Not Your Dad's Klezmer LP

Those inside the new Jewish music boom find it rewarding to see bands stretch so far beyond old-country wedding and bar mitzvah music, to lose what Harris calls the once-prevalent stigma of being "Jewish bands" or affiliated with a "Jewish label." Now people talk about the opposite: bands getting consumed with hipness and being consumer-friendly. This means opting for the trendy over the more musically complex, the ironic over the emotionally sincere.

"I worry sometimes when things get trendy and when artists start making art to fit hipster expectations, that it can be reduced to more Jewish jokes, good fodder for a party," said Josh Kun, a communications professor at the University of Southern California and a co-founder of Reboot Stereophonic, a Jewish label founded in 2005. "But I think the majority of stuff is earnest."

The fact that a band such as the Black & White Jacksons could be playing in a synagogue at a Hanukkah party, Kun says, "is a good indication of how strange this conversation can get. What does it all mean?"

Part of the reason this can all go on at Hanukkah is because the holiday is generally void of religious significance. A historic commemoration, Hanukkah marks the Maccabees' successful revolution against Assyrian-Greek religious persecution nearly 2,200 years ago. It is marked primarily at home, not in a synagogue, with the lighting of candles and the playing of games that allow the retelling of the Maccabees' story. The holiday commemorates the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by foreign fighters.

Its timing near Christmas has turned it, primarily in the United States, into a much larger event that includes gift-giving.

Adam Gardner, who sings and plays guitar in the LeeVees (as well as in his bigger band, Guster) said the band was put together so Jewish Americans would have something culturally their own during Christmas. He is pleased that the movement is largely unreligious.

"I think it avoids the pitfalls of some things where people say, 'Oh God, religious music.' These are good bands making good music, inherently. We say [when we're playing one of our songs]: Oh, it's too bad this song is about kugel, because it's a beautiful song. If you changed the words, you'd think it was an R.E.M. song."