Adam Sandler holiday songs spawn love, loathing

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post

You can hear Adam Sandler singing his holiday songs at adamsandler.com. Click on "Movies and Albums," then choose the album you would like to hear.

"David Lee Roth lights the menorah," Sandler first sang in 1994. "So do James Caan, Kirk Douglas and the late Dinah Shore-ah."

The ditty quickly disappeared, only to resurface on Sandler's 1996 comedy album, "What the Hell Happened to Me?" Soon, a video version of the song began airing on MTV, and radio stations started putting it on their play lists. The album went on to sell 3 million copies. And a Hanukkah classic — or at least the first Hanukkah-theme pop song widely embraced by goyim (non-Jews) — was born.

After releasing an updated version in 1999 ("So many Jews are in showbiz/Bruce Springsteen isn't but my mother thinks he is"), Sandler has now leveraged his two-minute shtick into a full-fledged entertainment franchise. The latest version, "The Hanukkah Song III," is the theme music for a new Sandler-produced and -voiced animated musical movie, "Eight Crazy Nights," a title that refers both to the duration of the holiday and a line from the original song.

The third iteration is just as musically primitive and lyrically challenged as the original, but it retains the same goofy charm and subject matter. "Houdini and David Blaine escape straitjackets with such precision," Sandler sings. "But one thing they could not get out of: their painful circumcision."

Question is, what's so funny about identifying who's a Jew? Why is Sandler's song so entertaining to so many people — particularly Jewish people?

To some Jewish people, the songs are a source of pride, even a cultural milestone. It's not that anyone needs reminding that "so many Jews are in show biz"; Jews have been common in popular entertainment for decades. But they've often buried their heritage by changing names (Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch, and Winona Ryder was Winona Horowitz). Or, like Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, they use it as a source of comic self-deprecation.

In this case, Jews appreciate that Sandler has had the chutzpah to proclaim his Jewishness.

"What's amazing about that song, what makes it important, is that Jews are being outed, and it's no big deal. It's funny, and it's normal," says Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

At the same time, Jewish people say, it's gratifying to learn that so many disparate people are Jewish. If they say anything at all, the Sandler songs may say that it's hard to construct an anti-Semitic stereotype.

What connecting thread is there, after all, among the names that Sandler mentions — people such as William Shatner, Ann Landers, the Beastie Boys, or "all Three Stooges"?

But not all Jews are enamored of Sandler's songs, or their intended message. Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, the author of "Searching for My Jewish Brothers: Jewish Men in a Gentile World," says "Hanukkah" bespeaks a vapid, superficial Jewishness.

"All of these celebrities are Jewish, but you ultimately have to ask, 'So what?' " he says. " ... Having reached acceptance in American society, the next question is 'What have you done for your people lately?' Have any of them spoken out for Israel at a time of its greatest emergency? For the most part, these ... celebrities are a vast wasteland."

Ultimately, says Nate Bloom, the editor of Jewhoo.com, an encyclopedic Web site of Jewish celebrities, it's hard to separate this messenger from his "message."

"If many other comedians did this song," he says, "it would be seen in a very different light. But Sandler, the clown, makes it a boisterous celebration, and he lets you, no matter who you are, join in the joke and the 'discoveries.' ... Because Sandler's such a regular guy, he can be very ethnic and still seem universal."