Whenever Adam Sandler is ready to write the next installment of “The Chanukah Song,” he might want to add another Jewish musician to the lyrics: Hall and Oates legend Daryl Hall.
Last week, our favorite Jewish foodie Phil Rosenthal and writer David Wild re-released a 2024 episode of their podcast Naked Lunch that featured an interview with Hall. In that interview, they asked Hall to clear something up: Is he — or was he once — Jewish?
“Is it true that you were Jewish for at least a few months of your life?” Wild asks Hall via Zoom.
“I don’t know if you can be Jewish for a few months,” Hall replies good-naturedly but also vaguely Talmudically. “Well, yes, the answer is yes.”
He goes on to explain that while he was in college in the late 1960s, he met a Jewish girl from Philadelphia. “Her family said, ‘You’re gonna marry her, you gotta join the tribe.’”
“And you’ve been complaining ever since,” Rosenthal quips, forever ready with a Jewish dad joke.
“It changed my brain!” Hall says back. Whether this is a quick comeback to Rosenthal’s joke or a powerful statement on his conversion is open to interpretation, but in a more sincere conversation in 2010, Hall opened up to Heeb magazine about his conversion.
“I spent almost a year under [the West Philadelphia Jewish community’s] tutelage. It became a part of my life. I wasn’t married to [my ex-wife] very long, but Judaism still gives me an understanding of life. I do feel more akin to Judaism than Methodism, that’s for sure.”
In 2023, Hall appeared on “Club Random with Bill Maher,” where Maher asked “Aren’t you Jewish? Didn’t you convert?”
“Yes, more or less I am,” Hall said, telling Maher that there is a tree in Israel planted in his name “Daniel Daryl”— the Daniel possibly referring to the Hebrew name he was given upon his conversion.
Hall grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, deeply ingrained in the Methodist community and singing in the church choir. While in school at Temple University in Philadelphia, he met Byrna Lublin, the Jewish woman he married, divorced, and who — according to Hall and Oates lore — partially inspired one of the band’s first hits, “She’s Gone.”
In the Naked Lunch interview, Hall is asked what his favorite part of Judaism is.
“Nat Hiken,” Hall replies immediately, apparently referring to the midcentury Jewish television writer-producer who died in 1968.
“I thought you were going to say ‘not hiking,’ which is my favorite part of Judaism,” Rosenthal replies, once again solidifying his place as America’s Jewish Dad.
“That, too,” says Hall.
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