Hanukkah – December 9th

Today is Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights.

Hanukkah

Hanukkah is celebrated by lighting one candle on the Hanukiah each day.

Hanukkah dates back two centuries before Christianity and literally means rededication. Hanukkah symbolizes how God looked after Jewish people in hard times.

The story goes that an ancient king in Syria tried to make Jewish people worship Greek gods. He built a statue of one Greek god in a big Jewish temple and ordered people to bow to it. The Ten Commandments forbid the worshipping of idols and the Jewish people refused. Three years of war and unrest followed these events. Eventually, lead by a small group called the Maccabees, Jewish people claimed back Jerusalem from the Syrians. Their temple, however, was destroyed. Jewish people then rebuilt the temple and purified it by burning ritual oil.

The purification of the temple marks one of the biggest miracles in Jewish history: only a small amount of oil was found (enough to last for a day) but the lamp in the temple burned a total of eight days.

Today is the first day of the seven-day Jewish Festival, Sukkot.

Sukkot

A Sukkah in North Carolina

Sukkot takes place on the fifth day of Yom Kippur, and is 
known to be one of the most joyous and ecstatic festivals in the Jewish calendar. The transition to Sukkot always seems very drastic because Sukkot is preceded by one of the most quiet, solemn days in the Jewish calendar.

Sukkot has a dual significance: historical and agricultural. Historically, the festival commemorates the 40-year period that the people of Israel wandered in the desert. To reflect upon this 40-year journey it is common for Jewish families to build a Sukkah, a form of temporary shelter.

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is one of the most important
festivals in the Jewish year. It is the occassion when Jewish people remember how they were led away from slavery and out of Egypt towards the Promised Land. Also, the Passover is one of the three national feasts of Israel that were commanded by God that Israel as a nation commemorate annually, and they are; Passover, Shavuot (the feast of weeks also know in the Christian world as Pentecost) and Succot (the feast of tabernacles). A special service called Seder (Order) takes place over a meal around a table in a home.