Story  

Hanukkah is a Jewish Holiday and it’s about these men named the maccabees. Their leader was Judah. Judah and the Maccabees lived (took care of) of this home type thing called the “Temple”. These bad guys named The Greeks and their leader Antiochus invaded the Temple and crashed everything into little shardes. The Maccabees used to have this light that always lit. 

This light was called a menorah. A menorah starts off like any candlestick, but then it split off into seven candlesticks that represent each day of the week. They are always lit. The Maccabees lit the light with olive oil that was kept in a jug. There were over one thousand jugs in the Temple. The Greeks destroyed every single jug. All hope was lost that the Maccabees will never be able to light the lamp again. Until one of the Maccabees saw one drop of oil left in one of the jugs. They said this will only be able to last us one night but it’s good enough. The oil lasted eight days. WHAT A MIRACLE! 

Now a days…

Now a days we celebrate this holiday and call it the festival of lights. We have a hanukiah (hanu-key-ya) that’s like a menorah except with nine candlestick inside of seven. One of the candlesticks are raised higher than the rest. That candle is called the “shemash”. Every night we light the shemash and then use that candle to light the candle for that night. The extra candles left are the ones we light. We have eight of them because there are eight days of the holiday and there are eight days of the holiday because the oil lasted for eight days and we want to remember that. 

Traditions

1. We play “Dreidel” (dre-del) a fun game that the maccabees used to play when the greeks were saying they couldn’t study torah. They decided to play this game with this thing below. You spin it and if it lands on the gimel “ג” you get all of the prises, if you land on the nun ‘’נ’’ you don’t get any, if it lands on the heh “ה” you get half and if it lands on the shin “ש” you get some. These letters represent נס גדול היה ש” which means a great miracle happened there. For the people in Israel they say “ נס גדול היה פו “ a great miracle happened here. The prise is gelt. 
2. Gelt is a chocolate coin. It’s a tradition to give it to children.
3. You get presents on hanukkah because we used to only give gelt but then some parents decided to add the giving of presents to make it more fun.
4. You eat foods that are fried in oil to remember the miracle that happened hundreds of years ago. The kinds of foods we eat are: #1 Latkes (lat-kaz). Latkes are potato pancakes fried in oil. The are crispy on the outside and soft-ish in the inside. #2 Sufganiyot (suf-gani-ot). Sufganiyot are dusted donuts with jam in the inside. They also are fried in oil.

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