We previewed Hallmark’s schmaltzy Chanukah movies so you don't have to

Get your cringe-o-meter ready, because the Hallmark Channel’s latest spate of Chanukah-themed movies is about to be released, and we’re more in need of mind-numbingly lighthearted Jewish content than ever.

Of course, we all wait in great suspense each year for the two or three token Jewish movies to be released alongside Hallmark’s usual ten million new Christmas movies, which they somehow keep finding “new” ways to reinvent, and this year is no different.

While the card company/film studio has already produced plenty of holiday movies over the past decade (more than 300, to be exact) for you to choose from this season, the good people at Hallmark Media have gifted us with another three dozen new ones for our troubles. And this year, a whole two of them are made just for us Jews.

Leah’s Perfect Gift, scheduled for release on 8 December, plays on the tired trope of the jealous Jew who wishes they could celebrate Christmas but, alas, cannot – thanks to the bummer of being Jewish. Leah (Emily Arlook) is that Jew.

Thank Hashem that Leah’s boyfriend Graham (Evan Roderick) is not Jewish and can therefore help fulfill her lifelong wish of finally getting to celebrate a real Christmas. But the holiday spent with Graham’s “classic Connecticut family” (read: WASP-y gentiles) and his less-than-welcoming blond-haired mother isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Leah soon discovers.

Prediction? After seeing how the other side lives, Chanukah won’t seem so bad to sweet Leah after all.

Still from Leah's Perfect Gift, one of the latest Hallmark Chanukah films. (Photo: Hallmark)[Missing Credit]

Hanukkah on the Rocks, premiering on 13 December, is the other movie sent to appease us this season. Set in this JC writer’s hometown of Chicago, the movie follows the suddenly unemployed corporate lawyer Tory (Stacey Farber) one week before the holidays as she “embarks on a quest across Chicago to find the last box of coveted Hanukkah candles”, I guess in some kind of universe in which the enormous and super Jewish-friendly city of Chicago has run out of this extremely common commodity.

Somehow this search leads her to a bar called Rocky’s where she meets a handsome doctor from Florida named Jay (Daren Kagasoff) and a “cast of quirky regulars who make her rethink everything.” Just what a bunch of Chicago barflies could make a well-bred Jewish girl rethink about her life, this writer could not possibly imagine. But Tory ends up bartending at Rocky’s and turning it into some kind of Chanukah-themed funhouse, which is totally something I’ve seen in Chicago and makes complete sense.

Hanukkah on the Rocks. (Photo: Hallmark)[Missing Credit]

Despite the cloying cheesiness of these sorts of films, replete with neat happy endings and impossibly glib love stories, Hallmark has managed to do one thing that even many acclaimed filmmakers often neglect: to cast actual Jewish actors for the roles of all the main Jewish characters. So even though it seems like AI might be writing the scripts – or at least helping, given the astounding speed at which these films come out – at least there is authentic Jewish representation.

The same goes for the Chanukah-themed Hallmark films of previous years, like 2021’s Eight Gifts of Hanukkah featuring Israeli actress Inbar Lavi and Jake Epstein, and 2022’s Hanukkah on Rye with Jewish actors Yael Groblas and Jeremy Jordan.

So, even though I may bear a perpetual sneer while watching this year’s latest selection, at least I’ll be sneering at real Jews playing superficial made-for-television Jews. That’s something, right?

While the Hallmark Channel is unfortunately not available on television in the UK, you can find the films on Amazon Prime (or get a sneaky VPN).