16 Best Movies to Watch During Hanukkah

A hard-working toy exec has to learn about Hanukkah — fast — to seal the deal with a new account. So she reaches out to her co-worker’s friend, who’s consumed with trying to turn his bachelor pad into a winter wonderland to impress his girlfriend’s dad. After initially failing to get along, they realize they need each other’s holiday knowledge. Eventually, they learn just how much they have in common … and, of course, romance ensues.

A single woman in New York is consumed by the bookshop where she works and the intellectual community that swirls around it. But her grandmother isn’t exactly satisfied with this lifestyle for her granddaughter, so she enlists the services of a Jewish matchmaker. Enter: a potential suitor, who is a working-class Jewish pickle vendor, vying for her attention against another suitor, who is decidedly not those things.

Lucy DeVito, Jonah Platt and Sarah Silverman star in this movie that came out in 2022. Sarah (DeVito) returns home for the holiday to introduce her family to her fiancé, but that becomes the least stressful event of her stay after she finds out her family is on the verge of losing its bakery ... and her new love is the one who wants to take it over.

Inbar Lavi stars as Sara Levin, an optometrist who receives a special gift each night of Hanukkah from a secret admirer. It has all the hallmarks of, well, a Hallmark movie, but it is the company's first fully Hanukkah-focused film.

RELATED: Traditional Hanukkah Foods to Make This Year

Adam Sandler plays a 30-something party animal who overdoes it enough to face legal trouble. It’s the holidays, so the judge gives Sandler’s character one more chance to redeem himself: He can avoid jail time by doing community service as a referee for the youth basketball league. He thinks it’s a great deal … until he meets his boss. Although it's animated, it’s hardly for little kids: Toilet jokes and other off-color humor make this one PG-13.

Disney Channel based this original Hanukkah movie on the real story of Lamont Carr, the beloved basketball coach. In the movie, a college basketball star is sidelined from the game because of a knee injury, so he becomes the head coach of a yeshiva’s hapless team in Philadelphia.

The Hebrew Hammer is an orthodox Jew (Adam Goldberg) who goes on a mission to save Hanukka from Santa’s evil son, Damian (Andy Dick), who wants to destroy it along with Kwanzaa.

This flick plays on the theme that Jewish kids feel left out of all the magic that goes along with Christmas. Here, a Jewish boy on his way to disappointingly sunny Florida tries to pursue his holiday dreams by swapping plane tickets with another kid, who is on his way to a wintry wonderland in Christmastown, Washington.

A commitmentphobic bachelor goes online in an attempt to fulfill his grandmother’s dying wish to see him find a partner. There, he meets another Jewish single New Yorker trying to appease her family by appearing to be coupled up. The pair agrees to pretend they’re together to get through Christmas and Hanukkah with their families. Spoiler: Romance ensues.

It’s Christmas Eve and a group of childhood guy friends (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie) usually spend the night getting wild. But they’re adulting now, so the tradition is changing big time. Still, they set out to find the most major Christmas party ever, the Nutcracker Ball. As usual, Rogen brings the Jewish humor in this holiday flick.

Who could forget the lovable '80s animated Fievel? He’s a young Russian mouse who finds himself separated from his parents on the way to America, where they’re headed for safety because they think it’s a land without cats. When he gets there, he tries to find his family and keep up hope … all while dodging cats.

Hallmark Channel’s much-touted Hanukkah movie is also kind of Christmas-y, which isn’t surprising. In the movie, a hard-charging career woman gets a promotion opportunity that dashes her Hanukkah plans. The boss asks her, as well as her main competitor for the promotion, to work together on the office Christmas party to demonstrate cooperation and flexibility.

This musical comedy-drama is an adaptation of the 1964 Broadway show by the same name. The plot focuses on Tevye, a poor dad to five daughters in pre-revolutionary Russia and his efforts to keep up Jewish traditions against antisemitism — and the will of his kids.

Seth Rogen stars as both Ben and Herschel Greenbaum in this movie, which dives into Jewish family love and tradition across generations. It’s not specifically a Hanukkah movie per se, but it’s funny, poignant and actually kind of deep fare that’s just right for holiday time. Originally available on Max, this movie is now widely available for streaming.

If you are a fan of the Coen brothers’ style of filmmaking, here’s your dark Hanukkah movie. It focuses on a Jewish physics lecturer in Minnesota in the ‘60s; he is a very serious man. He’s also in the midst of a tangle of utterly messed-up life circumstances and seeks advice from rabbis to help steer him.

Oops, this Hallmark Channel Hanukkah movie is kind of about Christmas. But suspend your disbelief and enjoy: A woman gets dumped right before Christmas and enlists an actor to play her boyfriend for the holidays. But he turns out to be Jewish, which isn’t exactly what her family was expecting.