The Best Hanukkah Videos of 2018

The number of Hanukkah music videos has really gone down the past few years. There was a time when I would come up with a list of at least a dozen fun and creative Hanukkah videos. This year, there are really only two that are worth mentioning. Six13, the Jewish a capella group from New York clearly has this year's best video for Hanukkah... and maybe the best one for the entire decade. With the recent success of the biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, Six13 was very smart to use Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody for their Hanukkah video this year. Of course, The Maccabeats produced another great video this year for Hanukkah, which is more of a mishmash of different type of music. Happy Hanukkah everyone!


Six13 - Bohemian Chanukah (a Queen adaptation)

The Maccabeats - I Have a Little Dreidel - Hanukkah

Detroit Stand Up Comic Jeff Dwoskin Launches Twitter Hashtag Games App

Twitter, the social network known for its 140 character limitation, has been in the news a lot lately. Much of the media attention has certainly been driven by President-Elect Donald Trump who tweeted his way to an election victory over the past year. Trump will, no doubt, be the first President to tweet his thoughts and policy decisions without a filter on social media when he takes over the @Potus Twitter handle on January 20.

The other reason Twitter has been making headlines in recent months has more to do with the company that was founded a decade ago in San Francisco. Created by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass, the company today is valued at around $10 billion; far less than its $40 billion valuation just three years ago. While Twitter has over 300 million monthly active users, many have questioned its health. Further, businesses have long been concerned that Twitter doesn't provide marketing value the way other social networks do.

Jeff Dwoskin, an entrepreneur, stand up comedian and creator of Twitter's Hashtag Roundup

Rabbi Bob Alper Makes Pope Laugh in Comedy Contest

While my colleague Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City certainly got more face time with Pope Francis during his recent visit to the U.S. than any other rabbi, it was another rabbi who received the title "Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope."

Rabbi Bob Alper, the 70-year-old Reform rabbi turned stand-up comedian, had his joke chosen among thousands in the recent "Joke with the Pope" contest. Professional comedians including Bill Murray, late night television hosts Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon, and comedy writer Mike Reiss were among those who submitted video jokes to the jokewiththepope.org contest on YouTube. Even Brooke Shields recorded a joke for the Pope while sitting in her closet.

Rabbi Alper's winning submission allowed him to choose a charity for a $10,000 donation. He chose Housing the Homeless in Ethiopia. I've long been a fan of Rabbi Alper since first meeting him at a synagogue in East Lansing in the mid-1990s during one of his performances and book signings. In 2007 I had a chance to open for him at a comedy show and it was truly one of the highlights of my life.

Rabbi Alper's winning joke sumission was: "I’ve been married for 46 years, and my wife and I are on the same wavelength. At the same time that I got a hearing aid, she stopped mumbling."


In an interview, Rabbi Alper said the one-liner was among his best work. "It’s reality,” he said. "It’s something with which people can identify. It exemplifies the Pope’s values, which are family, humor, warmth."

Mazel Tov to Bob Alper for making the Pope laugh and for his new gig as the Honorary Comedic Advisor to the Pope.

Jon Stewart and Jon Hamm Make a Minyan (or Minion)

Jon Hamm was the guest on last night's episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. Hamm came on to plug his new movie "Minions" and things got about as Jewish as they ever have on The Daily Show.

Jon Stewart opened the dialogue by telling Jon Hamm what he assumed Minions is about: "Here's what I hope this movies about, okay? Nine Jewish men looking for a tenth so they they may celebrate Shabbos!"

Hamm then offers up that he knows the common English transliteration of the Hebrew is actually spelled "minyan."

The two go back and forth riffing on the minyan-minion pun, with Jon Stewart offering to be the designated "minyan maker" in a road movie saying that he'd go around to groups of nine Jewish men saying "What do you want some tefillin?" and "I'm the Minyan Man!"

The minyan pun on the animated characters called minions is nothing new. Back in January I was in Las Vegas outside Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino and took a photo with two minions, posting it on Facebook with the caption, "If you need to say Kaddish, it's not difficult to find minions in Vegas!"

With the Minions movie about to be released, there are a lot of other minyan-minions images circulating on the Web. Here are a few:

Jon Hamm is not Jewish, although his long time girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt is Jewish through her mother, meaning their children would be counted in a minyan along with Jon Stewart. So, if you're looking for a minyan (or minions), just ask Jon Hamm or Jon Stewart!

Watch Jon Stewart and Jon Hamm mix it up here:

I Gave "Kosher Soul" a Second Chance

A friend tipped me off to a new reality TV show that was about to begin publicizing its pilot episode. I was immediately intrigued. The show, Kosher Soul, is about a pretty Jewish woman and a Black comedian who fall in love. I clicked the link to find the trailer from the Lifetime network and was immediately disappointed. Oy, I thought to myself, this is not going to be "good for the Jews."

I posted the link to the trailer in a few rabbi discussion groups I'm part of and encouraged my colleagues to check out this video and give their own opinion. It was unanimous that we all cringed when we saw the typical, run-of-the-mill Jewish jokes interspersed with sub-par humor about African-Americans. One of my Rabbis Without Borders colleagues suggested we have a conference call right after the first episode airs so we can discuss and determine the best way to articulate our dismay of this farcical portrayal of everything from interdating to conversion to Black/Jewish relations.

©2015 A&E Television Networks, LLC. All rights reserved. Photo Credit: Richard Knapp

I helped coordinate the conference call, and we all seemed to have the same impressions about the show. It was a car wreck! I explained how I too was uncomfortable with the show, but that generally I detest reality television because it's almost as unreal as any other television sitcom. The actors are performing for the cameras, each episode has a theme, and the editors are going to cut the raw footage down to a bunch of sound bites for the 20 or so minutes of the final cut. It seemed to me, I explained, that O'Neal McKnight, the Black comedian, was trying to hard to market his comedy routines by offering one-liners that made me yawn rather than laugh out loud. The Jewish partner, Miriam Sternoff, came off as a snob who never seemed to feel comfortable having her private life aired to the masses. I didn't learn anything new from the conference call, but my sentiments about the show seemed to be the party line among my colleagues. I watched the first episode so I could have a coherent dialogue with my fellow rabbis and then, I reasoned, I'd never watch another episode of this filth again.

Best Purim Videos on YouTube 2015

Jewish parents have always had very high expectations for their children. In fact, just the other day I was reading a birth announcement in my local Jewish newspaper that proudly stated, "Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Rosenbloom are pleased to announce the birth of their son, Dr. Jonathan Rosenbloom."

I love that joke and I thought of it last week when I received not one, but two emails from people who had just made funny Purim videos and wanted me to include them in my annual list of the year's best Purim videos. Both of these emails stated that I should check out the "new viral video" they just created. Well, if you just created it, how do you know it's going to go viral? So, just as Jewish parents can announce the birth of their son the doctor, I guess aspiring Purim video creators can announce the launch of their viral video.

So, here's my annual list of the Best Purim Videos of the year... (some might even go viral!):


SHUSHAN FUNK - Ronn "Markson" featuring Jewno Mars (Erez Cohen)



(This video isn't technically a Purim video, but I think it's funny and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu made the connection between Iran (Persia) and the Purim story in his speech to Congress the other day.)

STAND! DOWN! IRAN (BIBI TECHNO DANCE SPEECH) - Noy Alooshe Remix





PURIM 2015 IN THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES (IDF)




VASHTI'S SONG (Meghan Trainor) - Felicia Sloin




SHUSHAN FUNK - Rosenblum Shaloch-E-Manos (Lyrics: Crazy Daddy)




SHOSHANAS YAAKOV - Lev Aryeh - Catwalk




JEWBELLISH PURIM DANCE MIX




V'NAHAFOCH HU - NY Boys Choir




CHAG PURIM 2015 - Ross M. Levy

Kitschy and Tacky Hanukkah Gifts

Somehow throughout the course of writing (well, technically typing) all of these blog posts, I managed to survive without a pair of $50 "Shalom Y'all" socks from Neiman Marcus with Jewish stars emblazoned on them. That was not a typo! $50 socks! My grandmother, who is of sound mind at 93 (keinahora!), presented me with these tacky looking socks to wear at our annual family Hanukkah party.

The look on my face must have conveyed to her what I was thinking at the moment of said gift presentation, which was something to the effect of, "I wouldn't wear these socks if I were stuck in the freezing tundra and all my toes had frostbite; not to mention I can buy 20 pairs of socks at Costco for 50 bucks!"

She gave me the receipt from Neiman Marcus listing the purchase of the Arthur George by Robert Kardashian holiday star socks and told me I should feel free to exchange them if I wished. At that moment, I was thinking I couldn't get myself to the mall fast enough... but not before I blogged about these corny socks. And by the way, wasn't Robert Kardashian one of OJ Simpson's attorneys and I thought he died several years ago. That last part about Robert Kardashian I must have said aloud, because my grandmother (who incidentally stays quite current on pop culture) then began to explain that the socks were from designer Rob Karshashian, who is the son of OJ's deceased lawyer and the sister of the Kardashian sisters of reality TV fame. My head was already spinning by the time she mentioned something about the former Olympic star Bruce Jenner and Kanye West. Thanks Grandma!

Attention Seinfeld Fans: Read This Book by Peter Mehlman

Peter Mehlman's new book was recommended to me by several people before I finally picked it up and read it over the course of a rainy weekend. You may have never heard of Peter Mehlman, but like me you probably were a fan of Seinfeld. And Peter Mehlman, like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, is one of the guys we have to thank for the wit, wisdom and shear brilliance that was the Seinfeld TV experience of the 1990s.

I must say that I was hooked on Mehlman's book, It Won't Always Be This Great (Bancroft Press, 2014), from the opening few lines. He writes:

When did being me become a full-time job? I know, it sounds unseemly to imply that you never considered yourself self-absorbed but, before the events I'm about to describe, I'd never given it any thought. So there you go, right? Maybe not. Either way, everything changed last December and it's important for you to know right off -- I haven't told this story to anyone, not even God.

Mehlman, a sports writer who used to write for the Washington Post, was a writer and producer for Seinfeld. After meeting Larry David in L.A. back in 1989, Mehlman gave him a sample script which ultimately became the Seinfeld episode "The Apartment." Over the next eight years of the Seinfeld show, Mehlman would coin such famous pop-culture phrases as "Yada Yada" and "shrinkage."

Robin Williams, Jacob in the Torah and Depression

I’ve never cried when a celebrity suddenly dies. It has always seemed like something that just happens. Certainly, it’s a sad day when an actor or musician, athlete or politician has “cashed in their chips” early. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve been shocked and saddened when I’ve learned of the lethal overdose of a promising young athlete or when the news breaks that a famous actor has lost his battle with cancer. But Robin Williams wasn’t just any comedian. He wasn’t your typical actor or entertainer. Robin Williams was the textbook definition of “comedic genius.”

Robin Williams grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan only a few miles from my childhood home and, while not Jewish by birth, he was widely known as an honorary Jew – both for his brand of humor (always peppered with a Yiddish expression and Jewish inflection) and for his unwavering commitment to Jewish causes. I’ve cried several times in the past couple of days since hearing of his untimely death. He was a brilliant at entertaining us.

Like most of my generation, I was first introduced to the silliness of Robin Williams as a young child tuning in to every episode of “Mork and Mindy.” It was my mimicking of Robin’s goofy antics in kindergarten that led the teacher to tell my parents I was a “class clown.” And then I found my father’s audio cassettes of his standup routines, “Robin Williams: A Night at the Met” and “Reality… What a Concept.” I listened to those tapes dozens of times and brought them with me to summer camp to entertain my friends. The counselors told my parents I should be a standup comedian. Not long after that my dad took me to see “Good Morning Vietnam” in the theater and then I bought the video tape as soon as it came out, memorizing long segments of the movie and then performing them in front of my class at my Jewish day school. The teacher told my parents that I should tone down my R-rated humor.

Finding Humor in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict of Summer 2014

Regular readers of my blog will certainly notice that I've been silent since July 1 when I posted "There are no words for this tragedy" following the murder of three Israeli teens. With Israel in turmoil and its people under constant rocket attacks, it's a challenge to write about anything else. In the past two weeks I've been so consumed reading all of the thoughtful opinion pieces trying to make sense of the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that I haven't blogged about anything.

My Facebook news feed has been flooded with personal stories of my friends who live throughout Israel running for bomb shelters. And since this conflict is taking place in the summer -- the height of tourist season in Israel -- I'm reading the reflections of my friends from the United States who are visiting Israel this summer and finding their travel itinerary has been altered like they never expected. Rather than hiking in the South and touring Jerusalem's ancient sites, they are experiencing what it's like to have to grab the kids and make it to the shelter in 30 seconds as another errant bomb from Gaza descends overhead.

I'm also watching as the global Jewish community walks the tightrope between solidarity and security. Is now the time to travel to Israel to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters there? Is it time to bring Israeli children to Jewish summer camps in America to give them some respite from the daily conflict? At the same time as I'm being invited to travel to Israel for a three-day solidarity mission with the Rabbinical Assembly (the Conservative rabbis' central association), I'm also discussing whether the local Jewish Federation in Detroit should bring the Teen Mission back home for safety (they're cutting the trip short by two weeks and returning to Michigan today).

Rather than attempting to make sense out of yet another senseless and violent escalation in the no-end-in-sight Middle East conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, I've been intrigued by the way humor is helping Israelis cope with the current situation.

Jewish Themes in Michael Jackson's Songs

Today is the fifth anniversary of Michael Jackson's sudden death. He died on June 25, 2009 and like the notable deaths of other big name celebrities, I remember exactly where I was at the time. As a child I was a big fan of Michael Jackson's music. I recall listening to the cassette tape of Thriller on the way to and from Hillel Day School in the Fall of 1982. When I discovered MJ's "Off the Wall" cassette in my parents' music collection I listened to it until it just broke. Today, my oldest son loves listening to Michael Jackson, which is certainly a good sign that his music will outlive him.

In Michael Jackson's memory I've gone through his entire song catalog to find the "Jewish themes" in his music. Thanks for reading and sharing... Enjoy!

ABC – Learning the alef-bet in cheder

A Brand New Day – Havdallah

Another Part of Me – Neshama Yiterah (our second soul on Shabbat)

[I’m] Bad – The Vidui (Confessional)

Baby Be Mine – Pidyon Haben

Beat It – Hoshanah Rabbah theme

Beautiful Girl  – King Ahashverosh's serenade of Queen Esther

Ben – Hebrew for “son”

Black or White – How some describe Jewish law

Break of Dawn – Hashkama Minyan (early risers' prayer group)

Can't Get Outta the Rain – Mashiv haruach u'morid hageshem (prayer for rain)

Can't Let Her Get Away – Agunah (chained woman without a bill of divorce)

Cheater – Ryan Braun

Come Together – Minyan

Dancing Machine – There’s one at every Jewish wedding

Dirty Diana – The Princess of Wales in niddah (sorry!)

Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough – What you don’t say to a mohel

Earth Song – "Kol Ha-olam Kulo"

Fly Away  – Shiluah Haken (shooing away the mother bird)

Free  – Yovel (Jubilee year when all slaves and prisoners go free)

The Girl Is Mine – Kinyan at a Jewish wedding "Harei at mekudeshet lee b’taba’at zo…"

Got to Be There – That guilty inner monologue before holiday dinners with the family

Heal the World – Mi-Sheberach prayer for the Ill

I Want You Back – Pidyon Haben (redemption of the first born)

I'll Be There – Elijah says this before every bris

In the Back – Where everyone sits in shul

Jam – Goes nice on a bagel

Keep the Faith – Ani Ma'amin (b'emunah shleyma)

Leave Me Alone – Lonely Man of Faith (Soloveitchik)

Man in the Mirror – Cheshbon Nefesh (personal accounting before High Holidays)

Night Time Lover – Mikvah Night

Off the Wall – What happens to your kvittel (note) if you don't stick it deep enough into the cracks of the Kotel (Western Wall)

Privacy – Yichud

(No Michael Jackson songs that start with Q)

Remember the Time – Kiddush (Remember the Sabbath day...)

Rock with You – Palestinians said this to Israelis during Intifada

Save Me – Hoshiah Na!

She’s out of My Life – Get (Bill of Divorce)

Somebody's Watching Me – God's omnipresence

Someone in the Dark – Pharaoh during the 9th plague

Speechless – Vayidom Aharon (Aaron was speechless - Lev. 9)

Take Me Back – Ba'al Teshuva

Unbreakable – The groom can't smash the glass at his wedding

Up Again – T'chiyat Hametim (resurrection of the dead)

(No Michael Jackson songs that start with V)

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – Simchat Torah

We Are Here to Change the World – Tikkun Olam

We’ve Had Enough – Dayeinu!

(No Michael Jackson songs that start with X)

You Are Not Alone – Hashem is everywhere

You Can’t Win – Trying to convince Bubbie you're not hungry

(No Michael Jackson songs that start with Z)

12-Year-Old Howard Stern with a Yarmulke

Have you seen the 12-year-old stand-up comic who seems to have channeled his inner Howard Stern?  Josh Orlian is a pre-bar mitzvah modern Orthodox kid from New York who told some racy jokes on "America's Got Talent" the other night. His stage presence and delivery need some polishing, but he had Howie Mandel and Howard Stern -- two of the four judges -- in stitches.

The last time we saw a Jewish teen wearing a kippah (yarmulke) on "America's Got Talent," there was no controversy... just a lot of kvelling (pride) for the Jewish people. Edon Pinchot was the fourteen-year-old singing piano player who quickly became the big story in the Jewish media two summers ago during his performance on "America's Got Talent." Fast forward to this summer and Josh Orlian, another cute Jewish boy with a yarmulke, has advanced to the next round of the reality TV show. This time around, there is some question in the Jewish community as to the nature of the performance. Have a look:

Jason Bateman Schools Jon Stewart in Yiddish

The great Yiddishist Leo Rosten was hopefully rolling (with laughter) in his grave last night. The late author of the book "The Joy of Yiddish" worked very hard during his lifetime to bring the dying Yiddish language into the mainstream.

Last night's five minute dialogue between actor Jason Bateman and Jon Stewart included more Yiddish words than we typically hear on television. It was as if Bateman wanted to drop some of his well-rehearsed Yiddishisms during his interview on The Daily Show. As soon as Jason Bateman sat down he told Jon Stewart that his "It's nice when nice happens to nice" opening comment sounded very Yiddish. And from there it became a Yiddish word competition between the two men.

Jason Bateman explained that he recently learned the Yiddish word "chazerai" which seemed to confuse the Jewish host of The Daily Show (the former Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) who mistakenly said the word means a guy who's a bit of a chazer (pig). Bateman correctly defined chazerai as garbage, but Stewart disagreed. At the end of the show Stewart actually returned to publicly apologize to Bateman for correcting his Yiddish since chazerai indeed does mean garbage.

Bateman then threw out mishegas and Stewart responded with meshugena. The conversation then turned to Bateman's self-identification as a goy (gentile) and his experience at a friend's Passover seder. Here's the video of them shmoozing on the show last night:

Zei gezunt to Jason Bateman and Jon Stewart... and thanks for the early freilich Purim gift! 

Drake's Bar Mitzvah on Saturday Night Live (SNL)

Yesterday morning in synagogues throughout the world the Jewish people read the portion of the Torah called Yitro. Named for the Medianite priest who became father-in-law to Moses, Yitro (or Jethro) was also a trusted adviser to the Israelite leader. While it doesn't mention this in the Torah, it is possible that Yitro had black skin which likely meant that Moses was married to a Black woman thereby making them the first bi-racial marriage in the Torah. Today, the most famous rapper with bi-racial Jewish-Black heritage is Drake, who has a White Jewish mother and a Black father.

Last night Drake hosted the year's first Saturday Night Live show and Jewish and Black stereotypes were getting tossed a mile a minute during his opening monologue. The famous rapper opened the show by explaining that he's from Canada, was in the TV show Degrassi Junior High, and that his mother is Jewish and his father is Black.

Jewtopia the Movie: My Kvetch

Right off the bat I feel the need for a disclosure: I'm not a movie reviewer. I took a film class in college, but that doesn't count. I also love watching movies, but that doesn't make me a credible reviewer.

I do have a lot of respect for professional film critics because it's not an easy job. I recall being on jury duty in NYC about a dozen years ago and the film critic Jeffrey Lyons was in my group of potential jurors. It was right before the Oscars and we had a few hours to kill while we waited (before eventually being dismissed from a trial), so I had the opportunity to ask his opinion about some of the films up for Best Picture of the Year. I was amazed at how knowledgeable he was about each movie. Personally, I have a hard time remembering anything about a movie after I see it, let alone the names of the actors in the movie.

Now that I got that disclosure out of the way I feel much better. You see, after publishing a little blurb on my PopJewish.com blog about the Jewtopia movie that opened this past weekend I was asked by the film's public relations guy if I'd be interested in screening the movie and reviewing it. So I said sure. Which was a mistake. Because it was right before Yom Kippur and I was busy with a million things including writing sermons for said holiday and really didn't have time to watch an hour-and-a-half movie. So after Yom Kippur was already a memory and the first couple days of Sukkot had passed I finally got around to screening it.

Jewtopia

Conan O'Brien Teaches Halacha (Jewish Law)

As the founder and director of a kosher certification agency, people often send me anything and everything having anything to do with kosher certification. So last week when the Rabbinical Council of California first certified a sexual lubricant product as kosher and then rescinded the certification, you can imagine I received several articles about the story.

While I wasn't surprised to see coverage of this story making the rounds on late night TV talk shows, I was taken aback when I saw Conan O'Brien's uber-esoteric halachic schtick on last night's episode of "Conan".

Jewish jokes aren't anything new for Conan O'Brien, who is Irish Catholic. One of Conan's long-time writers is Rob Kutner (@ApocalypseHow), who once wrote for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Kutner has become something of a maven when it comes to writing funny Purim shpiels and created The Shushan Channel, a mail-order Purim shpiel business.

Spelling Knaidel and Bravo's Princesses Reality TV Show

We Jews have arrived! That seemed to be the general sentiment on my Facebook news feed last night as word traveled around the social network that the winning word in the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee was "knaidel" - the Yiddish word for matzah ball. Most excited Facebook users chimed in on the variant transliterated spellings of the Yiddish word wondering how the organizers of the annual spelling bee could agree on just one accepted spelling.

Arvind Mahankali, the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee champ spelled Knaidel for the win (NBC)

Humor and the Holocaust: Where the Line's Drawn

The New York Times article in yesterday's Sunday Review section titled "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking" uncovers the recent scholarly discoveries that the Holocaust was in fact even more catastrophic than researchers once thought. Such news almost 70 years after the Shoah reaffirms what a horrific, devastating era this was in human history.

The Holocaust researchers, according to the Times article, "have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington."

It is evident that while we are several generations removed from the Holocaust there is still new information coming to light about this dark period in European Jewish history. This makes it even more difficult to find humor in comedy from such tragedy and yet there has not been a single tragedy in the world that has been free from the reach of comedy. Comedians crack jokes about 9/11, worldwide natural disasters, the Chernobyl incident, plane crashes, Space Shuttle tragedies, and horrific mass murders. A common refrain following such off-color jokes is "Too soon?" But, when really is it not "too soon" to tell a joke about a catastrophe on par with the Shoah? Where is the line of taste when it comes to humor about the Holocaust and who do we trust to draw such a line?

An Austrian actor plays Hitler during a Berlin production of Mel Brooks' musical The Producers (AFP/GETTY)

Best Hanukkah Videos of 2012

Hanukkah, Hanukah or Chanukkah... no matter how you spell it there's one thing you can be certain of when Hanukkah arrives and that is that there will be no shortage of fun Hanukkah videos on YouTube. Since posting my list of the top Hanukkah videos the past couple years I now receive dozens of videos to include in my list. I'm sure I'm leaving out some great ones, but these are what I consider to be the best Hanukkah videos of 2012.

Oh, and special thanks to the indie band "fun." for releasing the song "Some Nights" this year. As you can see from several of the videos below, it was an obvious song to parody y.for Hanukkah. And yes, the band's guitarist/vocalist Jack Antonoff is Jewish and attended Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, New Jersey (he also dated Scarlett Johansson in high school). Enjoy!

Stand Four - 8 Nights




Pella Productions - 8 Nights Of Hanukkah A Capella Mashup




Maccabeats - Shine




Matisyahu Sings "Happy Hanukkah" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno




The Best Dreidel Songs (Including a Version by Jimmy Fallon and Rashida Jones)


Shirat Machar (Marom) - Eight Nights the Miracle of Light




Technion - Rube Goldberg Machine Lights Menorah




Aish - Racing Home: A Hanukkah Surprise




Michelle Citrin - Hanukkah Lovin'




Bubala Please - Making Latkes (Warning: Strong Language)




(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To DREIDEL)

Monday Morning Caption Contest

Leave your funniest caption for the photo below in the comments section: