The dearth of good Hanukkah songs can be best illustrated by the fact that the most famous one was written by Adam Sandler and is less a song about Hanukkah than it is a song about rhyming “Carnegie Deli” with “Arthur Fonzarelli.” There is “The Dreidel Song,” but only if you are under 7.
The field was thus wide open for the harmonizing Maccabeats, whose YouTube video of “Candlelight” (to the tune of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”) got nearly 1 million views in less than eight days.
How a 14-man a cappella group from Yeshiva University created the Hanukkah anthem of 2010: “The whole message of Yeshiva University is that you can be an Orthodox Jew and participate in secular society,” said Immanuel Shalev, lyrics writer.
When Shalev heard Cruz singing “I throw my hands up in the air sometimes” and mentally replaced it with “I flip my latkes in the air sometimes, singing ay-oh, spin the dreidel,” he knew he was onto something.
The Maccabeats were invited on CBS’s “Early Show,” and the video appeared on NBC’s “Today.” The chief rabbi of London phoned to see about a possible video collaboration. They heard from Jay Leno’s people, but that’s up in the air.
Hear the song. Watch the YouTube video of “Candlelight.”
