Photo: Glyn Lowe PhotoWorks

Revisiting Adam Sandler’s Classic ‘… Chanukah Song’: Look + Listen

November 28, 2021

Originally previewed on December 3, 1994, during Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update “The Chanukah Song” is a novelty song written by comedian Adam Sandler with SNL writers Lewis Morton and Ian Maxtone-Graham.

Performed by Sandler, himself, the lyrics center around the theme of religious Jewish children feeling alienated during the Christmas season. In the song Adam lists Jewish celebrities (with both real-life and fictional connections to Judaism) along with:

“You” (The hypothetical Jewish listener)
“Me” (Adam Sandler)
David Lee Roth
James Caan
Kirk Douglas
Dinah Shore (replaced in some performances with Pauly Shore)
Jon Bauman (Bowzer from Sha Na Na)
Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler)
Paul Newman (Jewish father)
Goldie Hawn (Jewish mother)
Captain Kirk (William Shatner)
Spock (Leonard Nimoy)
“The owner of the Seattle Super-Sonic-ah’s” (founding partners Sam Schulman and Gene Klein, both Jews, had sold it to the non-Jewish Barry Ackerley in 1985, nine years before the song was written. The situation would correct itself when Ackerley sold the team to another Jew, Howard Schultz, in 2001.)
O. J. Simpson was declared as “not a Jew!” to great applause from the audience.
Rod Carew (Sandler erroneously claims “he converted;” Carew’s wife and children are Jewish but he is not. Carew later contacted Sandler and said he found the song rather funny.)
Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer)
“Dear Abby” (Pauline Phillips at the time)
Harrison Ford (Sandler understated Ford’s Jewish ancestry by saying he is only a quarter-Jewish; Ford’s mother was Jewish).
Ebenezer Scrooge, described as not Jewish.
All of The Three Stooges (brothers Moe, Shemp and Curly Howard; Larry Fine; and Joe Besser)
Tom Cruise, a Scientologist, is mentioned in the song as not Jewish (Sandler jokes during the song that he “hear(s) his agent is” Jewish; Cruise’s agent at the time of this song’s release was Kevin Huvane who is not Jewish and would later be an ordained minister).