Chad Gadya - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • The film track of the 2005 movie Free Zone includes a controversial interpretation of Chad Gadya composed by Israeli singer Chava Alberstein. The song was banned on Israeli radio stations in the 1980s.
  • In the Season 1, episode 14 of The West Wing "Take This Sabbath Day," the rabbi of Toby Ziegler's temple references this story as a deterrence against capital punishment and mentions that vengeance is not Jewish.
  • It is source of the title A Kid for Two Farthings, a 1953 novel written by Wolf Mankowitz, the basis of a 1955 film and 1996 musical play.
  • It was featured in the American television series NCIS in the season 7 opener "Truth or Consequences" by Abby and McGee, and then was sung jokingly in a scene by Dinozzo in another season 7 episode titled "Reunion". McGee explains that they accessed Mossad's encrypted files, "but they weren't in English, so we had to do a little bit of rudimentary linguistics. It's a Hebrew school nursery rhyme." Chad Gadya (One Little Goat). McGee and Abby start to enthusiastically sing along with the nursery rhyme."
  • The recording "A Different Night" by the group Voice of the Turtle has 23 different versions of Chad Gadya in all different languages.
  • The Israeli satirical team Latma has created a parody "Chad Bayta" ("One House"), to the tune of "Chad Gadya", which tells the story of a house in the settlements. Instead of a cat, a dog, a stick, and so on,the song features Peace Now, Benyamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama, Ahmadinejad, and the UN, among others.
  • It is sung in the seder scene of the 1999 film The Devil's Arithmetic, with Kirsten Dunst.
  • In Italy the song has become very popular since the ’70s, when the Italian folk singer and composer Angelo Branduardi recorded it with the title of Alla fiera dell'est.
  • It is the name of a theatre company based in Toronto, Canada: One Little Goat Theatre Company

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