The group was dressed in the attire they wear in the video: white shirts, black pants and black ties. All wore yarmulkehs. Two members of the band apologetically wore grey pants; due to the amount of gigs they had that week all their black pants were in the wash. Several band members described the recent publicity “overwhelming,” though they weren’t complaining.

“Our phone has been ringing off the hook, our inbox has been flooded,” said Ari Lewis. He said that the group has already been booked for events in September.

While the group practiced Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida,” one member asked if they wanted to pre-game before the show, a slang term meaning getting drunk before an event. For the Maccabeats it had an entirely different meaning: davening Maariv before the concert. (Rushed to the stage, they had to settle for singing Shir Hama’alot and benching.)

Part of their charm, aside from the beat of the song, is that the Maccabeats are pretty much really nice guys who hit gold; the only boy band Jewish mothers can get behind: most of them are going to become lawyers, accountants, rabbis or architects.

“Next week we’re going to have to go back to school or we’ll fail,” said Michael Greenberg, another band member.

Nachum Joel, who has the high solo in the video, was picked out of 60 Yeshiva University students that tried out for the group when one of the founding members left for medical school. He called the video a “huge Kiddush Hashem” (sanctification of G-d’s name).

“It’s up to us to capitalize on it,” he said.

Lewis said that one of the highlights of the publicity has been the letters the band receives from non-affiliated Jews who were inspired to light candles because of the song.

“That’s the sort of stuff we don’t get tired of,” Lewis said.

The Maccabeats was founded two years ago.

“That first year we were kind of a nerdy a capella group, singing at the arts festival,” Maccabeats associate director Immanuel Shalev told The Jewish Star. “It took until our second year for people to begin to like us.”

They were largely caught unprepared for the publicity of “Candlelight.”