''Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas'' is a Canadian documentary film, directed by
Larry Weinstein
Larry Weinstein (born 1956) is a Canadian film director of theatrical and television documentaries, performance films, and dramas. The majority of his films centre on musical subjects and the depiction of the creative process, while his other sub ...
Point of View
Point of View or Points of View may refer to:
Concept and technique
* Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration
* Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or ...
'', November 30, 2017. The film profiles a number of musicians, including
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Berlin received numerous honors including an Acade ...
,
Mel Tormé
Melvin Howard Tormé (September 13, 1925 – June 5, 1999), nicknamed "the Velvet Fog", was an American musician, singer, composer, arrangement, arranger, drummer, actor, and author. He composed the music for "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts Roa ...
,
Jay Livingston
Jay Livingston (born Jacob Harold Levison; March 28, 1915 – October 17, 2001) was an American composer best known as half of a composing-songwriting duo with Ray Evans, with whom he specialized in composing film scores and original soundtrack ...
,
Ray Evans
Raymond Bernard Evans (February 4, 1915 – February 15, 2007) was an American songwriter best known for being a half of a composing-songwriting duo with Jay Livingston, specializing himself in writing lyrics for film songs. On music Livingston ...
Johnny Marks
John David Marks (November 10, 1909 – September 3, 1985) was an American songwriter. He specialized in Christmas songs and wrote many holiday standards, including " Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (a hit for Gene Autry and others), " Rockin' Ar ...
, who made a mark on contemporary culture by writing many of the most beloved
Christmas music
Christmas music comprises a variety of Music genre, genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas and holiday season, Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or in the case of Christmas ...
standards even though they were
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
rather than
Christian
A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
; it focuses, in particular, on the way these songwriters helped to create the 20th-century shift from traditional liturgical Christmas music toward contemporary pop songs that address Christmas through universal themes of love, joy, peace, family and the sensual pleasures of winter rather than explicitly religious imagery. The young Larry is portrayed by Decker Williams in this documentary in a scene which takes place in a
Chinese restaurant
A Chinese restaurant is a restaurant that serves Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese style, due to the history of the Overseas Chinese, Chinese diaspora, though other Chinese regional cuisine, regional cuisin ...
that he and his family visited on December 25 in about 1961.
The film incorporates interview segments with figures such as musician
Ben Sidran
Ben Hirsh Sidran (born August 14, 1943) is an American jazz and rock keyboardist, producer, label owner, and music writer. Early in his career he was a member of the Steve Miller Band and is the father of Grammy-nominated musician, composer and ...
, comedians
Jackie Mason
Jackie Mason (born Yacov Moshe Maza; ; June 9, 1928 – July 24, 2021) was an American stand-up comedian and actor.
His 1986 one-man show ''The World According to Me!'' won a Special Tony Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an Ace Award, ...
and
Mark Breslin
Mark Breslin, is a Canadian entrepreneur, producer, stand-up comedian and actor best known for being the co-founder (along with Joel Axler) of Yuk Yuk's, the largest chain of comedy clubs in Canada. On December 29, 2017, he was appointed a Mem ...
Ophira Eisenberg
Ophira Eisenberg (born 1972) is a Canadian American comedian, writer, and actress. She is from Calgary, Alberta. She has been living in New York City since 2001 and obtained American citizenship in April 2021.
Eisenberg hosted the weekly NPR a ...
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...
'', December 6, 2017. Performing musicians include
Steven Page
Steven Jay Page (born June 22, 1970) is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was a founding member, lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the music group Barenaked Ladies. Page left the band in February ...
Dione Taylor
Dione Taylor is a Canadian blues, roots, soul and jazz singer/songwriter, born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan. Dione calls her music the “''Prairie Blues''”, which is a mixture of Roots, Blues, Gospel and Americana. She is influenced by v ...
, Kevin Breit and Aviva Chernick.
The film premiered on
CBC Television
CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...
in December 2017, and received further broadcasts on the
Documentary Channel
A documentary channel is a specialty channel which focuses on broadcasting documentaries. Some documentary channels further specialize by dedicating their television programming to specific types of documentaries or documentaries in a specific ar ...
. In the United States the film has been broadcast by some
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
Canadian Screen Award
The Canadian Screen Awards () are awards given for artistic and technical merit in the film industry recognizing excellence in Canadian film, English-language television, and digital media ( web series) productions. Given annually by the Academy ...
for Best Direction in a Documentary Program at the
CBC News
CBC News is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC ...
, March 26, 2019. The film was nominated for Best Biography or Arts Documentary Program or Series, Best Sound in a Non-Fiction Program or Series (Gary Vaughan and Richard Spence-Thomas) and Best Writing in a Documentary Program (Jason Charters). At the
46th International Emmy Awards
The 46th International Emmy Awards took place November 19, 2018 at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City. The award ceremony, presented by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (IATAS), honors all TV programming produced ...
, the film was a shortlisted nominee for Best Arts Programming.
Songlist
# "
Winter Wonderland
"Winter Wonderland" is a song written in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith. Due to its seasonal theme, it is often regarded as a Christmas song in the Northern Hemisphere. Since its original recording by Richard Himb ...
" (English version) - performed by Gaston Poon, Franc-Anton Harwart and the waiters
# "
The Christmas Song
"The Christmas Song" (commonly subtitled "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" or, as it was originally subtitled, "Merry Christmas to You") is a Christmas song written in 1945 by Robert Wells (songwriter), Robert Wells and Mel Tormé. The Nat K ...
" - lead vocals by Dione Taylor
# "
A Holly Jolly Christmas
"A Holly Jolly Christmas", also known as "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas", is a Christmas song written by Johnny Marks and most famously performed by Burl Ives. The song has since become one of the top 25 most-performed "holiday" songs written by ...
" - performed by Roger Feng, the cooks and the
lion dance
Lion dance ( zh, s=舞狮, t=舞獅, p=wǔshī, c=, first=t) is a form of traditional dance in Culture of China, Chinese culture and other Asian countries in which performers mimic a Asiatic lion, lion's movements in a lion costume to bring good l ...
rs
# "
Silver Bells
"Silver Bells" is a Christmas song composed by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.
It debuted in the motion picture '' The Lemon Drop Kid'' (1951), where it was started by William Frawley,"The Lemon Drop Kid" in The American Film Institute Catalog of ...
" - lead vocals by Steven Page
# "
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer created by Robert L. May. Rudolph is usually depicted as the ninth and youngest of Santa Claus's reindeer, using his luminous red nose to lead the reindeer team and guide Santa's sleigh on C ...
" - performed by Tom Wilson and the Lemon Bucket Orkestra
# "
Do You Hear What I Hear?
"Do You Hear What I Hear?" is a song written in October 1962, with lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne. The pair, married at the time, wrote it as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Regney had been invited by a record ...
" - sung by Aviva Chernick
# "Winter Wonderland Reprise" - Yiddish vocals by David Wall with the waiters' backing vocals
Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants
The Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants became prominent in the 20th century, especially among Jewish New Yorkers. This cultural phenomenon has been seen as a paradoxical form of assimilation, where Jewish immigrants embraced Chin ...