Eight Gifts of Hanukkah: The Hallmark Television Movie

EIGHT GIFTS OF HANUKKAH

The Hallmark Channel breaks out not the holly but the dreidels for a Hanukkah-themed television film to add to its Countdown to Christmas set of films. Eight Gifts of Hanukkah is Hallmark's idea of representation to tell us of the joys of keeping romance kosher. To be fair, I imagine Christ would have lit the candles on a menorah, but that is neither here nor there at the moment. Eight Gifts of Hanukkah is at least in one way similar to most Countdown to Christmas Hallmark fare. It is terrible, filled with brain-dead characters and a plot so moronic that one is astonished either the story or characters would be able to function.

Successful optometrist Sarah Levin (Inbar Lavi) is unlucky in love and missing her beloved Bubbe Rose, a survivor. However, a glimmer of hope has come on this Hanukkah season, as she starts receiving a gift from a secret admirer on each night of the Festival of Lights. Who could be courting our kosher princess? Could it be her goy online find, successful British restauranteur Nigel Templeton (Oliver Rice)? What about frequent optometrist patient and half-Jewish tech billionaire Adam Lessner (Andrew Zachar)? A dark horse is her ex-boyfriend and fellow Jewish Community Center board member, successful lawyer Paul (Michael Patrick Denis).

One name that she does not even consider is her lifelong BFF Daniel Myer (Jake Epstein), a successful contractor remodeling her optometry clinic. He's known her all her life. He's besties with her brother Jacob (David Kaye). The Levin family knows and loves our cheerful, pleasant, successful, kind and loving good Jewish boy. Even Bubbe Rose loved him. 

By now, it should be obvious, painfully obvious, as to who the secret admirer is. It is painfully obvious to Sarah's friend and assistant Keisha (Natalie Malaika). In case it wasn't painfully obvious to everyone, Daniel flat-out tells his friend and associate Jimmy (Doron Bell) that it is he who is sending our oblivious Sarah rather lavish and specific gifts. Jimmy pushes for a direct approach, but Daniel now wants to see if Sarah can figure it out to see if they are bashert (meant to be in Yiddish). As the Mazel Ball to celebrate the holiday season comes closer, Sarah keeps flipping between thinking her secret admirer is Nigel, Adam or Paul, and even a faint thought of fellow JCC member Tom Sherman (Amitai Marmorstein). However, what is bashert is bashert, with our Hebrew Honeys finding each other in the end.

It would have been nice to have been Jewish, at least I think so. I was born in December, which meant that there would be a good chance that I would have celebrated both my birthday and Hanukkah at the same time. Imagine the motherlode I would have struck as a kid. This year, had I been half-Jewish, half-Gentile, I would have been making serious bank with gifts galore. Alas, I am not of the Hebrew persuasion, so the best I can do is Eight Gifts of Hanukkah. I do not know if there is a Hebrew version of getting coal for Christmas, but I would mark Eight Gifts of Hanukkah as receiving eight sets of pretty lousy gifts that I would be forced to regift for next year. 

If we go by the seven gifts Sarah received (the eight being Bubbe Rose's promise ring that she had secretly given Daniel as a de facto engagement ring for whenever Sarah woke up), it is shocking, flat-out shocking, that she did not figure it out on Night One. The gifts are in order of presentation: white roses, chocolates, a picture frame, a watch, a menorah, a music box that plays Ma'oz Tzur, and the antique pair of glasses like the ones Bubbe Rose owned that Sarah had been desperately bidding on. Upon receiving the first gift, Sarah comments that white roses were Bubbe Rose's favorites, growing them in her garden and even being the reason Sarah thought her name was "Rose". How then could she think that Nigel or Adam, both of whom had either just met her or knew her to a limited degree, would know such intimate details?

One of those gifts was a menorah, which Sarah collects to keep Bubbe Rose alive. How could Nigel, the very gentile chef and host of the Continental Fusion cooking show, know such things about Sarah outside of online stalking? Maybe Adam could know such things, but he makes clear that he is in the process of connecting to his Jewish heritage. As such, he would have no idea what Ma'oz Tzur was, let alone gift her with a music box playing it. Therefore, Adam could not, to a thinking person, be the secret admirer as he would not have as detailed a knowledge of Hanukkah as someone like Daniel, who was steeped in it, would.

Over and over again, the gifts all but scream "It's Daniel Myer", yet for someone who examines eyes for a living, Sarah is thoroughly blind. Perhaps that was a subtext that screenwriters Karen Berger and Donald Martin were going for. I, however, think that is giving them far too much credit. 

In some ways, Sarah is a surprisingly horrible person. She has this plethora of admirers whom she uses to get things: catering the Mazel Ball from Nigel, a gaggle of toy bears for a Hanukkah Hunt from Adam. She is terribly oblivious to disinterested in Daniel, who bends over backwards to help her and be almost at her beck and call. For a lot of Eight Gifts of Hannukah, I was all but shouting "DON'T GIVE HER A CHANCE! SHE'S STUPID AND OBLIVIOUS!"

As a side note, am I a horrible person for not thinking that it should have been renamed the Matzo Ball? Would Latke Luau have been too tacky even for our Reform Jews (given that Jacob's daughter Zoey mentions that she wants to be a rabbi among other careers makes me think that they are not part of Conservative Judaism)? Yet I digress.

Eight Gifts of Hanukkah is also terribly structured with unnecessary characters. Tom Sherman gets mentioned as a potential suitor, but I did not really know who he was. Fellow JCC board member Myra (Samantha Farris) did nothing but kvetch at every opportunity at how poorly run the Mazel Ball was. It is also poorly acted by some of the cast. Inbar Lavi is pretty, and perhaps she had little material to work with and a lousy director in Mark Jean. She, however, could never escape a blank expression and poor line reading. Shelia Tyson and Barry Levy as Sarah's parents Esther and Stuart were equally bad. 

To be fair, a scene where Daniel and Sarah are at a bench dedicated to Rose Heller was surprisingly moving.

Jake Epstein as Daniel did not do a bad job, though again the material made him look like the Kosher King of Simps. Rice and Zachar also had little to work with, but they made the best they could of their characters. I actually would have thought both would have made good catches, though Zachar's Adam did seem a bit too eager to please. 

Am I being too hard on something as disposable as Eight Gifts of Hanukkah, which is just ramming a standard Hallmark Channel story through a Jewish lens? No, it has a dimwitted, somewhat unlikeable protagonist that makes me wonder why any man would want her. Daniel Myer is too good for Sarah Levin and would be better off moving to Aspen to find a better woman. 

Truth be told, so would Nigel Templeton, Adam Lessner, Paul and even Tom Sherman. When it comes to the central character in Eight Gifts of Hanukkah, every man should reject her latkes. 

3/10