Hanukkah

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE, when the Maccabees successfully recovered Jerusalem and the Second Temple.
Beginning on the 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, Hanukkah lasts for eight nights and days. Each night is marked by lighting a Hanukkah menorah, a nine-branched candelabrum containing spaces for eight ceremonial lights plus one additional candle, the , which is used to light the others. Aside from the shamash, one candle is lit on the first night, two on the second, and so on, until all eight are burning together on the final night. It is the only Jewish holiday that starts in one month of the Hebrew calendar and concludes in another.
Common practices on Hanukkah include certain Jewish prayers; indulging in Hanukkah music; playing the game of dreidel; and consuming fried food and dairy products, such as ' and '. Since the 1970s, the Chabad movement within Hasidic Judaism has organized community-wide lightings of public menorahs in locales around the world.
Originally instituted as a feast "like the days of the festival of Sukkot", it does not entail the corresponding obligations and is therefore a relatively minor holiday in strictly religious terms. Nevertheless, Hanukkah has attained major cultural significance in the Western world and elsewhere, especially among secular Jews, as it often falls during the Christmas and holiday season. Among American Jews, this chronological proximity also contributed to the seasonal gift-giving practice.

Etymology

The name "Hanukkah" derives from the Hebrew verb "", meaning "to dedicate", because on Hanukkah, the Maccabees Jews regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple.
Many homiletical explanations have been given for the name:

The name can be broken down into, " rested twenty-fifth", referring to the fact that the Jews ceased fighting on the 25th day of Kislev, the day on which the holiday begins.
, from the same root, is the name for Jewish education, emphasizing ethical training and discipline.
is also the Hebrew acronym for – "Eight candles, and the halakha is according to the House of Hillel". This is a reference to the disagreement between two rabbinical schools of thought – the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai – on the proper order in which to light the Hanukkah flames. Shammai opined that eight candles should be lit on the first night, seven on the second night, and so on down to one on the last night. Hillel argued in favor of starting with one candle and lighting an additional one every night, up to eight on the eighth night. Jewish law adopted the position of Hillel.
Psalm 30 is called , "the Song of the 'Dedication' of the House", and is traditionally recited on Hanukkah. 25 + 5 = 30, which is the number of the song.
Alternative spellings

In Hebrew, the word Hanukkah is written or . It is most commonly transliterated to English as Hanukkah or . The spelling Hanukkah is the most common and the preferred choice of Merriam–Webster, Collins English Dictionary, the Oxford Style Manual, and the style guides of The New York Times. The Guardian uses "Hanukah" The sound represented by Ch is not native to the English language, so those not familiar with Hebrew pronunciation may pronounce it with an h. Furthermore, the letter ḥeth, which is the first letter in the Hebrew spelling, is pronounced differently in modern Hebrew from in classical Hebrew, and neither of those sounds is unambiguously representable in English spelling. However, the classical Hebrew sound is closer to the English H than to the Scottish Ch, and Hanukkah more accurately represents the spelling in the Hebrew alphabet. Moreover, the 'kaf' consonant is geminate in classical Hebrew. Adapting the classical Hebrew pronunciation with the geminate and pharyngeal can lead to the spelling Hanukkah, while adapting the modern Hebrew pronunciation with no gemination and uvular leads to the spelling.

Festival of Lights

In Modern Hebrew, Hanukkah may also be called the Festival of Lights, based on a comment by Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, καὶ ἐξ ἐκείνου μέχρι τοῦ δεῦρο τὴν ἑορτὴν ἄγομεν καλοῦντες αὐτὴν φῶτα "And from then on we celebrate this festival, and we call it Lights". The first Hebrew translation of Antiquities used "Festival of Lamps", but the translation "Festival of Lights" appeared by the end of the nineteenth century. The term "Festival of Lights" is also commonly used in English.

Historical sources

Books of Maccabees

The story of Hanukkah is told in the books of the First and Second Maccabees, which describe in detail the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem and the lighting of the menorah. These books, however, are not a part of the canonized Masoretic Text version of the Tanakh used and accepted by normative Rabbinical Judaism and therefore modern Jews. However, the books of Maccabees were included among the deuterocanonical books added to the Septuagint, Greek-language translations of the Hebrew Bible originally compiled in the mid-3rd century BCE. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches consider the books of Maccabees as a canonical part of the Old Testament.
The eight-day re-dedication of the temple is described in 1 Maccabees, though the miracle of the oil does not appear here. A story similar in character, and older in date, is the one alluded to in 2 Maccabees according to which the relighting of the altar fire by Nehemiah was due to a miracle which occurred on the 25th of Kislev, and which appears to be given as the reason for the selection of the same date for the rededication of the altar by Judah Maccabee. The above account in 1 Maccabees, as well as 2 Maccabees portrays the feast as a delayed observation of the eight-day Feast of Booths ; similarly 2 Maccabees explains the length of the feast as "in the manner of the Feast of Booths".

Early rabbinic sources

contains a list of festive days on which fasting or eulogizing is forbidden. It specifies, "On the 25th of is Hanukkah of eight days, and one is not to eulogize". The scholion then references the story of the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the cruse of oil.
The Mishna mentions Hanukkah in several places, but never describes its laws in detail and never mentions any aspect of the history behind it. To explain the Mishna's lack of a systematic discussion of Hanukkah, Nissim ben Jacob postulated that information on the holiday was so commonplace that the Mishna felt no need to explain it. Modern scholar Reuvein Margolies suggests that as the Mishnah was redacted after the Bar Kochba revolt, its editors were reluctant to include explicit discussion of a holiday celebrating another relatively recent revolt against a foreign ruler, for fear of antagonizing the Romans.
The miracle of the one-day supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days is described in the Talmud, committed to writing about 600 years after the events described in the books of Maccabees. The Talmud says that after the forces of Antiochus IV had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight days.
The Talmud presents three options:

The law requires only one light each night per household,
A better practice is to light one light each night for each member of the household
The most preferred practice is to vary the number of lights each night.

Except in times of danger, the lights were to be placed outside one's door, on the opposite side of the mezuza, or in the window closest to the street. Rashi, in a note to Shabbat 21b, says their purpose is to publicize the miracle. The blessings for Hanukkah lights are discussed in tractate Succah, p. 46a.
Megillat Antiochus concludes with the following words:
The Al HaNissim prayer is recited on Hanukkah as an addition to the Amidah prayer, which was formalized in the late 1st century. Al HaNissim describes the history of the holiday as follows:

Narrative of Josephus

The Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus narrates in his book, Jewish Antiquities XII, how the victorious Judas Maccabeus ordered lavish yearly eight-day festivities after rededicating the Temple in Jerusalem that had been profaned by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Josephus does not say the festival was called Hanukkah but rather the "Festival of Lights":

Other ancient sources

In the New Testament, John 10:22–23 says, "Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon's Colonnade". The Greek noun used appears in the neuter plural as "the renewals" or "the consecrations". The same root appears in 2 Esdras 6:16 in the Septuagint to refer specifically to Hanukkah. This Greek word was chosen because the Hebrew word for 'consecration' or 'dedication' is Hanukkah. The Aramaic New Testament uses the Aramaic word hawdata, which literally means 'renewal' or 'to make new'.

History

Background

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, Judea became part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt until 200 BCE, when King Antiochus III the Great of Syria defeated King Ptolemy V Epiphanes of Egypt at the Battle of Panium. Judea then became part of the Seleucid Empire of Syria. King Antiochus III the Great, wanting to conciliate his new Jewish subjects, guaranteed their right to "live according to their ancestral customs" and to continue to practice their religion in the Temple of Jerusalem. The Seleucids, like the Ptolemies before them, held a suzerainty over Judea, where they respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions. This policy was drastically reversed by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the son of Antiochus III, seemingly after what was either a dispute over leadership of the Temple in Jerusalem and the office of High Priest, or possibly a revolt whose nature was lost to time after being crushed. In 175 BCE, Antiochus IV invaded Judea at the request of the sons of Tobias. The Tobiads, who led the Hellenizing Jewish faction in Jerusalem, were expelled to Syria around 170 BCE when the high priest Onias and his pro-Egyptian faction wrested control from them. The exiled Tobiads lobbied Antiochus IV Epiphanes to recapture Jerusalem. As Flavius Josephus relates: