What can you say about a Hanukkah record where the best performances are rendered by goyim? Not much, but maybe that’s the point of this release. Much the same way Jesus has been effectively marketed out of his own birthday, Jews  evidently feel the need to produce holiday music as boring as thier Gentile brothers and much of this is just that. Boring. Which is a drag,‘cause there are some real gems hidden among the dreck.

The influence of The Klezmatics' Frank London features prominently on several tracks, most notably Jane Siberry’s ambitious rendering of “Shir Amami” (featuring the violin of Palestinian virtuoso Simon Shaheen) and the lush “Dybbuk Shers” a staple of the Klezmatics live show. Clarinetist Don Byron checks in with the singular nod to the old school with a loosely tight trio (Eric Freedlander, cello and Glen Velez, frame drum) rendition of “Oi Tata,” at turns both honoring and stretching the traditional old melody.

Beyond that, however, unless you really want to hear archival Cantorial recordings grafted clumsily to drum machines and digeridoos (“Kiddush le Shabbat” The Covenant) or “Aveniu Malkenu” rendered with all the passion of a guitar wielding John Tesh (Rebbe Soul), you should probably look elsewhere. 

Oh yeah, Peter Himmelman contributes the closer, “Lighting Up The World”  a duet with Israeli guitarist David Broza, which is fairly unexceptional and made even more so with his sappy liner note comment that Hanukkah “...is a metaphor for the triumph of the spirit over the material...”  Sure. Go tell that to the boys in marketing.

Best I can figure, this was intended to be the inoffensive record that the ”hasn’t-been-near-a-shul-since-bar-mitzvah-but-still-
wants-to-be-culturaly-aware“ Jewish parent puts on the hi-fi while the kids indulge in the un-Jewish practice of  tearing open presents under the “Hanukkah bush” so they won’t feel left out when all the goyim kids show up for school with their Christmas treats. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before we get a Yom Kippur rap CD.

Mark Rubin
11/6/96