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Holiday Traditions: part 2
Today's Topic: Celebrating Hanukkah
Hanukkah starts tonight at sundown. The meaning of: The word “Hanukkah” means “dedication” but also shares the same root as the word “educate.” An alternate spelling is Chanukah.
This eight-day celebration, also known as the Festival of Lights, commemorates the triumph of the Jews over their oppressors in ancient Israel. According to legend, when the Jews reclaimed their temple, they found only enough oil to create light for one day, but the oil lasted for eight days; the lighting of Hanukkah candles symbolizes that miracle. A menorah has nine holders, one for each night plus one for the shamash, the candle used to light all the others. The candles are placed from right to left, then lit from left to right; the new candle is always lit first.
Sitting down to a Hanukkah meal with family and friends is as significant a part of the celebration as lighting the menorah candles. Like the candles, the oil used to fry potato latkes and cook the traditional jam-filled doughnuts, called sufganiyot, recalls the miracle in the temple.
Try some of these traditional Hanukkah recipes:
Potato Latkes
Cheesy Potato Kugel
Sufganiyot
After dinner, the children play dreidel. The dreidel game has long been a favorite part of the Hanukkah celebration. The dreidel, a four-sided top, has a Hebrew letter on each of its sides—nun, gimmel, hey, and shin, the first letters of the Hebrew words meaning “A great miracle happened here.” The Hebrew letters on the dreidel later came to stand for different words in Yiddish, a dialect spoken by Jews in Europe and Russia; in the rules of the game, these Yiddish words correspond to the outcome of each spin of the dreidel.
Rules For Playing Dreidel
1. Each player receives a set amount of gelt (chocolate coins covered in foil) or real coins.
2. Before each spin of the dreidel, the players put a fixed amount of their gelt in the pot, or kupah.
3. Each player takes a turn spinning the dreidel.
4. When the dreidel falls, the letter displayed on top determines the action of the player (the Yiddish words are given here with their translations):
Nicht (nothing)— move on to the next player
Gut (good)—take all the gelt in the kupah
Halb (half)—take half the gelt from the kupah
Schlecht (bad)—the player loses all the gelt he or she deposited into the kupah
5. A player who loses all of his or her gelt is out of the game.
6. The game continues until there is no more gelt in the kupah.
7. The player with the most gelt wins.
posted by Kitty Friday, December 19, 2003
