Hallmark Chanukah movie round up! I ended up watching all ten Hanukah Hallmark movies (plus a couple others), and I want to discuss some of them a little more, so here we go!

best Hallmark Xanukkah movie: Round and Round (2023)

seriously, it's so good! the magical dreidel that creates a time loop so that you don't miss your chance with your soul mate--it's definitely the most unique of these movies, and it feels Jewish in a way that none of the others felt. plus Vic Michaelis is fantastic! and there's a married lesbian couple with a kid, so it's officially the Queerest Janukah Hallmark movie!

seriously, if you haven't seen this one yet, DO IT!!! it's so good, and there's a LOVELY twist that I really liked

#mazeldon #jewniverse

my very first latkes turned out really good, though I think it needed another egg, bc they got less stable as I fried them

happy seventh night!

#mazeldon #jewniverse

night 6! Shabbat Shalom!

tonight's movie: Oy to the World (2025)

now (sigh) the name's bad. also it's a joint holiday movie. Xan worries about what this year's movie means as a kind of cultural benchmark, but I'm kinda hopeful?

for one thing, the premise is that the local synagogue floods or something, so the neighboring Christian church helps them out, and the focus is on the Christian choir director and the Jewish, like, assistant cantor? so I see why they went for Oy to the World (still hate it)

for another thing, this is (as far as I can tell) the first Hallmark movie to feature a synagogue, and while I've been enjoying the non-religious Chanuka movies, I HAVE been missing the, uh, synagogue aspects of these characters' lives, y'know?

finally, while Hanukkah on Rye is definitely in the top 3 of Chanukkah movies for me, I've been feeling particularly bitter about the joke in that movie that there are only two Hanuka songs, so hopefully this one has good music

#mazeldon #jewniverse

night 5!

tonight's movie is my personal favorite (before I watched Round and Round), Hanukkah on Rye

it's definitely the Most Jewish movie. I love the matchmaking aspect of the movie, it's a really nice unique twist. I also love the deli culture parts of it

plus, I ADORE Yael Groblas, she's a FANTASTIC actor

#Chanukah #mazeldon #jewniverse

night 4

tonight's movie is a new one for us: Love, Lights, Hanukkah!

the main character was adopted, and did a DNA test and found out she was half Jewish ... she meets up with a DNA match and meets their family (and also a cute guy who's a friend of the family)

#chanukkah #mazeldon #jewniverse

night 3!

tonight's movie is one we've seen before: Eight Gifts of Hanukkah

no fake dating, barely any Christmas, it's very Jewish

and there's a very funny bit in the beginning where the main girl is shown showing up to a bunch of online dates, and one of them is a guy in a Santa outfit who greets her by shouting MERRY CHRISTMAS, and she immediately turns around and leaves, which would never happen in a Christmas Hallmark movie

#mazeldon #jewniverse #hanukkah

happy second night of Chanukkah!

we're doing eight nights of Hallmark Hanukkah movies, and tonight we're traveling back in time, to 2012, before Hanukkah was invented

tonight it's Hitched for the Holidays, the first Hallmark movie to acknowledge that Hanukah is its own holiday

#chanukkah #mazeldon #jewniverse

my girlfriend bought me a GLOW IN THE DARK blanket, and I love it, but I've never seen an ELEVEN BRANCH MENORAH before

#Hanukkah #Chanukah #mazeldon #jewniverse

Is there a tool for figuring out what percentage of an online event intersects with shabbat across time zones?

Like something 17:00-18:00GMT is 100% overlap right now in every(?) European time zone but not for people in California.

Ideally, I'd like to know who has the highest degree of overlap and who has the lowest. This is slightly fiddly to code and thus I don't want to do it myself, so I'm hoping for a website or an app.

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #Jewish