Maccabees that Mel Gibson has been threatening to make to fill this void.  In April of this year, Joe Eszterhas, the veteran screenwriter commissioned to author the script, accused Gibson of attempting “to deflect the continuing charges of anti-Semitism” which had ruined his career.  I always suspected that the working titles for Gibson’s motion picture were either Revolting Jews or The Protocols of the Elders of Judea.   Mel’s version of the rebellion centered on Judah’s plot to undermine the currency of the Seleucids by flooding the market with fake gold coins that were really pieces of chocolate covered with foil.  So that’s where that Hanukah custom arose!  .

Whatever solace Jews can take in Warner Brother’s shelving of Gibson’s project, they still face the December viewing dilemma: what if they don’t want to watch for the umpteenth time A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Miracle on 34^th Street.  With channel surfing, DVDs, and internet videos, there finally are some choices.

Actors, Animals, cartoon characters, and puppets celebrate Hanukah in a plethora of children’s programs.  Here are a few that you can purchase from websites like Amazon, find playing on television, or stream via YouTube.   (I’ve used the same spelling for Hanukah even though its transliterations vary greatly): Agent Emes and the Happy Hanukah; Bubbe’s Hanukah;  Debbie Friedman-Hanukah Tales and Tunes/Miracles and Wonders; Hanukah at Grover’s Corner; Lamb Chops’ Special Hanukah, Lights: The Miracle of Hanukah; Maccabees: The Story of Hanukah; A Rugrats’ Hanukah, Shalom Sesame Hanukah Special; A Taste of Hanukah, There’s No Such Thing as a Hanukah Bush, and the Weinerville Chanukah Special.  In one way or another, all of these explain the foods, meaning, and rituals of HanukaH.           

Once you become an adolescent or adult, the cinematic pickings for Hanukah become slimmer. My personal favorite is The Hebrew Hammer, Jonathan Kesselman’s Jewish parody of the Shaft film franchise.  Adam Goldberg is truly funny as the macho Mordechai Jefferson Carver, a Certified Circumcised Dick (sorry to mohel this punch line if you haven’t seen the film) who joins forces with his girlfriend Esther Bloomenbergensteinenthal, the Jewish Justice League, and the Kwanza Liberation Front to thwart Santa’s evil son Damian from making Christmas the only holiday celebrated in December.  From the opening scene contrasting the attention lavished on Christmas compared to the token explanation of Hanukah in public school settings to the concluding one where the forces of multiculturalism triumph over Damian’s parochialism, The Hebrew Hammer delivers a message of respecting religious diversity consistent with the cause the Maccabees championed.  Take that Bill O’Reilly! 

Hanukah often provides the backdrop for testing tolerance and resisting bullying in films targeted at adolescents.  Researching this column, I learned about Jenny and the Queen of Light and Seasonal Differences. The former (http://www.bei-distribution.com/jqlindex.html) deals with a girl’s fabrication of a Hanukah queen of light to compete with the allure of Christmas and her brother’s defending himself against playground toughs who extort money from him.  The latter (http://www.solarmovie.so/tv/abc-afterschool-specials-1972/season-16/episode-4/) was one of the ABC Afternoon Specials that ran from 1972 to 1997.  It dramatizes the conflict that arises between Jewish and Gentile high-school students when their school’s nativity scene is taken down to avoid violating the separation of church and state.                 

Although hard to find, there are two other notable Hanukah films that come to mind. Not in This Town, directed by Donald Wrye, is a television docudrama about how the Gentile residents of Billings, Montana countered a wave of Neo-Nazi attacks on Jews and other minorities by displaying Hanukah menorahs in the windows of their homes as an act of solidarity.  Used copies in a VHS format can be purchased on the internet.  The Disney film Full-Court Miracle directed by Stuart Gillard pits a Hebrew Academy basketball team known as the Lions against their archrivals, the Warriors.  When the gymnasium generator shuts down in the middle of the championship game, the Lions draw on their faith in themselves, their coach, and God hoping that the lights will go back on and enable them to defeat the Warriors.  Disney has never released this film on DVD, but perhaps it will in the future.

I would be remiss, but justified, in not mentioning Adam Sandler’s mean-spirited Eight Crazy Nights.  How many feature length cartoons earn a PG-13 rating?  Davey Stone, a repeat offender with a foul mouth and a violent streak has two options: go to prison for a drunken rampage through his hometown or serve as an assistant referee for a youth basketball league at a local community center.  Placed under the supervision of the head referee, the kindly Whitey Duvall, Davey slowly becomes more charitable and sympathetic towards others as an expression of the spirit of Hanukah which, in Sandler’s mind, seems to be the equivalent of the spirit of Christmas.  I’ve always enjoyed Sandler’s Hanukah Song, a musical enumeration of famous Hollywood Jews.  It is appended to the end of Eight Crazy Nights.  Save your time and just watch videos of its various Saturday Night Live renditions on the internet.

One valid parallel can be made between the beloved A Christmas Story and the Jewish experience of Hanukah in America.  When the family’s roast turkey is eaten by a pack of dogs, they must search for the only restaurant open on Christmas Eve.  Of course, it turns out to a Chinese restaurant.  Chow down my readers, but not on the sweet and sour pork!

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Lawrence Baron recently retired from being the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005) and editor of The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011). He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com