The best Hanukkah songs for your holiday playlist

Jones and her Brooklyn soul crew pull off the seemingly impossible feat of making a modern Hanukkah song you’d actually want to listen to all year. As per usual, the band’s Motown-infused gospel sound is warm and lived in, while Jones enumerates a holiday-appropriate activity for each night. Sharon, we applaud your soulful, non-annoying interpolation of the ‘Dreidel’ song, your pronunciation of Pesach... the whole schmear.

The students of Staten Island’s PS22 deliver an adorable, youthful version of the Hanukkah classic.

Here’s proof that even Taylor Swift’s pop smash can be reworked (via the miracle of a capella, no less) to tell the story of the Maccabees.

Well, duh. Sandler busted this tune out on Weekend Update in 1994, shouting out the celebrities you may not have known to light the menorah every year, with the idea being precisely that there really aren’t any Hanukkah songs for young Jewish kids to take pride in. It started as a joke but has become a seasonal classic. For a whole generation, it’s really the Hanukkah song – a tip of the yarmulke to the indie rock version Haim put on their Instagram last year. 

It’s not clear why the Bay Area rap legend decided to record a grinding slow jam celebrating the Festival of Lights, but hey, let’s not question miracles when they happen. ‘I’m fryin’ latkes/I’m makin’ a mess,” he declares, “with some jewish girls/pinching tuchus.” Oh, and what’s his favourite word? Maccabiatch! 

The Yeshiva University–based a cappella group’s tune evokes a number of upbeat musical touchstones, from boy bands to You Might Be Giants’s ‘Constantinople.’

The Okie who later made his way to Brooklyn has a sizable cache of Jewish song lyrics, written – and this is not a joke – with his mother-in-law. This catchy folk ditty should get the mishpocheh moving at your Festival of Lights barn party.

Disappointed in the disparity between the Christmas and Hanukkah pop canons, Hasidic hip-hopper Matisyahu was inspired to write this pop-reggae jam in 2010 to offer children something to celebrate (check out ‘Happy Hanukkah’ as well).

Unfortunately, the album this song appears on, Barenaked for the Holidays, lacks a critical Barenaked element: The holiday album is the Canadian rock group's only LP without a naked track (a song recorded with all members playing nude). Despite that fact, the joyful spirit on this original Hanukkah track will, um, blow your socks off.

A festive five-song EP, Holidayland, from They Might Be Giants strangely makes sense – the offbeat alt-rocking guitar-and-accordion duo have that ultimate crossover charm, which makes them perfect candidates for surprise holiday tunage.

The occasionally shmaltzy Jewish Elvis takes on Adam Sandler’s SNL skit turned holiday classic, and while the comic timing isn’t quite there, he does cheekily substitute Jesus Christ for Tom Cruise’s agent.

In what seems like the longest one-minute-and-forty-five seconds of all time, satirist Tom Lehrer rattles off the warm-weather locales he visits for each Jewish holiday. California seems like a fine place to avoid NYC’s frigid December, but you’d have to be some kind of schmuck to shlep all the way to ‘Mississippuh’ for Yom Kippur just cause it sort of rhymes.

You might not want to say the band’s name in front of your auntie, but this Hanukkah ode is actually another sweet, peppy horah-ready jam.

The banjo-master settles into a deep, hypnotic groove for this instrumental meditation.

This is the other dreidel song, the lyrics of which roughly translate to ‘dreidel spin spin spin / Hanukkah is a good holiday.’

The a-capella group no doubt burned the midnight oil longer than one night to figure out the arrangement for this complex reworking of Taio Cruz's ‘Dynamite.’

Here’s a New Orleans street march with giddy klezmer pulse – and yes, there really is a Japonica Street in ‘Nawlins.

You might not be familiar with the LeeVees; if so, don't feel down on yourself. It's the project of Adam Gardner of alt-rockers Guster and Dave Schneider of the Zambonis, a band that exclusively writes songs about hockey. The twosome strike gold in this comical tune that is exactly what you might surmise from the name.

Yes, this is a Festival of Lights-centric update of one of the most obnoxious Christmas perrennials of all time, from an album called Mama Said Nog You Out, no less. Obviously, they also do a version for Christmas and Kwanzaa, just to ensure that the hippo arrives one way or another. 

Pella proposes one solution to the dearth of Hanukkah-ready modern pop hits: Mash up ‘Some Nights’ by the pop-rock band Fun and a few other tunes and add slightly different holiday-focused lyrics.

Okay, okay – ostensibly, this song is in no way about Hanukkah. But Def Leppard lead vocalist Joe Elliot titled it after the traditional Hanukkah hymn (‘Ma’oz Tzur’ in Hebrew) after finding a children’s choir’s songbook in the recording studio.