Looking to get yourself psyched up for the Big 8? This year was a big year for some really awsome Chanukah videos - see below.

Oh, and don’t forget - if you are looking for a little post-lighting activity and would like to win some cool prizes - check out our Chanukah Video Contest at www.yideoz.com/mylight

1. The Adventures of Todd and G-d
Todd wishes he knew how to light the menorah - G-d shows up in the form of a gold-toothed genie and gives him a lesson he’ll never forget!

2. The Controversial Miriam and Shoshana are back with The Chanukah Dance

3.  Chocolate Coins - Comedian/Rapper Eric Schwartz aka Smooth-E reveals the gritty underbelly of the dreidel game. He is the chocolate-coin kingpin, the don of gelt and the lip-smackin’ chip stacker.

4.  The Eight Nights of Hanukkah, as told by Jewish celebrities (Jon Stewart, Dr. Ruth, Fran Drescher, Woody Allen, Madonna, Natalie Portman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Barbara Streisand)

5. Help Ben, Jake, and Max, nice Jewish boys from Fairfax, Virginia, spread the joy of Hanukkah around the world by having 1000 kids seeing this funny video. All the kids idea!

6. Hip-Hop Chanukah  - Animated Rap Song by Eric B, NerdCore Superstar

7. Feed Me Bubbe Episode #13 - Get the oil out for Chanukah because it is latke time! FEATURING MUSIC OF YIDCORE!!!

8. The Bostoner Rov at the Bobov Rov’s Chanukah Tisch

*** We’re pretty excited about our very cool new logo for Chanukah, so check that out too and mouse over for a little music to get you in the mood!

LOS ANGELES, CA — (November 28, 2007)
Rebecca Rosenthal

C

ommuters gnashing their teeth in traffic on the 405, the 5, the 101, the 134 or anywhere from Sacramento to San Diego will have reason to lighten up this Chanukah, because Chabad of California’s going on a road trip.

Set to cover 600 miles in eight days, Chabad’s mitzvah mobile will be stocked with menorah kits, dreidels, chocolate gelt candies… and a digital camcorder and laptop. Distributing Chanukah items and accessories is a well-known Chabad tradition. Giving Jewish people a chance to have their reactions to and questions about the holiday action recorded and uploaded and blogged about—that’s Chabad pushing the proverbial envelope, again.

Photo 1 of 3

“We are always expanding and looking for new ways to reach out and to spread the message of Chanukah using modern technology,” said Rabbi Chaim Nochum Cunin, of Chabad’s West Coast Headquarters. “Today’s kids are getting their inspiration online, and this way they will be able to learn about Chanukah in a forum that speaks to them.”

Set to cover 600 miles in eight days, Chabad’s mitzvah mobile will be stocked with menorah kits, dreidels, chocolate gelt candies… and a digital camcorder and laptop.

Powering the road trip is one of Chabad of California’s new Mitzvah Mobiles. Currently ten are on the road, adopted by local Chabad centers for use whenever outreach needs extend beyond the walls of the center. During last month’s wildfires, Chabad parked one of the mitzvah mobiles at the Qualcom Stadium to offer hungry evacuees kosher food.

“The fires California just went through lit up that state in a tragic way,” said Rabbi Mendy Pellin, who will be driving the length and breadth of California with his wife, Shulamis Pellin. “We intend to be the counterbalance and light the place up with the positive, uplifting message of Chanukah.”

The Pellins will also be scouting for content to place online. On the net, a whole other dimension of the Chabad of California’s Chanukah programming awaits user input. MyLightContest.org, a joint project of Chabad of California, AskMoses.com, Chabad.org, Yideoz.com, and Mendy.tv, invites girls and boys up to age fourteen to submit videos of lighting the menorah and describing what Chanukah means to them, in thirty seconds or less.

Winning submissions will be broadcast on national television on December 6, at 4:00 p.m.on the ION network. Menorah lighting with California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, the 59th Army Band, and a choir from Israel will give a Chanukah party flair to the one hour broadcast viewable in 94 million households nationwide.

Television of a different sort will be another outgrowth of the Chanukah drive. On the spot interviews will be conducted to get a feel for what the average Mr. and Mrs. Stein are thinking about for Chabad of California’s new AskMoses.com TV division. AskMoses.com is a live forum where questions about Judaism are answered 24-6.

Shulamis Pellin, a veteran traveler, is looking forward to hitting the highway. “During my travels I’ve always come to appreciate my home away from home anywhere I went: Chabad. Now, we will bring that Chabad “home” to the road.”

 From http://www.andycarvin.com

The NPR website recently launched a 2006 holiday guide that includes some of its greatest hits from previous holiday seasons, along with lots of new material. One of them is a great story from All Things Considered last December about the proper way to spell Hanukkah. Robert Siegel interviewed a rabbi about the various spellings, including Hanukkah, Chanukah, Chanukkah, etc. and the source of the problem, which is due to the fact that there are certain Hebrew letters that simply don’t exist in English.

One part of the piece that interested me was when Siegel referred to the popularity of different spellings according to Google. At the time he recorded the story last year, he noted that there were 2.8 million hits for the spelling Chanukah versus 650,000 hits for the spelling Hanukkah. Siegel therefore suggested that Chanukah was the most popular spelling, and that certainly jives with what I remember while growing up. (I was such a snob about it, too, always accentuating the “ch” sound when speaking to my gentile classmates.)

I was curious, though, how much variation there might be over the course of a year, so I decided to search Google again. As it turns out, a great shift has taken place. The number of hits for Chanukah had increased to 3,070,000, while the number of hits for Hanukkah had surged to a whopping 10,200,000 - more than three times the other spelling.

Meanwhile, the blogosphere suggests a similar trend. According to Technorati, there were 23,274 results for Chanukah and 41,667 results for Hanukkah - almost a two-to-one margin. Google’s blog search produces similar results, with 21,336 hits for Chanukah versus 42,960 for Hanukkah.

For those of you visual learners, here’s the horserace according to Blogpulse:

Once again, Hanukkah beats Chanukah, and rather soundly as of late. What’s going on here? Could it be that this year’s popularity of sites like YouTube and MySpace is somehow causing Hanukkah to spread virally across the Net and slap down its rival Chanukah into submission? That may have been the case for the election, but not here. According to YouTube, there are a paltry 64 videos for Chanukah and 85 videos Hanukkah. Contrast that with 26,736 videos for Christmas. Amazingly, there were actually 74 videos for Yom Kippur. Aren’t we supposed to be fasting rather than shooting video that day?

As for MySpace, those millions of naughty teenieboppers clearly aren’t in a Macabee frame of mind. How many results did I get for the two spellings? Zero. bupkus.

Maybe Wikipedia has something to do with it. If you look up Chanukah, it automatically redirects you to the spelling Hanukkah. There’s a long discussion about the proper spelling, and the last word seems to be that while Chanukah conveys the original intention of the Hebrew pronunciation, Hanukkah has become de rigeur among lexicographers, because it’s easier to pronounce by native English speakers. And since Wikipedia seems to double its audience every three days, perhaps that might account for the shift since last year.

Of course, Hanukkah/Chanukah is still more than two weeks away, so perhaps it’s too early to pass judgment on the state of the Internet in this regard. Nonetheless, it would appear that a great spelling shift is afoot - a relief to all of those gentiles who squirm every time they try to pronounce the “ch” sound correctly…. -andy

 

 

Posted by acarvin at November 29, 2006 5:33 PM

No, we didn’t make the front page, or even a mention in an article - still, seeing this did make my heart jump a little:
http://download.nytimes.com/Video/9250-13458_4-0-2-0.html?

I can’t say that we’ve been mentioned too many times in print as of yet, but based on the next few things we have lined up for Yideoz, I can already smell the ink….

You guys remember Miriam and Shoshana? We featured them a few weeks ago here and I couldn’t have been more excited to have those two HardCore Jewish Chics on board. Finally, great satire, done well, a good laugh at our own expense…

Unfortunately, not everyone else was as thrilled. We received a very strong complaint requesting that we remove the video from our site. Why? Apparently is was taken as offensive, making fun of Orthodox Judaism. Well, duh - thats the point!! We took it down anyway, assuming this complaint represented a heck of alot of Jews out there, sticking to our policy of trying to keep everyone happy (not so easy in the Jewish world!).

Well, today I read a great article by the JewishJournal.com, who mentioned that Yideoz and others have removed the video due to complaints. Anyway, the article is great and gives us a look at the crew and (honorable “We LOVE Jews!) intentions behind the video. Check it out here.

Meanwhile, in honor of Miriam and Shoshana’s upcoming video in time for Chanukah, Yideoz is going to dust off the original video and decide on whether or not it should be re released in the name of teaching the world to chill out and enjoy a laugh at our own expense.

Take from LittleGreenFootballs.com

The owners of YouTube should be utterly ashamed of allowing garbage like this to pollute their web site; they crack down ruthlessly on copyrighted material, but allow vile, disgusting antisemitic videos—even neo-Nazi videos—to remain on the site for months and years. Here’s just one of the sick freaks, using the name Mahdiarmy. If you look at his “subscriptions” and “friends,” you’ll find links to a whole world of incitement to violence and Jew-hatred.

Check out the rest of the article here for the passionate comments and a little Yideoz plug too

A very exciting project we are currently working on is our Partners section.

Becoming a Partner entitles you to an exclusive page on the site (see example here) that we design – this page displays your current videos, a little about what you do and a link back to your home page. In addition to that the partner gets free advertising on Yideoz in one of our prime banner locations. All of this together provides you with an incredible free marketing opportunity and the chance to share with our thousands of Jewish users why you rock.

What do you have to do? Upload videos, that’s it.

We started with a few of our closest friends on Yideoz, including the famous (I mean actually famous, check this out) Feed Me Bubbe, and the host with the most (beard) Mendy Pellin with the Mendy Report.

Recently we have attracted the attention of some seriously huge Jewish video content providers and we can’t wait to show off their brand new very own exclusive pages.

Keep an eye on who’s who in our Partner’s section and let us know if you think you’ve got what it takes to become a Yideoz.com partner.