Hanukah
The Jewish midwinter festival of Hanukah celebrates a relatively recent event in the history of this longstanding community. In 333BC, the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, conquered Egypt, Syria and Palestine. Under their rule, the Jews of the region took on many elements of Greek culture such as their language and dress, but were free to continue to practise their religion.
Cultural attack
Then, in 175BC, the Syrian Antiochus IV became king. His regime was much more oppressive: he prohibited Jewish religious practices, put a Hellenistic priest in the Temple and insisted that pigs (animals that Jewish religious law considers unclean) were sacrificed there.
Two groups of Jews joined forces to fight back. The Maccabees (led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah) and the Hassidim (no relation to the current group called Hassidim) who were the forerunners of the Pharisees who, in turn, formed the basis of rabbinic Judaism that still exists today. The Maccabees – the name they took themselves, which means 'hammer' – fought what we would now call a guerrilla war. It took them three years to drive out the Greek-Syrians, then they cleaned up the Temple and removed all the Greek statues before rededicating it as a holy place.
A miracle
Their final task was to rekindle the light which is kept burning continuously in every Jewish place of worship – but they could only find enough pure oil, which had not been defiled by the Greeks, to last one day. They sent a runner to fetch more, but that meant a journey of eight days. To their amazement, the tiny amount of oil lasted the eight days until the messenger returned – they believed that God had performed a miracle.
Since then, to remind them of the miracle, every year, Jewish people light candles on a nine-branched candlestick called a menorah or hanukiah. The candle at the front is lit first, and this is used to light the others – one on the first night, two on the second, and so on until all eight are lit on the last night of Hanukah.
Food, games and songs
To remind them of the oil, on Hanukah, Jewish people eat doughnuts and potato latkes – tasty fried potato pancakes. And children play a game with a spinning top called a dreydl. This has a Hebrew letter on each of its four sides: N, G, H, Sh. These stand for: 'Ness gadol hayah sham', which means, 'A great miracle happened there.'
Nowadays, partly because Hanukah falls in December, near to Christmas, people give presents to each other, but traditionally, the adults gave small gifts of money (real and chocolate) to the children. This is called in Yiddish, 'Hanukah gelt'.
As well as prayers, there are lots of Hanukah songs, which celebrate the successful struggle for the right to maintain your own culture and traditions.
