Orrin Hatch’s Song For Hanukkah (Seriously)

Really, Orrin Hatch? You’re going to challenge me for Hanukkah song of the season? OK you win. The song you wrote to celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, is awesome.

Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senior Senator from Utah, wrote a song called “Eight Days of Hannukah” for Tablet Magazine — and it’s so good! It’s actually quite delightful and catchy, good for kids but actually swap the lyrics out and put it on the radio and you’d bop along with it just as easily.* The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for Tablet, writes a great account of how he came not only witnessed Hatch’s genesis as Hanukkah songwriter but was also the catalyst for it:

Ten years ago, I visited Orrin Hatch, the senior senator from Utah and a prominent member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on Capitol Hill. I was writing for The New York Times Magazine and Hatch was thinking of running for president. We talked about politics for a few minutes, and then he said, “Have you heard my love songs?”

No senator had asked me that question before. It turned out that Hatch was a prolific songwriter, not only of love songs, but of Christian spirituals as well. We spent an hour in his office listening to some of his music, a regular Mormon platter party. After five or six Christmas songs, I asked, him, “What about Hanukkah songs? You have any of those?”

That encounter a decade ago was not forgotten by either of them, and last year when Goldberg reminded Hatch of that suggestion, Hatch whipped into action, and voila! A sincere, earnest, uncynical, unironic, super-uplifting Hanukkah song was born. Give it a listen, it’ll make you feel as good as chocolate gelt, with none of the calories.

I love Goldberg’s last line: “So it’s just – all it is is a hip-hop Hanukkah song written by the Senior Senator from Utah.” Ha. Everyone is having fun with this, by the way, as they should — Mark Leibovitch‘s lede in the NYT, which snapped it up pronto, is pretty awesome: “The canon of Hanukkah songs written by Mormon senators from Utah just got a little bigger.” But it’s so clear from reading Goldberg’s and Leibovitch’s piece that they are with Hatch and his effort all the way. Actually, it’s so earnest and sweet — there are children in the video, for goodness’ sake — that it’s impossible not to like.

So why is Hatch writing a Hanukkah song? Leibovitch explains:

“Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do,” Mr. Hatch said in an interview before heading to the Senate floor to debate an abortion amendment. “Mormons believe the Jewish people are the chosen people, just like the Old Testament says.”

(This is the part where I like Hatch slightly less, given that the abortion amendment was his, proposing to block women from using federal subsidies to buy insurance that covers abortion. Really, Orrin Hatch? Don’t you think that when Judah Maccabee was fighting for our freedom he was also fighting for the freedom to choose? Hatch’s abortion amendment was voted down, by the way.)

Still, this is why we take people for what they are — complicated, with different views, but with some truly wonderful things that can actually unite us. (And I’m not talking about Hatch’s love for Barbra Streisand, though I’m with him all the way.) “Eigh Days of Hannukah” is great not only for Jews, but the themes are worthy of celebration by us all: Fighting for justice, for freedom, celebrating the tradition. It’s nice. Good on Hatch for doing it.

As for Goldberg, he makes a good point about the “Adam Sandlerization of Judaism in America” though I have to say that when I first heard “The Hanukkah Song” it was like an amazing revelation….and it really served as a point of pride for Jews, and a great reminder that there was something else going on in December too. His song was funny, but actually just as earnest as what Hatch did here. (And in truth, in writing my own song, I was motivated by that same earnestness, even if my Hebrew is a little blue.) So, good on Goldberg too:

“I am willing to serve as a Semitic song muse for any United States senator,” Mr. Goldberg said. “God forbid any of the Jewish senators write a Hanukkah song.”

Al Franken, the gauntlet is thrown.

*”Eight years of loving you, eight years of being true, eight years of loving you, for what?” Can’t you hear that by Jessica Simpson or someone? Actually that would work for Elin Nordgren, she met Tiger Woods in 2001. But anyway. I like this song!

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.