William Shatner doesn’t include Hanukkah song on new Christmas album
Opening up about his childhood holiday memories, Jewish icon says he regrets leaving out ‘Dreidel, Dreidel’
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JTA — William Shatner recently released a star-studded holiday album titled “Shatner Claus,” on which he croons classic Christmas tunes as “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Silent Night.”
But there are no Hanukkah songs on it, and the Jewish icon is having regrets about that.
“I was going to do ‘Dreidel, Dreidel,’ then I thought better of it … I mean, I should have, maybe,” Shatner said in the upcoming PBS documentary “Hanukkah: A Festival of DeLights,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
He also opened up about his childhood Hanukkah memories in the doc.
“The menorah was silver and blackened a little by years of use — the places where the candles went in were black no matter how much p olishing had been done,” Shatner said. “It was something that sat somewhere on the mantelpiece all year long until it was used — and then it was used with great reverence.”
The Montreal-born actor, best known for playing Captain Kirk in “Star Trek,” also spoke about how his mother would make latkes during the holiday.
“My mother’s standing over a frying pan, putting the mixture of potato, the ground-up potatoes into the sizzling fat, the oil, and frying up potato pancakes,” he said. “The [memory of] potato pancakes and the applesauce … and the family all around having the pancakes is indelible.”
Watch a trailer for the PBS documentary, which also features singer Lainie Kazan and journalist Abigail Pogrebi, here:
The Times of Israel Community.