What Is Hanukkah?

Chanukah -- the eight-day festival of light that begins on the eve of the 25th from the Jewish month of Kislev -- celebrates the triumph of sunshine over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality.

More than twenty-one in past centuries, the Holy Land was ruled through the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who sought to forcefully Hellenize the people of Israel. Against all odds, a small gang of faithful Jews defeated among the mightiest armies worldwide, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the company of G-d.

Once they sought to light the Temple's menorah (the seven branched candelabrum), they found simply a single cruse of other oil that had escaped contamination by Greeks; miraculously, the one-day supply burned for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity.

To commemorate and publicize these miracles, the sages instituted the festival of Chanukah. At the heart of the festival is a nightly menorah (candelabrum) lighting: an individual flame on the first night, two on the second evening, and so forth till the eighth night of Chanukah, when all eight lights are kindled.

On Chanukah additionally we add the Hallel and Al HaNissim in our daily prayers to offer praise and thanksgiving to G-d for "delivering the strong in to the hands of the weak, the many into the hands irrespective of few... the wicked into the hands of the righteous."

Chanukah customs include eating foods fried in oil -- latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiot (doughnuts); playing with the dreidel (a spinning top on which are inscribed the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hei and shin, an acronym for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, "a great miracle happened there"); and the giving of Chanukah gelt, gifts of money, to children.