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We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
Hallmark holiday movies are famously formulaic. They all have guaranteed happy endings and almost universally involve a homecoming, a life-changing shift in work-life balance and a chaste kiss amid glowing lights. But that doesn’t mean they have to be bad.
Since 2019, Hallmark has occasionally applied this formula to Hanukkah. This is generous of them. It is also where the trouble begins.
Sorry to be a Grinch, but this year’s installment in the Hallmark Hanukkah canon was not only corny (that’s to be expected) but also honestly kind of offensive. In the plot, a rabbi’s son comes home for the holidays and falls for the pastor’s daughter; their families end up combining Hanukkah and Christmas services and traditions to “unite their communities through song,” since, as the logline says, “coming together is the best way for everyone to celebrate the holiday season.”
After watching the movie, two of us — Mira Fox and Benyamin Cohen — cringed in dismay. We thought we could easily write a better plot, one that didn’t seem knocked out by a monkey typing into ChatGPT but still stays true to the frothy hallmarks people love about, well, Hallmark, complete with soapy romance and happy ending, but without the Christian hegemony.
So here’s our attempt. Give us a call, Hallmark.
The name
Love at First Light
The plot
Esther Rayzel Stiefel (not all Jewish women have generic names like Rebecca Goldstein) is a high-powered Jewish consultant who flies home to her struggling childhood synagogue to “fix Hanukkah,” a simple marketing mission her boss thinks will somehow reverse decades of suburban synagogue decline through a few simple branding choices.
Naive and headstrong, Esther believes it’s a task she can confidently take care of in one night, with a PowerPoint. Instead, it drags on for all eight days — derailed by committee meetings, Talmudic disputes and the discovery that Hanukkah is, theologically, a minor holiday that has nothing to do with synagogue attendance. This insight comes thanks to Esther’s new study partner: the synagogue’s new, young rabbi, Shaya Carlebach, who is singlehandedly revitalizing the shul’s youth attendance through his impish grin and knowledge of the slang term “6-7.”
Romance, sufganiyot and and a humorous montage of the pair trying to make an “elevated” latke out of everything but a potato ensue.
The cast
Kristen Bell, Emmy-nominated for her role as a non-Jewish podcaster dating a hot rabbi in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, stars as Esther. Some call it stunt-casting, or worse, others progress: an attractive blond with a normal-sized nose can play a television Jewess.
A shaggy-haired Timothée Chalamet repurposes his Wonka topper as a black hat to play Shaya Carlebach, a Rashi-quoting neo-Hasid who has a penchant for Yiddish EDM and moonlights as a DJ. The supporting cast — including Benny Blanco playing himself as a music industry friend — all correctly pronounce the end of his last name as “CH” and not “CK.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, who has real-life experience restoring a shul, plays Shaya’s widowed mom who falls in love with the equally widowed dad of Esther, portrayed by Kelsey Grammar. The star of Frasier — whose sixth season featured the holiday episode “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz” — already has daddy-daughter chemistry with Bell from their little-seen 2018 film Like Father.
Seth Rogen, his beard dyed white in a nod to Santa Claus, plays Esther’s boss, Nick Frost. Barbra Streisand makes a cameo.
Behind the scenes
Hallmark passes because the jokes have too much Yiddish and the executives didn’t get any of them. Also, Streisand requests fresh rugelach on set, a bark mitzvah for her cloned dog, and $18 million.
Warner Bros. pounces, but the script spends months in development, caught up in the midst of a corporate takeover. David Ellison, the new head of Paramount who is constantly trying to prove his Jewish bona fides, promises he’ll cast an Israeli, but only if he can fund the film using sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia.
Netflix produces the movie instead, repurposing the menorahs from the Nobody Wants This set, and says it will give the film a short theatrical release to qualify for an Oscar. Diane Warren scores the soundtrack and includes a song called “Let the Light Find You.”
The opening scene
Esther, wearing a power suit that signals both competence and unresolved resentment toward her mother, kisses a mezuzah as she strides through a glossy open-plan office in Manhattan murmuring into her phone buzzwords like “engagement,” “deliverables” and “community buy-in.”
A junior colleague asks the meaning of Hanukkah. Esther pauses, realizes she doesn’t really know, and says, “I’m too farklemt to do this right now.” Also, she’s late for lunch with her mom, who offers to raise a grandchild so Esther can focus on her career if she’ll just pop one out like, yesterday. (Nagging Jewish mothers might be an overdone trope, but this anecdote is straight out of real life.)
Cut to Esther’s boss assigning her the Hanukkah account — Esther’s childhood synagogue, now hemorrhaging members and relevance. “We need to make it festive,” he says. “Warm. Universal. Christmas-adjacent.”
Esther promises quick results. She books a flight home that night. Eight candles appear on the screen. Only one is lit.
The meet-cute
Esther arrives at the synagogue, a product of multiple mergers over the decades, and buys a hot drink from the lobby cafe, The Kiddush Cup. As she reaches to grab the non-dairy creamer, her hand brushes up against Shaya. They both realize they’re lactose-intolerant and have undiagnosed Chron’s. She introduces herself briskly, explaining she’s here to “optimize Hanukkah engagement.” Shaya smiles and asks if she wants to study.
They sit down for a chevruta — Shaya pulls an Artscroll Talmud off the shelf while Esther opens her laptop to Sefaria.org. They both try not to stare at each other. It’s antagonistic, flirtatious and immediately derailed by a congregant interrupting to ask the rabbi whether LED candles can be used in a menorah. In his attempt to summarize the arguments for and against the electric candles, Shaya digresses into recounting Talmudic gossip, like that time one student lay under his rabbi’s bed while he had sex with his wife because “this, too, is Torah.” Esther begins to realize there might be more to Judaism than Hanukkah-print pajamas.
The plot twist
By night four, Esther’s PowerPoint has grown to 97 slides (98 if you’re counting the one showing all the Jewish a capella groups parodying KPop Demon Hunters into Hanukkah medleys.) She has zero buy-in. Every attempt to “rebrand” Hanukkah collapses: Is it about miracles? Assimilation? Resistance? Latkes? Mensch on a Bench?
Esther is beginning to worry that all her ideas about revitalizing Hanukkah are more about trying to imitate Christmas. Hanukkah stockings aren’t going to convince anyone to come to shul.
That’s when Shaya casually mentions Purim. Esther can’t believe she didn’t think of this herself. After all, she is named after the holiday’s heroine. Perhaps it is a nod to the megillah, in which God’s divine hand is hidden.
In their study sessions, Esther and Shaya begin to speak faster and faster, cooperatively overlapping, discussing how the best way to bring people into synagogue isn’t trying to make Judaism closer to Christianity, but instead leaning into real Jewish practices. Hanukkah bushes might be pretty lame but Purim spiels can be outlandish, whip-smart and fun.
“Wow,” Esther exclaims, “It’s pretty ironic how everyone wants to make Hanukkah about Christmas when the whole holiday is about religious zealots resisting assimilation!” They laugh heartily.
The ending
On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Esther finally gives up.
At the synagogue candle lighting, she scraps her prepared remarks — a TED-adjacent d’var Torah about resilience, relevance and light as metaphor — and instead tells the truth. Hanukkah, she says, doesn’t need to be fixed. It resists optimization. It has survived this long without a content strategy.
Still, Esther has to do something to prove to her boss that she succeeded and get a long-awaited promotion, so she and Shaya decide to host a sufganiyot-eating contest in concert with a local bakery; they have their first kiss covered in strawberry jam. But the real moral — and romance — comes in the beit midrash, with Esther’s realization of the real solution to the synagogue’s woes.
What this synagogue needs is a blowout Purim party: Costumes, chaos, congregational email threads. Shaya offers to DJ. Someone starts arguing about hamentaschen fillings. Good thing they have more than eight nights to plan this time. (Coming this spring, A Very Purim Proposal.)
The post We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead appeared first on The Forward.
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With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over?
When the remains of the last Israeli hostage in Gaza returned to Israel this week, Scott Spindel, a lawyer in Encino, Calif., finally took off the thick steel dog tag he had put on after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
His friend Lauren Krieger, an orthopedic surgeon, did the same. And he pulled down the last of the names of the hostages remaining in Gaza that his wife, Jenn Roth Krieger, had placed in the window of their Santa Monica home.
During the nearly 28 months that Israeli hostages remained in captivity in Gaza, Krieger, 61, and Spindel, 55, consistently argued over Israel’s war in the strip.
“Lauren would say that we probably were a little too extreme,” Spindel, whose daughter serves in the IDF, told me in a telephone interview. “I don’t think we blew up enough buildings.”
But those differences paled beside their mutual concern over the fate of the hostages.
“Unfortunately,” said Spindel, “it took tragedy to pull us together.”
So it was across the American Jewish landscape. Then, the body of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili, the 24-year-old Israeli police officer killed on Oct. 7 and taken by Hamas terrorists back into the enclave, was returned to Israel — the last of the hostages to come home.
Jews from across the political spectrum unpinned yellow ribbon buttons from their lapels, removed the hostage posters from their synagogues, and folded up and put away the blue-and-white flags displayed as a symbol of the missing Israelis.
The marches and vigils American Jews held on behalf of the hostages — small but meaningful echoes of the mass rallies that roiled Israel — came to a quiet halt.
Jewish unity is forged in adversity. Without it, we are apt to find enemies among ourselves. And as painful as the hostage saga was, it unified an otherwise fractious American Jewish community in a time of crisis.
Without that common concern, are even deeper rifts our future?
“As committed and connected as we were,” said Spindel, “it doesn’t change the fact that we also were still divided about solutions.”
A family in distress
Across the United States, synagogues of all religious and political bents regularly joined in the same Acheinu prayer for the release and return of the hostages.
“Our family, the whole house of Israel, who are in distress,” the prayer begins — a wholly accurate summation of the totality of Jewish concern.
Surveys showed that the hostages unified American Jews even when Israel’s Gaza campaign divided them. An October 2025 Washington Post poll found that a plurality of American Jews disapproved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza — but a whopping 79% said they were “very concerned” about the hostages.
There have been other moments in recent Jewish history when calamity created unity. The 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for instance, brought together the vast majority of American Jews in mourning, even those who opposed his policies.
And, of course the brutal Oct. 7 attack, which claimed almost 1,200 lives, created a near-universal sense of shock and sorrow.
But the hostage crisis may have had an even deeper emotional — and perhaps political — impact.
“Even for people who were not affiliated Jewishly, those hostages struck a deep, deep chord,” Krieger told me. “It felt personal. I don’t think we’ve had that level of collective trauma in our lifetimes in that same way.”
And a family divided
The hostage crisis bonded American Jews to one another, and to their Israeli counterparts, at a time when enormous political rifts were opening within their communities.
In the U.S., as in Israel, there were sharp disagreements over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and whether he was even prioritizing the hostages’ safety.
And the encampments and protests against the war at college campuses — in which many Jewish students participated, and to which many others objected — created even deeper divisions over support for the Jewish state.
But if the hostage issue didn’t erase such differences, it muted them. Krieger and Spindel could frustrate each other in conversations about the conduct of the war, or American support for it. But in the end, they were both in that 79% that the Washington Post poll identified.
What will hold them — and the rest of us — together, now?
The hostage crisis provided something history unfortunately bestows upon Jews with regularity: an external enemy that transcended ideological differences. With it gone, American Jews return to what they’ve always been — a community bound by tradition, and riven by politics.
Krieger and Spindel have already resumed their arguments. But even though the dog tags are gone, they’re both still wearing Jewish stars on silver chains around their necks. When someone admires Krieger’s, he takes it off and gives it to them. He buys his metal stars in bulk on Amazon, and has given away dozens since Oct. 7.
“I want people to feel like I do,” he said, “like we’re a peoplehood worth cherishing.”
Worth cherishing — even though we can’t agree on much else.
The post With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over? appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran President Says Trump, Netanyahu, Europe Stirred Tensions in Protests
Amnesty International Greek activists and Iranians living in Athens hold candles and placards in front of the Greek Parliament to support the people of Iran, in Athens, Greece, January 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that US, Israeli and European leaders had exploited Iran’s economic problems, incited unrest and provided people with the means to “tear the nation apart” in recent protests.
The two-week long nationwide protests, which began in late December over an economic crisis marked by soaring inflation and rising living costs, have abated after a bloody crackdown by the clerical authorities that US-based rights group HRANA says has killed at least 6,563, including 6,170 protesters and 214 security forces.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told CNN Turk that 3,100, including 2,000 security forces, had been killed.
The US, Israeli and European leaders tried to “provoke, create division, and supplied resources, drawing some innocent people into this movement,” Pezeshkian said in a live state TV broadcast.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced support for the demonstrators, saying the US was prepared to take action if Iran continued to kill protesters. US officials said on Friday that Trump was reviewing his options but had not decided whether to strike Iran.
Israel’s Ynet news website said on Friday that a US Navy destroyer had docked at the Israeli port of Eilat.
Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Europeans “rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,” said Pezeshkian.
“They brought them into the streets and wanted, as they said, to tear this country apart, to sow conflict and hatred among the people and create division,” Pezeshkian said.
“Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest,” he added.
Regional allies including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have been engaging in diplomatic efforts to prevent a military confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
The US is demanding that Iran curb its missile program if the two nations are to instead resume talks, but Iran has rejected that demand.
Foreign Minister Araqchi said in Turkey on Tuesday that missiles would never be the subject of any negotiations.
In response to US threats of military action, Araqchi said Tehran was ready for either negotiations or warfare, and also ready to engage with regional countries to promote stability and peace.
“Regime change is a complete fantasy. Some have fallen for this illusion,” Araqchi told CNN Turk. “Our system is so deeply rooted and so firmly established that the comings and goings of individuals make no difference.”
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CBS News Chief Weiss Touts Commentator Push, Draws Mixed Reaction in Newsroom
FILE PHOTO: Bari Weiss speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
Three months into her tenure, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss presented a vision this week to revitalize the nearly century-old broadcaster, in part by applying the same formula that fueled the rise of The Free Press – recruiting commentators who offer observations about news, politics and culture.
From adding 19 new commentators, including some drawn from The Free Press ranks, to introducing new podcasts, newsletters and live events, employees were variously energized or skeptical of the ideas presented by CBS’ new boss. Weiss’ notions about how to thrive in a post-Walter Cronkite era struck some as in conflict with the stated mission of doing great journalism, according to seven current and former CBS News employees and industry insiders.
In her presentation, Weiss also envisioned a galaxy of cross-platform stars, like New York Times columnist and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, whom she highlighted with a meme: “Sorkining.” The Dealbook founder is the author of several business books, executive producer of the Showtime series “Billions,” and maestro of the New York Times premiere live event, and a Davos fixture.
“It’s like saying ‘Hey, Hollywood. Why can’t you just be like Leonardo DiCaprio?’ If people knew how to bottle that magic and make someone a star, they would do it,” said a former CBS employee.
An industry veteran said the idea suggested a lack of appreciation for the power of television, which has been making stars for generations: among them “CBS Evening News” anchors Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Walter Cronkite and Katie Couric.
The 41-year-old Weiss, who has no broadcast experience and has been described as a distant leader by six current and former CBS News sources, now has to deliver on her promise of capturing new and younger viewers – including political independents who don’t see themselves reflected in mainstream media. It is a daunting undertaking that has hobbled executives across broadcast and cable, including former CNN chief Chris Licht, ousted in June 2023.
One supporter sees the charismatic Weiss as a modern-day Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, who was undermined by underlings when she took over in 1963. Graham transformed the paper and led it through its Watergate-era heyday, and generally left editorial decisions to Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.
A current staffer, speaking on background, said, “People are saying, ‘Let’s give her a chance’ … I want to see her succeed. If she succeeds, we all succeed.”
CBS News and Weiss did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
PRIORITIES FOR CBS NEWS
Weiss, a former opinion journalist and media entrepreneur, joined CBS after parent Paramount owner David Ellison bought her five-year-old media company, The Free Press, for $150 million in October.
Some see Weiss’ playbook of expanding CBS’s journalism ranks with commentators as conflicting with other initiatives including breaking news and landing deep investigative stories, according to three current and former CBS News staffers and an industry veteran.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said the former employee. “But is that what a news division is or are they craving something completely different? That’s fine but don’t pretend it’s a news division.”
Another current CBS News staffer talked about past failures to capitalize on new ways of reaching the audience, such as leveraging the power of the Paramount+ streaming service to promote news shows, observing, “We have done a wretched job of being on the internet.”
Weiss is also attempting to change the news network’s political orientation, appealing to a wider cross-section of Americans, according to her remarks Tuesday. Weiss said she wants CBS News to reflect the friction animating the national conversation.
In broadening its perspective to include more diverse viewpoints, CBS News could ultimately lay claim to the uncharted ground for a center-right broadcaster, said Integrated Media Chief Executive Jonathan Miller, a veteran media executive who has held senior positions at News Corp and AOL.
“We need to commission and greenlight stories that will surprise and provoke – including inside our own newsroom,” Weiss said in her address to employees. “We also have to widen the aperture of the stories we tell.”
On that front, CBS has had mixed results so far. Earlier this month, “CBS Evening News” broadcast a widely panned segment featuring U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in various meme-like situations, saluting him as “the ultimate Florida man.”
EARLY SUCCESSES
It has also seen successes, including Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump son-in-law and Middle East advisor Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, within a week of brokering a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and Norah O’Donnell’s “60 Minutes” interview with Trump. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over its editing of an interview with his White House rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
It landed journalistic scoops, including interviewing the man who charged one of two gunmen who attacked a Jewish community gathering in Sydney, and exclusive video of Alex Pretti, the man killed by Border Patrol in Minneapolis, reading a tribute to a veteran who died in 2024.
Weiss announced that the network would bring in contributors with expertise in politics, health, happiness, food and culture, whom she encouraged staffers to use on-air. The roster includes Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson of the conservative Hoover Institution, as well as Casey Lewis, a former Teen Vogue and MTV editor who writes about youth culture.
“It’s great to have younger people, a diverse demographic and diverse ideology represented,” said Kathy Kiely, the chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Newsrooms can’t do a good job unless we have that diversity in our ranks. What worries me is the emphasis on opinion over primary-sourced, reported facts.”
Weiss emphasized making content available online before it airs on TV to reach more viewers. CBS has long been in third place behind rivals ABC and NBC and, like most mainstream media, is struggling with audience declines as consumers migrate to social platforms.
Pew Research estimates about one-third of all adults get at least some news from podcasts. CBS News does not appear among Spotify’s or Apple’s rankings of the top 50 news podcasts.
One former employee expects the digital-first goal to be complicated because CBS hasn’t devoted sufficient resources to helping correspondents or anchors curate their social media presence or re-edit television interviews for YouTube or streaming.
Weiss encouraged staffers to think of the news organization as the best-capitalized media startup in the world.
“We are in a position, with the support of all of the leadership of this company, to really make the change we need.”