Hanukkah or the Feast of Lights.

Hanukkah, or the Feast of Lights, commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem 165 BC after its desecration by foreign forces. The celebration takes place during 8 days and begins on the 25th day of the month of Kislev. Each evening during the feast a candle is lit and placed in a special candelabrum; a nine-branched ceremonial lamp called Hannukiah. It has eight branches, one for each day of the holiday, and a ninth branch for the “servant” light. It is with the “servant” light that you light all the candles in the Hannukiah. On the first night you light the servant light plus one candle, on the second night you light the servant light plus 2 candles, and so on.

Hanukkah is a feast of lights. You play games, sing and give each other little gifts. It is tradition to eat fried food such as latkes, potato pancakes and sufganiyot, donuts with very sweet jelly, vanilla or chocolate filling. Children play with dreidels (Jiddish) which are a spinning toys. The four sides of the dreidel bear four Hebrew letters: nun, gimel, hey, and shin to stand for the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, “A great miracle happened there.” In Israel the Hebrew letters are: nun, gimel, hey, and pey, the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Hayah Po, “A great miracle happened here.” During this holiday children are free from school.

The historic background of this feast is the reconquering of Jerusalem and the Temple from the Hellenistic Syrians 165 BC by the Maccabees.

The story of Hanukkah is the struggle for religious freedom and it takes place during a time that is not written about in the Bible. Over two thousand years ago, the foreign rulers of the Israelites decreed that the Jews bow down to the image of their Hellenistic king and leader, Antiochus IV of Seleucid, whose statue was erected in the Temple. Antiochus also desecrated the Temple by erecting a Zeus altar on which pigs were offered just to turn this house of worship for Jews to a non-Jewish cult place. Antiochus wanted the Jews to cease believing in God and he threatened with the death penalty if they observed anything to do with Judaism; circumcision, Shabbat observance or Torah studies etc. But the Jewish people were forbidden by the law of God to bow to statues or idols.

The Greeks tried to force the priest Mattathias Maccabee to make a sacrifice to the god of the Greeks and thus lead the people astray, but he refused. Inspired by Mattathias and led by his son, Judah, a small group of Jews called Maccabees (meaning “hammer”) rebelled. The Maccabees risked their lives to live according to Jewish law and to prevent this desecration of their sacred Temple. Although the Maccabees won, the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jews’ holy place, was destroyed. The Jews had to clean and repair the Temple, and when they were finished they rededicated it to God by rekindling the menorah, the candelabrum symbolizing the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people and the continuity of tradition through the generations. But there was only enough olive oil to fuel the menorah for one night, and it would have taken eight days to make more oil. The legend of the miracle at Hanukkah says that the one day supply of oil burned for eight days and nights until more oil could be made.

After a unanimous vote it was decided that all Jews would observe this feast every year.

Here are some verses from 2 Maccabees.

But Machabeus, and they that were with him, by the protection of the Lord, recovered the temple and the city again.

But he threw down the altars, which the heathens had set up in the streets, as also the temples of the idols.

And having purified the temple, they made another altar: and taking fire out of the fiery stones, they offered sacrifices after two years, and set forth incense, and lamps, and the leaves of proposition.

And when they had done these things, they besought the Lord, lying prostrate on the ground, that they might no more fall into such evils; but if they should at any time sin, that they might be chastised by him more gently, and not be delivered up to barbarians and blasphemous men.

Now upon the same day that the temple had been polluted by the strangers, on the very same day it was cleansed again, to wit, on the five and twentieth day of the month of Casleu.

And they kept eight days with joy, after the manner of the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had kept the feast of the tabernacles when they were in the mountains, and in dens like wild beasts.

Therefore they now, carried boughs, and green branches, and palms for Him that had given them good success in cleansing his place.

And they ordained by a common statute, and decree, that all the nation of the Jews should keep those days every year.
2 Maccabees 10:1 - 8