In the 1971 movie FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Tevye the Milkman is forced to come to terms with a world that is changing before his eyes. Although he has arranged for his eldest daughter, Tzeitel, to marry a wealthy widower, the butcher Lazar Wolf, Tzeitel eachews tradition and chooses to marry the poor but good-hearted Mottel the Tailor, the man she loves. It takes some work to convince Tevye but he agrees to the marriage. His second daughter, Hodel, also follows her heart and announces that she wants to marry Perchik the Bolshevik revolutionary. Tevye is furious yet again but, once again, he sees both the love in her eyes and her determination, and he reluctantly agrees to the marriage even though it means that the young couple will be exiled to Siberia and he may never see his daughter again. Youngest daughter, Chava, poses the greatest challenge to Tevye’s ideology when she then announces that she wants to marry Fyedka, a Russian. With this news, Tevye draws a line in the sand — he cannot sanction his daughter marrying a non-Jew — and he disowns his daughter leaving her to elope with her boyfriend. Although the story of Tevye the Milkman is fictional, Tevye’s emotions and actions are grounded in reality. Even today, more than 125 years after Tevye first appeared in print, many if not all Orthodox Jewish families would disown any child who marries out of the faith. (I have a friend who had exactly that happen to him when he married out.) The situation is very different outside of religious Jewish circles, and according to a survey done by the Pew Research Center in 2020, 42 percent of married American Jewish respondents had a non-Jewish spouse. More surprising (at least to me), among those respondents who married after 2010, the intermarriage rate was 61 percent. When Orthodox Jews were excluded from the data, the figure rose to 72 percent. Given this new reality, it shouldn’t be surprising that Hallmark would make a movie about a Jewish woman and her non-Jewish boyfriend… and that her family would be solidly on board with it.

In LEAH’S PERFECT GIFT, Leah Goldberg (Emily Arlook, TV’s NOBODY WANTS THIS) is infatuated with Christmas — the mall Santas, the trees, the sweaters, the whole shebang. Though her family celebrates Chanukah, she’s always wanted to experience a traditional Christmas. When her boyfriend, Graham Westwood (Evan Roderick, TV’s ARROW), invites her to spend Christmas with him and his family, Leah jumps at the opportunity. However, Graham’s family are not exactly out of a Norman Rockwell painting and Leah finds that no matter what she does, it’s not good enough for Graham’s obsessive mother, Barbara (Barbara Niven).

I would have liked to have been offended by Leah’s embrace of Christmas but I also have a family member who is just as infatuated with the holiday as she is, he writes shaking his head and rolling his eyes in resignation. I’ll give Hallmark credit for at least stripping out the religious connotations to the holiday. Thankfully, Leah doesn’t go to midnight Mass or want to sing “Silent Night” in front of the Christmas tree nor do the subjects even come up. Short of one very brief reference to the manger, the Westwood family’s Christmas celebrations are as secular as they come. To them it’s all about maintaining family traditions and I can’t find any fault with that, although Barbara does take it to the extreme for Hallmark-style comedic effect, i.e., it’s not very funny.

As I was watching the movie, two thoughts were going through my mind though, and neither of them had anything to do with the plot. (That’s the wonderful thing about Hallmark movies. You don’t have to pay too much attention to what’s going on.) The first was that Barbara Niven looks like a dime store Christina Applegate and the second was that the actor who plays Graham’s father, Christopher Shyer, looks like a budget Peter Gallagher. A quick search on the Internet revealed that I’m not alone in those thoughts as there are numerous postings by others commenting on their resemblances. Make of that what you will.

Although LEAH’S PERFECT GIFT isn’t as entertaining or heartwarming as Hallmark’s other Chanukah-themed entry for 2024, HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS, it’s not bad. It’s the movie equivalent of the greeting card that says, “Happy Chrismukkah”. If that’s the card you look for at this time of year, then you won’t be disappointed with this movie.

LEAH’S PERFECT GIFT is available now on the Hallmark Channel.

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