Adam Sandler Drops Mic at Hanukkah: Funky Beats, Ancient Feuds, and Family Drama

Max Sterling, 12/13/2025Explore the vibrant tapestry of Hanukkah in Detroit, where tradition meets modernity. This article delves into the holiday's evolving significance, from its ancient roots and culinary delights to contemporary expressions through music, highlighting how Hanukkah continues to adapt and shine amidst challenges.

Oddly enough, for a holiday marked by precision—eight days, always candles, always a script—Hanukkah has a bad habit of showing up with all the timeliness of a subway with a hangover. One year it’s sidling right up to Thanksgiving, masquerading as a prelude to turkey; another year, it waits in the wings so long December’s almost out of breath. The secret culprit? That capricious lunar Hebrew calendar, which, much like winter itself, refuses to synchronize nicely with everyone’s Google schedules. For 2025, mark the stretch from December 14 to December 22 as the window when Hanukkah shares turf with Christmas, creating a festive overlap with just a hint of sibling rivalry.

Ask a roomful of Hanukkah aficionados why the candles burn, and the answers might sound less like confident recitations and more like tracing one’s finger around the edges of a familiar but worn coin. On one hand—a hand that’s likely sticky with chocolate gelt—the memory is that of the Maccabees: those resolute underdogs who stood up, stretched, and declared enough was enough to a king with ambitions of erasure. Rebels, absolutely, but also accidental heroes in a narrative that often forgets details and opts for flair. Think less William Wallace in face paint, more a scrappy band of rebels surviving against the odds, their own version of history’s plucky B-side.

But then, there’s the oil. Everyone knows the oil. The story goes that a single vessel, ordinary by all accounts, burned for eight nights—its endurance bordering on the absurd, the spiritual equivalent of watching your phone battery refuse to die while Instagramming an entire music festival. This miracle, it turns out, wasn’t even in the original script. Only later, when history started to feel a bit too heavy on heroism and not quite magical enough for cold nights, did the tale of the oil slip in—a rabbinic remix that swapped swords for shimmer. The result? Suddenly, Hanukkah became less about warfare, more about hope—the kind that gleams when everything around dims. A little defiance against gloom, as if to say: “We may have run out of options, but we haven’t burned out yet.”

Every tradition, though, jostles for interpretation. By the 1800s in America, Jewish leaders like Isaac M. Wise and Max Lilienthal rebranded Hanukkah as a festival meant to rival, not retreat from, the swelling tides of Christmas. The doctrine was simple: Bring a “grand and glorious” party, keep the children delighted (and sugared up on fried dough), and turn candlelight into community theater. Out went solemn reflection—at least for a while—and in came the full symphony of latkes, sufganiyot, and a friendly civil war over whether potato pancakes should rest beneath applesauce or sour cream. (The right answer? Listen, sometimes détente beats dogma.)

The menorah—that’s the hanukkiah to aficionados, with its lineup of nine—dramatizes this evolution every night. The shamash, awkwardly tall, presides over its companions, coaxing them into flame in a ritual that’s as much about persistence as spectacle. Nearby, dreidels spin—some with more enthusiasm than skill—each hemisphere with its own coded message. “A great miracle happened there,” reads the Hebrew, though, if you’re spinning dreidel in Tel Aviv and wondering why the letters don’t match your Brooklyn set, consider it proof that localization isn’t just for apps and streaming platforms.

And then, the plot thickened. In Israel, Hanukkah got a political charge—an anthem less for the oil and more for the comeback, glorifying the Maccabees as blueprints for modern sovereignty. Eight nights transformed into a mini pageant of national identity, a glowing pat on the back for resilience—a small, insistent act of independence that’s hard to underestimate in a region accustomed to struggle.

Like all living traditions, Hanukkah’s meanings were never locked tight. At the edge, dissent simmers. The early 20th-century Hasidic leaders—especially those in Sanz—pushed back against the nationalist rebranding, arguing this was a festival for the soul, not militaristic rallies. “Not by might, nor by power, but by spirit,” they might invoke from Zechariah—an age-old debate burned anew with every candle. Meanwhile, some folks simply prefer to drown the discourse in another round of fried fare and family banter, keeping the conversation as light as they keep the candles.

In truth, Hanukkah might be best understood not as a singular story, but as a patchwork—each square tugged a little by history, faith, and the ever-changing needs of its keepers. Lawrence Kushner, a contemporary rabbi, once put it this way: Hanukkah is about surviving the darkness, about throwing up light and hoping the universe gets the message. Maybe he’s onto something. Or—on second thought—picture this: It’s 2025, your phone’s at 10%, and it soldiers on for eight days straight. That’s Hanukkah logic, full stop.

If food and flame are Hanukkah’s first languages, then music’s the upstart dialect. Sure, the standards still hold court—dreidel songs at the table, sturdy folk melodies echoing in shul basements. But then comes Adam Sandler with “The Chanukah Song,” elbowing its way onto playlists right between Mariah and Maroon 5, its irreverence a sort of group therapy (“Eight crazy nights,” he promises, and what’s more universally appealing than extra presents?). And who expected Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings to inject some soul-drenched funk into the mix, their “8 Days (Of Hanukkah)” thumping through family kitchens? Clearly, the soundtrack refuses to stand still—why should it?

At the center, the holiday endures not because the miracle was definitive or the muscle legendary, but due to its uncanny knack for adaptation. Hanukkah is slippery—in all the best ways. It absorbs change, wrestles optimism out of cold air, and keeps the world guessing about what, exactly, is being remembered. “A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness,” Rabbi Schneur Zalman once said. Hanukkah never stops searching for new ways to prove it.

So, as Detroit’s metallic menorah burns against the chill—families bickering over which end the shamash belongs, chocolate coins melting into snow—Hanukkah pulses on: unfinished, debated, stubbornly aglow. Maybe, in the laughter or the shimmer, the miracle still flickers. You just have to squint.

Winter in Detroit isn’t so much a season as a challenge. Each time December steamrolls in, Detroit looks at the coming months—the icy winds that prickle cheeks and the darkness threatening to muscle in before most people even leave work—and answers back, loud and bright. This year, no gesture was louder than the hulking menorah elbowing for space in Campus Martius, certified by Guinness (because Detroit doesn’t half-do anything, especially when there’s a world record to chase). The structure looms not like a gentle symbol, but like a futuristic beacon—equal parts sanctuary and science fiction, somewhere between tradition and mechanical bravado.Oddly enough, for a holiday marked by precision—eight days, always candles, always a script—Hanukkah has a bad habit of showing up with all the timeliness of a subway with a hangover. One year it’s sidling right up to Thanksgiving, masquerading as a prelude to turkey; another year, it waits in the wings so long December’s almost out of breath. The secret culprit? That capricious lunar Hebrew calendar, which, much like winter itself, refuses to synchronize nicely with everyone’s Google schedules. For 2025, mark the stretch from December 14 to December 22 as the window when Hanukkah shares turf with Christmas, creating a festive overlap with just a hint of sibling rivalry.Ask a roomful of Hanukkah aficionados why the candles burn, and the answers might sound less like confident recitations and more like tracing one’s finger around the edges of a familiar but worn coin. On one hand—a hand that’s likely sticky with chocolate gelt—the memory is that of the Maccabees: those resolute underdogs who stood up, stretched, and declared enough was enough to a king with ambitions of erasure. Rebels, absolutely, but also accidental heroes in a narrative that often forgets details and opts for flair. Think less William Wallace in face paint, more a scrappy band of rebels surviving against the odds, their own version of history’s plucky B-side.But then, there’s the oil. Everyone knows the oil. The story goes that a single vessel, ordinary by all accounts, burned for eight nights—its endurance bordering on the absurd, the spiritual equivalent of watching your phone battery refuse to die while Instagramming an entire music festival. This miracle, it turns out, wasn’t even in the original script. Only later, when history started to feel a bit too heavy on heroism and not quite magical enough for cold nights, did the tale of the oil slip in—a rabbinic remix that swapped swords for shimmer. The result? Suddenly, Hanukkah became less about warfare, more about hope—the kind that gleams when everything around dims. A little defiance against gloom, as if to say: “We may have run out of options, but we haven’t burned out yet.”Every tradition, though, jostles for interpretation. By the 1800s in America, Jewish leaders like Isaac M. Wise and Max Lilienthal rebranded Hanukkah as a festival meant to rival, not retreat from, the swelling tides of Christmas. The doctrine was simple: Bring a “grand and glorious” party, keep the children delighted (and sugared up on fried dough), and turn candlelight into community theater. Out went solemn reflection—at least for a while—and in came the full symphony of latkes, sufganiyot, and a friendly civil war over whether potato pancakes should rest beneath applesauce or sour cream. (The right answer? Listen, sometimes détente beats dogma.)The menorah—that’s the hanukkiah to aficionados, with its lineup of nine—dramatizes this evolution every night. The shamash, awkwardly tall, presides over its companions, coaxing them into flame in a ritual that’s as much about persistence as spectacle. Nearby, dreidels spin—some with more enthusiasm than skill—each hemisphere with its own coded message. “A great miracle happened there,” reads the Hebrew, though, if you’re spinning dreidel in Tel Aviv and wondering why the letters don’t match your Brooklyn set, consider it proof that localization isn’t just for apps and streaming platforms.And then, the plot thickened. In Israel, Hanukkah got a political charge—an anthem less for the oil and more for the comeback, glorifying the Maccabees as blueprints for modern sovereignty. Eight nights transformed into a mini pageant of national identity, a glowing pat on the back for resilience—a small, insistent act of independence that’s hard to underestimate in a region accustomed to struggle.Like all living traditions, Hanukkah’s meanings were never locked tight. At the edge, dissent simmers. The early 20th-century Hasidic leaders—especially those in Sanz—pushed back against the nationalist rebranding, arguing this was a festival for the soul, not militaristic rallies. “Not by might, nor by power, but by spirit,” they might invoke from Zechariah—an age-old debate burned anew with every candle. Meanwhile, some folks simply prefer to drown the discourse in another round of fried fare and family banter, keeping the conversation as light as they keep the candles.In truth, Hanukkah might be best understood not as a singular story, but as a patchwork—each square tugged a little by history, faith, and the ever-changing needs of its keepers. Lawrence Kushner, a contemporary rabbi, once put it this way: Hanukkah is about surviving the darkness, about throwing up light and hoping the universe gets the message. Maybe he’s onto something. Or—on second thought—picture this: It’s 2025, your phone’s at 10%, and it soldiers on for eight days straight. That’s Hanukkah logic, full stop.If food and flame are Hanukkah’s first languages, then music’s the upstart dialect. Sure, the standards still hold court—dreidel songs at the table, sturdy folk melodies echoing in shul basements. But then comes Adam Sandler with “The Chanukah Song,” elbowing its way onto playlists right between Mariah and Maroon 5, its irreverence a sort of group therapy (“Eight crazy nights,” he promises, and what’s more universally appealing than extra presents?). And who expected Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings to inject some soul-drenched funk into the mix, their “8 Days (Of Hanukkah)” thumping through family kitchens? Clearly, the soundtrack refuses to stand still—why should it?At the center, the holiday endures not because the miracle was definitive or the muscle legendary, but due to its uncanny knack for adaptation. Hanukkah is slippery—in all the best ways. It absorbs change, wrestles optimism out of cold air, and keeps the world guessing about what, exactly, is being remembered. “A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness,” Rabbi Schneur Zalman once said. Hanukkah never stops searching for new ways to prove it.So, as Detroit’s metallic menorah burns against the chill—families bickering over which end the shamash belongs, chocolate coins melting into snow—Hanukkah pulses on: unfinished, debated, stubbornly aglow. Maybe, in the laughter or the shimmer, the miracle still flickers. You just have to squint.