Hanukkah

When it falls

Eight days from the twenty-fifth of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, in late November or December. The first candle is lit at nightfall on the eve.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

In 168 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish practice and set up an altar to Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees, a priestly family led by Judah, fought a three-year war and retook the city. When they cleansed and rededicated the Temple (ḥanukkah means dedication) they found only one day's supply of pure oil for the lamp, and it burned for the eight days it took to press more. The eight lights are for those eight days.

It is a minor festival in the religious calendar, with no rest from work, and one of the most widely kept, since it falls in the season of the world's other lights and needs only a window to keep.

How the day is kept

• The ḥanukkiah, the nine-branched lamp, is lit after dark, one more candle each night from right to left, using the ninth (shamash, the servant) to light the rest, and placed in a window so the miracle is seen from the street.
• Three blessings the first night, two the others, then the hymn Maʿoz Tzur; no work is done while the candles burn.
• Dreidel, the four-sided top marked with the initials of nes gadol hayah sham (a great miracle happened there), spun for chocolate coins (gelt).
• Public lightings at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, at the White House, in Trafalgar Square; the Chabad movement sets a menorah in most large cities.

At the table

Anything fried in oil: latkes (potato pancakes) with sour cream and apple sauce in the Ashkenazi tradition, sufganiyot (jam doughnuts) in Israel, and bimuelos among Sephardim.

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