Put on your yarmulke: It’s time for Chanukah!
Way back in 1994, Adam Sandler changed Chanukah forever when he performed “The Chanukah Song” on Saturday Night Live for the first time. (Sandler spells it “The Chanukah Song,” but Saturday Night Live uses “Hanukkah” on YouTube.)
Sandler, now 58, had already found a niche on the show with his funny, winding songs, and two years earlier he’d sung a memorable ode to turkeys with “The Thanksgiving Song.”
In the original version of “The Chanukah Song,” Sandler sat next to Weekend Update host Kevin Nealon while singing the simple, rhyming song and accompanying himself on guitar. Sandler cleverly listed celebrities who were Jewish — but he wasn’t always right.
“I am so proud of that song, I love it,” Sandler said at a 2022 event at Manhattan’s 92NY, per the Jewish Chronicle. But he also admitted to a mistake. In the original lyrics, he sang, “Harrison Ford’s a quarter Jewish …” Sandler told the crowd, “I remember when I met Harrison Ford, he goes: ‘Half!’ ”
In a 2018 interview with Howard Stern, Sandler also shared one person who wasn’t happy they were included in the song because they weren’t Jewish. In the first song, Sandler sings about “The owner of the Seattle SuperSonic-ahs” being Jewish. Years later, he and friend Rob Schneider walked into a restaurant where they met the then-owner of the SuperSonics, Barry Ackerley. “You’re the guy who does the song right? … The Jewish song?” he remembered him saying.
“Hey, 86 that song … I’m not a Jew,” Ackerley said. Sandler said he didn’t want to “get into it” with him, though he and Schneider argued. The founding partners of the team, Sam Schulman and Eugene Klein, were both Jewish, but they sold the team to Ackerley in 1985.
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The original “The Chanukah Song” appeared on Sandler’s 1996 comedy album What the Hell Happened to Me? and peaked at No. 80 on the Billboard Hot 100. It continues to receive radio play during the holiday season to this day.
The next version — “The Chanukah Song, Pt. 2 – Live” — was part of Sandler’s 1999 album Stan and Judy’s Kids. Like future versions, Sandler subbed out some of the song’s old references for new ones, including lines about Winona Ryder and the Beastie Boys.
Then in 2002, Sandler released the Hanukah film 8 Crazy Nights. The song got another new version — and a super-sized performance on Saturday Night Live. Songwriter Lew Morton, who wrote the track with Sandler and SNL writer Ian Maxtone-Graham, told PEOPLE at the time, “There are so many famous Jews that it’s a shame to keep mentioning the same ones over and over again.” This third version included references to “Ross and Phoebe from Friends” and Natalie Portman, among many others.
More than a decade later, Sandler updated the song one more time. The 2015 version, performed at the New York Comedy Festival, included Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhaal and Adam Levine.
The track has been widely covered — and frequently updated with new references — by other artists. Haim made their own updated version in 2021, and Sandler gave his stamp of approval, writing on social media, “Love you ladies! You are three bad— jews!”
Sandler reflected on the song’s 25th anniversary during a 2019 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “That’s a long time for one song,” he said. “If there are any other Jewish people out there who want to write a new one, that’d be great. I’d love to share the Hanukkah spirit with you.”
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