Is "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" the best Jewish Halloween song?

"30 Rock" gave us such a special gift with this tune.

It was just a 10-second bit in the second season of “30 Rock,” the cult favorite series about an SNL-like sketch comedy show called “TGS with Tracy Jordan” (played by actual SNL alumnus Tracy Morgan) run by Liz Lemon (Tina Fey). In the episode called “Jack Gets in the Game,” Jordan, who loves a get-rich-quick scheme, shows off his prized possessions, including his key to the city of Gary, Indiana and his "gold record from that novelty party song." Cut to a music video with Morgan dressed in a Michael Jackson "Thriller" style outfit with prosthetic snouts and werewolf ears, signing the now iconic lyrics: "Werewolf bar mitzvah, spooky scary / boys becoming men, men becoming wolves."

It was writer Robert Carlock who first came up with the idea for the song. He was inspired by the Black Eyed Peas song “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which features the band yelling “mazel tov,” which signaled to Carlock an obvious attempt to get those royalty checks from being played at bat and bar mitzvah parties in perpetuity (he wasn’t wrong), a scheme that felt perfect for Morgan’s character. Carlock then came up with the simple line: “Werewolf bar mitzvah, spooky scary.”

It was the only Jewish writer on the song, Tami Sagher, who came up with the following lyrics that nod to the Jewish lifecycle event. “The whole inspiration for that is just what happens at a bar mitzvah. Boys become men. And men become wolves,” she joked with NPR.

After the episode aired in 2007, the short snippet of the song became a streaming hit on YouTube. And thus Sagher, who has been featured on “This American Life” and who has worked on shows like “How I Met Your Mother,” “Inside Amy Schumer,” "Orange Is the New Black," "Girls," "Shrill," "The Great” and "Life & Beth," was then tasked with expanding the lyrics into a full song.

The lyrics of that final super specific and delightfully out-there song were a collaboration between Carlock, Sagher, Fey and SNL writer Donald Glover, who you might know from “Community” or as Childish Gambino, and who actually recorded the full song in Morgan’s stead. The song tells the story of a young Jewish boy who gets turned into a werewolf before his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth-Emannuel, which turns into a “wolfen fest,” and his reception at Larchmont Country Club (a shout-out to Sagher’s Jewish college friend who grew up in Larchmont), which starts out kind of normal with circumcision jokes but ends in a monster battle.

“I had to Google bar mitzvah terms for these lyrics, like Haftorah. I never actually had a bat mitzvah, or even been to one when I wrote this,” Sagher, who did go to synagogues growing up, shared with Vulture. She knew other Jewish words that made their way into the song, like bimah and Talmud, and she also knew that even in a novelty song, you can’t drop the Torah. Sagher wasn’t there for the recording of the song, in which Glover and the rest of the team inserted humorous lines in the background, like a shout-out to Morgan’s manager, Harvey Lemmings, who taught him all the Jewish words he knows, as well as the line “kooky hairy,” and she also wasn’t there to correct their pronunciation of Shabbat as Shabbath.

Since she wrote the song, Sagher has been to many a bar and bat mitzvah, including her nephew’s where “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” was played, perhaps a thoughtful nod to Aunt Tami. And Carlock has said that his son heard the song at his friends’ bar and bat mitzvahs, which means that, like the fictional Jordan, he’s probably getting those “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” royalty checks. I bet it’ll be a key feature at a lot of Halloween parties tonight, too.

What’s your favorite Halloween song? Let me know in the comments.