Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Mormon Republican from Utah, loves Jews.
He loves them so much, in fact, that he has penned and recorded a song just in time for the Festival of Lights, a ditty straightforwardly titled “Eight Days of Hanukkah.” And yes, we are completely serious.
“Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do,” Hatch told The New York Times just 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.”
Hatch’s lyrics might not have the Grammy folks pounding on his door, but they certainly sum up the Jewish holiday that gives Christmas a run for its money. The first verse begins:
“Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah,
The festival of lights
In Jerusalem,
The oil burned bright.”
Hatch is known as a songwriter-about-town, penning a number of Christian and patriotic tunes. However, this is his first venture into Jewish music — and it was a long time coming. A decade ago Jerusalem Post writer Jeffrey Goldberg lamented “the general lameness of Hanukkah music” and asked Hatch to write a Hanukkah song. The senator agreed, but never did. Then Goldberg, who now writes for The Atlantic, mentioned the broken promise in a blog entry a few months back, which finally prompted the senator to take pen to paper and write his gem. He teamed up with Madeline Stone, a liberal Jewish songwriter from the Manhattan’s Upper West Side who specializes in Christian music. She wrote the synthesizer-infused melody. The rest, as they say, is history.
The song was recorded in a Manhattan recording studio in October. Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish lifestyle and culture, released the video Tuesday night and it is definitely worth a watch, at the very least to see the senator barely move his lips as he joins others for a few “la la la’s.”
Oh, and the video also includes Hatch showing off his bling — a golden mezuzah he wears around his neck. (A mezuzah is a small case that contains Hebrew prayers and is typically mounted on the doorways of Jewish homes.) The song is primarily performed by Rasheeda Azar, a Syrian-American vocalist from Indiana. Again, seriously.
As one guy says at the very end of the video to kind of sum up this hard-to-believe collaboration, “So all it is is a hip hop Hanukkah song written by the senior senator from Utah. I think that’s all it is.”
Yep, pretty much. Go Orrin, friend of the Jews for life!
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
