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NBA’s Omri Casspi Sings the Dreidel Song

(Has clearly never sang it before)

by
Stephanie Butnick
November 27, 2013
Omri Casspi of the Houston Rockets during a game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 2013 in New York City. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Omri Casspi of the Houston Rockets during a game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 2013 in New York City. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Former Scroll maestro Marc Tracy brings our attention to the latest in a yearly Hanukkah tradition—seriously—of the Houston Rockets singing “The Dreidel Song.”

The best part of this year’s video, which is otherwise pretty lackluster (sorry boys), is Israeli player Omri Casspi, who signed with the Rockets this summer—and who faced off against Gal Mekel, the NBA’s second Israeli player, when the Rockets played the Dallas Mavericks last month—as he tries to sing along.

He’s a good sport, even though the Israeli-born small forward has clearly never encountered the distinctly American Hanukkah song before (there’s a Yiddish version, too: “Ikh Bin A Kleyner Dreydl”). Hopefully he’ll have better luck with the song selection when he attends the White House menorah lighting next week.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.