Disney’s “Full-Court Miracle” Still Matters — Especially This Chanukah

I was an Orthodox Jewish kid growing up in a small, out-of-town Jewish community when a commercial on the Disney Channel for a new movie stopped me cold. At first, it looked like every other made-for-TV sports story: a struggling basketball team, an unlikely coach, a familiar underdog arc. And then something caught my eye.

Was that a yarmulke atop the head of the teacher? I leaned closer to the screen. In the background, just behind him, was a picture of Israel. Excitedly, I called my sisters into the room.
“I think this is Jewish!” I said. By the time the commercial ended, it was unmistakable. This wasn’t just a movie with Jewish characters tucked into the margins. It was a Disney movie about Chanukah.

That movie, of course, is Disney’s 2003 Full-Court Miracle, about a struggling basketball team at Philadelphia Hebrew Academy — a boys’ yeshiva-like school — who find their very own modern-day Judah Maccabee in the form of an unexpected coach. Spoiler: during the final game, a powerful storm knocks out electricity citywide, but a lone generator miraculously stays on long enough for the boys, the Jewish underdogs, to win.

Sound familiar? It’s basically the Chanukah story — just rewritten with basketball jerseys instead of shields. But what made it powerful wasn’t just the miracle in the script. It was what it meant to kids like me, growing up outside major Jewish hubs, where Judaism wasn’t always reflected back to us in the world around us.

Most of my classmates at our Jewish elementary day school talked about weekend plans that didn’t include attending synagogue. They brought non-kosher snacks to school. And sometimes they celebrated holidays I didn’t. While our Judaic teachers were religiously observant, the deepest parts of my Jewish life happened at home and in shul. At school, being Jewish often meant explaining why I couldn’t eat certain things, why my calendar looked different, why my family lived the way it did. And in wider culture, Christmas was naturally always the default.

So to suddenly see something so unabashedly Jewish on my favorite TV channel — the most mainstream place imaginable — felt almost unreal.

What still feels so special about Full-Court Miracle is how fully it embraces its Judaism. It didn’t replace Chanukah with a vague notion of “religion” or sand down the Jewishness to make it more palatable. It actually told the story of Chanukah. At one point, the rabbi in the film mentions “Hashem” Himself in a sweet d’var Torah of sorts. And perhaps most moving of all? The Jewish kids are the heroes. Like the Maccabees of old, Alex Schlotsky and his team courageously compete, and ultimately triumph.

That stayed with me. Looking back now, I can easily admit the movie is a little cheesy. It follows a predictable sports arc. There are some very Disney-channel melodramatic moments. And yes, a few familiar Jewish tropes appear here and there. But none of that ever outweighed what mattered most:Their Judaism wasn’t something to hide or apologize for.

Now, more than twenty years later, that feels even more significant than I ever could have imagined.

This Chanukah feels darker than most. We are living in a post–October 7th reality, where Jewish identity and Jewish visibility feel unquestionably more dangerous. This year alone, we watched the Bondi Beach Chabad Chanukah celebration turn into a massacre, Orthodox Jews have been stabbed and harassed in the streets of New York, and TikTok algorithms continue to churn out hatred by the second while media narratives distort Jewish pain, flatten Jewish stories, or debate our trauma instead of acknowledging it.

Through the pain, I find myself thinking back to this simple, slightly cliché, deeply moving in its own right Disney movie. Because for one Orthodox kid growing up far from the center of Jewish life, Full-Court Miracle offered affirmation. It said: You belong. Your story matters — and here it is, retold for the masses to find it beautiful, too. In its own small way, that still feels like a miracle.

So if you’re looking to add something meaningful to your family’s Chanukah this year, consider watching Full-Court Miracle. It may not be perfect and it may not be sophisticated cinema, but it might remind us — and our kids — that Jewish stories deserve to be told with pride.

And this year, we’ll take every miracle we can get.

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