‘Jazzukkah Project’ aims to create a new Jewish soundtrack for the holiday season
Jazz band hopes its Hanukkah repertoire will provide an alternative to Christmas music for Jewish audiences, will perform at New York synagogue on the first night of festival

NEW YORK — Gil Shefler, an Israeli-American working in tech, used to host Hanukkah parties at his home for friends, complete with snacks, a menorah and gifts. One element was always lacking, though – a holiday soundtrack.
“Every year I’d have a Hanukkah party and invite my friends, and the music was just all over the place. Some were children’s songs, some were very religious ones,” he said.
He used to search through Spotify for songs, putting together a medley for his guests.
“The Christmas New Year’s season, just not having a soundtrack that is Jewish and quality and something I can listen to, it kind of irked me. And each year I’d ask myself, ‘How do they not have this already?’” he said.
Shefler contacted some musician friends who felt the same and the group decided to “do something about it,” said Shefler, who described himself as a “music aficionado” but not a trained musician.
The result is the Jazzukkah Project, a jazz ensemble that is putting together a canon of Hanukkah songs that the group’s members hope will serve as a holiday soundtrack for Jewish revelers. Shefler serves as the group’s producer and songwriter, Elana Rozenfeld, a cantor, is the vocalist, and Gilad Abro plays the bass. Regular collaborators include Tom Oren, a pianist, and Alon Benjamini, a drummer.

The group played together last year for the first time, is putting together an album for release next year and will perform on December 25, the first night of Hanukkah, at the historical Eldridge Street Synagogue in Manhattan beneath the building’s soaring stained glass window. The group’s members all have separate careers but come together around the holiday season to collaborate on the project. The band is supported by the Bloom Jewish Music Foundation and a grant from Mifal Hapais, Israel’s lottery.
The group is also planning to produce an animated narrative film to accompany the music, along the lines of the Christmas classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which has a jazz soundtrack. The band is working with animator Shahar Fleisher to develop the film with the help of artificial intelligence.
“Despite everything it has going for it, it becomes difficult sometimes this time of year for Hanukkah to hold a candle to the ubiquitous Christmas songs,” Shefler said. “We at this ensemble decided to pay homage to the vast songbook of Hanukkah and amplify it, energize it with a jazz sound, so that we can create a sonic signal and let anyone know it’s Hanukkah time.”
The songs in the group’s repertoire represent a range of holiday music, including American classics such as “I Have a Little Dreidel,” the traditional Hebrew song “Maoz Tzur” written around the 13th century, a song in Ladino, a Jewish language related to Spanish that has seen a musical revival in recent years, and an original composition called “Hanukkah Blues.” The group’s repertoire is around 15 songs, Shefler said.
The band is not just putting together a soundtrack, but adapting the songs as well. For “I Have a Little Dreidel,” for example, the group expanded the middle section with instrumentals.
“What we’ve done is we’ve elevated a song that’s a beautiful, fantastic song for children, but then we’ve added a lot of layers of musical sophistication to it that retains the original value, but also, I think adds more to it,” Shefler said.
The music will likely help US Jews connect to the holiday season, said Jeff Janeczko, a curator at the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, which collects material related to the history of Jewish music in the US.
“I would think of it as a way of American Jews making a kind of claim of belonging, that this culture belongs to us and this time of year is not just for people who celebrate Christmas,” said Janeczko who has a PhD in ethnomusicology and is not connected to the Jazzukkah Project.
He added that Hanukkah music has likely become more prevalent for US Jews because of the holiday’s proximity to Christmas.
“We’re probably seeing in some sense some cross-pollination between these two holidays that come from completely separate domains,” he said.
Rozenfeld, the vocalist, grew up in Scarsdale, New York, in a family of jazz musicians. She was a cantor at the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, Massachusetts, before making aliyah four years ago. She signed onto the Jazzukkah Project the moment Shefler told her about it, she said, adding that jazz was an appropriate genre for the album because it is flexible and goes with the different styles of music in the group’s oeuvre.
“You’ll hear in our music a lot of Latin rhythms as well as Middle Eastern rhythms and also funk. Funk comes right from jazz,” she said. “It’s a fusion that we’re creating.״
American Jews also have a long history in jazz, Janeczko said. In the 1920s, for example, klezmer musicians incorporated jazz into their work, and the late 20th century saw more “Jewishly specific kinds of jazz,” he said. Jewish composers Irving Berlin and George Gershwin worked in both pop music and jazz.
“Jewish participation in jazz really stretches back almost to the very beginnings of the genre. There were always Jewish musicians performing jazz, serving as composers,” Janeczko said. “I would argue that jazz has really been quite central to American Jewish music.”
The genre is also prevalent in non-Jewish holiday music, Shefler said, adding that Jewish composers played a role in shaping Christmas music’s sound. Berlin wrote the classic song “White Christmas,” and Jewish songwriter John Marks wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
“In mainstream culture, we have this association between this music and this time of year and this holiday,” Shefler said.
The project also aims to connect Jews from different spheres through music. Many Israelis may not know American songs like “I Have a Little Dreidel,” while American Jews are less familiar with some of the Hebrew tunes.
The music will likely resonate with a swath of the Jewish community, including children, adults, Modern Orthodox, olim in Israel and native Israelis, Shefler said.
“We’re looking to put a sound out there that can play anywhere – at a school, a shul, a shopping mall, at someone’s home,” he said. “I hope it becomes a standard touchstone that people can go to without even thinking, just putting it on and it will be part of the soundtrack to their holiday.”
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