Tom Lehrer Gave Us One of the Best Jewish Holiday Songs, ‘Hanukkah in Santa Monica’

The famously private Tom Lehrer, who passed away on Sunday, July 27 at age 97, was not a particularly observant Jew by his own admission. But he was a beloved and important one.

The Grammy-nominated song satirist and math prodigy (he earned his degree from Harvard at age 18) gave us one of the best-known Jewish holiday songs in American history, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” an infectious tune about spending the Festival of Lights by the sea in the California town.

The song might have never been if it weren’t for Garrison Keillor. Back in the 1990s he coaxed Lehrer, who had by then quit his musical career and gone back to teaching math, to record the song. He rightly noted that there aren’t a lot of great songs about Hanukkah, but there are a whole lot of great Christmas songs written by Jews for his radio program. And he thought they should fix that.

“There was thus a deplorable lacuna in the repertoire, which this song, a sort of answer to ‘White Christmas,’ was intended to remedy,” Lehrer once said about “Hanukkah in Santa Monica.” And unlike a saccharine Christmas song, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” is humorous and fun. It has, some would say, a real Jewish American sensibility. The title of the song may or may not have been taken from the title of a show by Yiddish musical comedian Mickey Katz (the father of Joel Grey and grandfather of Jennifer Grey).

The song is sprinkled with Jewish references about Hanukkah traditions, from lighting candles to playing dreidels to toasting to Judah Maccabee (or rather, “Judah Maccabeus”). It’s also a reminder that Hanukkah is hardly the most important Jewish holiday of them all — the song mentions Shavuos, or Shavuot as one knows it in the Hebrew pronunciation, spent in east St. Louis, and Rosh Hashanah spent in Arizona and “Yom Kippuh” spent in “Mississippuh.” It’s a little walk through the Jewish holidays and U.S. geography, and a nod to those Jews who spend the winter season in warmer climes.

The song is the only primarily Jewish song in Lehrer’s rich repertoire. But the satirist saw no subject as taboo, and he sang about religion (poking fun at Catholic traditions in “Vatican Rags”), politics (his “So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)” still feels so fresh), sexuality (like in his “The Masochism Tango”) and antisemitism. In his “Brotherhood of Man,” he sang: “Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants… and everybody hates the Jews.”

The reaction to his death, in the Jewish community and beyond, has been one of sadness and gratitude for his genius and generosity.

“Tom Lehrer gone. At his great age, it’s not a tragedy, I know, but it just does feel bad not having his genius in the world,” Jewish food writer Nigella Lawson shared on social media. 

“I loved Tom Lehrer. I am so glad I knocked on his door. I am so glad I got the time with him that I did,” comedian Alex Edelman, who met the reclusive Lehrer simply by knocking at the door of his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shared on X. “Am listening today to some of his songs, and some of our conversations. He didn’t want a funeral, memorial or a fuss but he was a legend and genius and curmudgeonly grump.”

Lehrer may have been private and a recluse, but he was also very generous with his work. He put it all in the public domain, and encouraged anyone who wanted to take his lyrics and melodies to make something new with them — like this delightful jazzy cover of “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” — to do so.

May the funny, brilliant, subversive gifts he gave the world live on forever.

And may his memory be for a blessing.