Hatch Name-Checks His Tablet Song

When Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, got up to speak this afternoon to a delegation from the Orthodox Union at a luncheon on Capitol Hill (the group was addressed by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last night), the first thing the famously pious Mormon mentioned was his mezuzah necklace. It was a gift, he said, and he wears it all the time.

The second thing he did was tell the audience about “Eight Days of Hanukkah,” the song he recorded two years ago for Tablet Magazine. It’s a good story, one that begins in 1999, when Hatch—an avid songwriter—treated contributing editor (and future blogger) Jeffrey Goldberg to a private performance of his Christmas songs. Hatch recounted that Goldberg had asked him for a Hanukkah song, and said the whole thing had been forgotten as a joke until a decade later, when he was invited up to New York to record the song, which was set to music by Madeline Stone. The only problem was that Hatch seemed to have forgotten both Goldberg’s name and the name of the “blog” that made the whole dream into reality. But, never mind: Here we are! And so, one more time, is the video:

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Related: Eight Days of Hanukkah [Tablet Magazine]
Ambassador Michael Oren Explains That These Are Perilous Times [Right Turn]