In a review for AllMusic, Jeff Tamarkin awarded the album 4 stars, writing "a companion piece to 2006's sublime Wonder Wheel, Happy Joyous Hanukkah, like that album, dips into Woody Guthrie's catalog of recently discovered, previously unrecorded Jewish lyrics, to which the Klezmatics have written new music... The Klezmatics are the ideal band to bring Guthrie's dormant words to life: vocalist Lorin Sklamberg's crystalline pipes lend a natural merriment to the band's arrangements, and trumpeter Frank London, who crafted the music for most of the songs that Sklamberg didn't, injects an experimentalism into the proceedings without losing sight of tradition."[2] The Sun Sentinel called the album "a fascinating project."[1]
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