🕎 To kick off Hanukkah, we’re shining a light on a 1990 episode of Shalom Sesame, an on-again, off-again co-production of Sesame Street and its Israeli counterpart, Rechov Sumsum, featuring the objectively better son from Growing Pains. 

 ****  

Sarah Shay (SarayShay.com, Bandcamp, Pilot House Podcast, @thesarahshay).  

****  

1. A brief history of Shalom Sesame, provided by the ever-thorough Muppet Wiki.  

2. Israel’s Big Bird stand-in, Kippi Ben Kippod, is mistranslated as a porcupine despite clearly being a hedgehog. A similar but unclothed costume was used in Spain’s Barrio Sésamo for Espinete, who’s identified as a hedgehog.  

3. Jeremy Miller, as Linus, sings The Vigil in Snoopy! The Musical.  

4. Yoav Tzafir’s other credits include the Hebrew-dubbed voices of Ninja Turtle Michaelangelo and Super Mario. Later he directed the Israeli version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?  

5. The real, actual, annual Hanukkah Torch Relay.  

6. Moishe Oofnik, Israel’s counterpart to Oscar, looks less like a grouch and more like a standard Muppet monster. Probably because he has a nose.  

7. Despite Sarah’s guess that Telly Monster is Sesame Street’s Jewish resident, this video of Baby Bear teaching Telly how to play dreidel suggests otherwise.  

8. A supposed folktale listed on the Wikipedia entry for sufganiyah that God fed them to Adam and Eve to cheer them up after kicking them out of the Garden of Eden may or may not be full of something that’s not jelly.  

9. Sarah met the head puppeteer from Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah while on tour.  

10. Apparently some kids put sugar in their latkes.  

11. Nell Carter was a Jewish convert who appeared on other episodes of Shalom Sesame as herself.  

****  

“Shalom Sesame” © 1990 Children’s Television Workshop.  

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.  
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.