Jewish 101: Hanukkah Special

[Music] you're watching Shalom TV celebrating Jewish [Music] culture [Music] welcome to a very special edition of Jewish 101 a program for anyone who wants to understand more about Jewish in general and especially the Jewish tradition so let's talk about hanuka which is fast approaching I'm Mark go it's wonderful to be with you again thank you for all your lovely notes and cards but tonight in this program I want to talk about kanuka which is one of the most misunderstood even maligned of Jewish holidays you know sometimes you'll hear people say that kanuka is really a minor insignificant Jewish holiday and has only become important in America because because of its proximity in time to Christmas and the Christmas season and that's only partially true khuk is technically a minor Jewish holiday why is it minor well which book of the Torah Five Books of Moses tells the story of kanuka where would you find the story of kanuka in the Tor and the answer is obviously nowhere since the Torah recounts what happened to the children of Israel from the time they left Egypt and through the 40 Years of their wanderings before re-entering the promised land of Canan erit Israel so clearly hanuka is not found anywhere in the Torah and only the major holidays of the Jewish tradition are the ones mentioned in the Torah Passover Shavuot Yom hazikaron the day of remembrance which the rabbis rename Ros sh Y kipur and suot which ends with these are the only major Jewish holidays called festivals and every Festival mentioned in the Torah is celebrated in part by the Commandment of not working in the Torah it's forbidden to work not only on the Shabbat but on all the other Jewish festivals and a festival is called in Hebrew yum to which literally means means a good day which has come to mean a holiday and the yish term for a yto is yff yff is yish for a good day or holiday a holiday festival mentioned in the Torah many of you know the phrase yti and even the phrase good yti which is actually a sort of a redundancy literally translated as good good day but in terms of what's meant by the phrase good yti it's have a good or wonderful holiday anyway only holidays mentioned in the Torah are major holidays or festivals in the Jewish tradition and you can't work on those festivals but what about holidays mentioned elsewhere in the Jewish Bible the Tanakh where in the rest of the Tanakh the rest of the Jewish Bible can you find the holiday of hanuka and the answer is nowhere the holiday of hanuka is not included anywhere in the Jewish Bible rather the holiday is mentioned in another set of books called the Apocrypha the Apocrypha and here is a copy of the Apocrypha and the Apocrypha is really derived from the Greek word for hidden or secret and it suggests that the authorship of these books in the Apocrypha is in dispute and that the facts are sometimes in dispute and the Apocrypha includes books which were not included in the Canon of the Jewish Bible which Scholars tend to believe was concluded in the 2 Century CE in the 2 Century CE the books of the Bible the Jewish Bible were put together and some of the books of the Apocrypha include the wisdom of Solomon or the book of Judith and the two most important books in terms of the Jewish tradition found in the Apocrypha are the first and second books of macbes which tell the story of kanuka and so to the extent that kanuka is not a major Festival in the Torah it is a minor Jewish holiday just as for example porm is a minor Jewish holiday porm tells the story of Queen Esther and Mori saving the Jews of Persia from Evil hamon hmon the Milla Esther The Scroll of Esther is also not in the Torah not in the five books of Moses though it is in the third section of the Jewish Bible you will find in Kim the writings the Milla The Scroll of Esther but puram and khaka are both minor Jewish holidays why because they're not found in the Torah the five books of Moses and therefore one is is permitted to work on both kanuka and puram though women are exempt from all work while the candles of kanuka are burning in one's home a little wrinkle most people don't know women are exempt from working while the hanuka candles burn in the home and the reason being one is not to use the candles of kanuka for any utilitarian purpose such as giving light for someone to do work by so as long as the kanuka candles burn no one is permitted to work especially Mommy and grandmas but if hanuka is a minor Jewish holiday because it's not in the Torah it's not an unimportant Jewish holiday nor is hanuka's importance related in any way to its proximity on the calendar to the holiday of Christmas for the truth is that the values and ideals of hanuka are some of the most important ideals the Jewish tradition has given to the world and the American constitutional principle of religious freedom is a direct descendant of the principles and values that are at the heart of the holiday of kanuka so let's do this let's take a look at the history of kanuka then we'll look at the story of kanuka which is what most of us know from our childhood and then we'll take a look at the basic ways in which kanuka is celebrated in Jewish homes first the history of kanuka which can be said to begin in the 4th Century BCE when a young king from Macedonia was said to have conquered the then Known World Alexander the Great was only 20 years old after the death of his father Philip and he began his conquest of the Persian Empire in Syria Judea and Egypt and as far east as India when Alexander conquered Judea in 333 BCE he had a very benevolent policy towards the Jews while he did tax Judea he permitted the Jews to practice their Jewish tradition as they wished and there's even evidence that for a period of an entire year every Jewish Family named any Boy Child Alexander unfortunately Alexander was not to live long and he died 10 years later at the age of 33 upon his death his generals divided his kingdom among themselves the tommies took Egypt to the South there was the Macedon Onan Kingdom to the north and west which was Greece and would eventually become the Roman Empire and then there was the Middle East ruled by the cusd family also known as the syrians they were all Greek helist at the time but the saluan family was also known as the [Music] syrians now the Syrian Kings often went by the name of Antiochus or some of you may pronounce it Antiochus most of the time the kingdoms that were divided out of Alexander's Kingdom wared with each other each trying to extend their respective control and Judea was often caught in the middle and was ruled alternately by the salusins of Syria or the tmes of Egypt but then in the second century BCE Antiochus ivth who is also known as an Antiochus epiphanies and epiphanies means God incarnate Antiochus ivth Antiochus epies determined that the most effective means of strengthening his entire Empire would be to impose one cultural system on all the different groups all the groups under his control would be one culture and so he decided to henize the Syrian Empire to make all the different little cultural and ethnic groups under his Control Act and think the same way like Greeks helist and this homogeneization of his realm he believed would strengthen his kingdom give it a solidarity a unity and give him an advantage in his battles with the tommies of Egypt and the Greek macedonians and so in Judea in the the year 175 BCE a horrible year in Jewish history 175 BCE Antiochus proclaimed that the practice of Judaism Torah would no longer be acceptable and an a Shabbat Antiochus entered Jerusalem butchered Jews everywhere took Jewish women and children to be sold the slaves plundered Jerusalem raised the city's walls took control of the temple in Jerusalem which he dedicated to the god Jupiter turned it into a Greek style gimnasia even erected a statue of himself inside the temple he outlawed circumcision established cult prostitution in the temple and specifically sacrificed unclean animals there such as pigs in the temple and he forced Jews to worship him as their God upon pain of death and by the way Antiochus was merciless against anyone in his entire realm not just Jews who refused to henize and to worship Him and after the initial horror and assault how do you think the Jews of Judea reacted to those changes made by Antiochus how did the Jews of Judea react in the main for the most part a large portion of the Jewish population of Judea was just as happy to wear Greek garments to wrestle naked inside the temple and to embrace helenistic culture just as many modern Jews embrace the Western culture of today to the extent that they virtually abandon the Jewish tradition and Jewish styles of life so too did this happen in the 2 Century bcee under Antiochus IV as it happened to the Jewish Exiles in Babylonia in the 6th Century BCE it's a constant theme of Jewish life that when Jews are free to assimilate many do just that and I'm not equating what American Jury is today to what the Jews of the second century in Judea were doing when they embraced of modin and modin is about 19 miles west of Jerusalem a city which by the way still exists and is a flourishing Israeli Community today but there was a Jewish leader in modin the priest of modin named maias or mahu and matathias had five Sons Simon or Simeon elezar there was John known as yanan there was Jonathan yhonatan and there was Judah Yehuda and in the year 167 BCE in the town of modin Syrian soldiers gathered at the Town Altar and they tried to force a Jew to sacrifice a pig on the Altar and when the je when the Jew did so Medias took a sword out of a Syrian Scabbard slew the soldier and the Jew who had sacrificed the pig and he turned to the crowd and proclaimed every one of you who is zealous for the law and wishes to maintain the Covenant of Adonai follow me and matathias and his five Sons rushed into the hills and a few Jews followed it's always a few Jews who follow and from then on under the leadership of Judah who turned turned out to be a genius of a general and a warrior and was given the name makabe which is normally translated as the hammer for his fighting Power Judah the hammer Yehuda makabe though there's also a tradition that the word makabe is an acronym for the phrase from the Torah M by Adonai a phrase which is translated to be who is like unto thee among the mighty oh Lord or Adonai but whatever under Judas leadership a small band of Jews began a quick soic journey to defeat what was then the mightiest military Empire of its time the cusd Syrian Empire and Judah and his army known as the macbes fought what we would call a Guerilla War they knew the land like the back of their hand they hid in caves during the day they struck Syrian military outposts at night drove the syrians crazy and then over time antiochus's generals sent their tanks into Judea what were the tanks of the day elephants carrying soldiers who were archers bows and arrows to fight against the Jews they the syrians would sit on top of the the um elephants and would fire arrows down at the m mccabes and there were heroic stories of mccabes who would risk their lives or even sacrifice their lives by running under the elephants and pushing a sword into the elephant's soft underbelly the only vulnerable spot on an elephant to bring the elephant crashing to Earth sometimes falling on the makabe himself and tradition has that judah's brother elezar died in such a fashion and as the macbes continue to fight a group of more observant Jews called at the time theim the pious ones theim they gave the mccabes their seal of approval and when that happened the macbes began to have greater and greater popular support more and more Jews joined the macbes and in the endend the truth is Antiochus epiphanies Antiochus the forth had bigger fish to fry bigger problems on his plate and he finally said to his generals we're wasting time and effort and soldiers in the fight against the macbes it's time to redeploy and the mccabes a small band of courageous committed Jews who believed they had the right to their own self identity their own ethnic identity and a Jewish way of life actually defeated the mighty Syrian Army around the Temple mount in Jerusalem the mccabes won back the Temple Mount by the way for many Jews that's where the story ends with the mccabes reclaiming the temple in actuality the mccabes still had to fight throughout the rest of Judea and the war continued for many years and wherever Judah was Victorious especially at the beginning he would bring Jews back to the safety of Jerusalem and after 7 years of fighting Judah was actually killed in battle Judah died in battle and he was succeeded by his brother yanan who was then captured by the syrians and executed yanan was succeeded by his brother yhonatan who ultimately made peace peace with Syria in 157 BCE but yhonatan is still killed 12 Years Later by a Syrian King who fears another Jewish revolt and it's not until the year 141 BCE 26 years after matathias and Judah began the Jewish revolt against Syria that Syria finally made a formal peace with judah's last brother Simeon and the mbes establish a monarchy of their own called the hasmonean dynasty which is granted full independence by Rome in 139 BCE and this marks the only time in Jewish history that the Jews had sovereignty over the land of erit Israel from the time of the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE until Rome takes into dependence away from the hasmonean Dynasty in the year 40 CE and then 30 years later it will sack the city of Jerusalem and Rome will destroy the second temple in the year 70 but it's important to understand that the mccabes establish a monarchy known as the hasmonean Dynasty and incidentally one of the explanations for why the book of macbes is not included in the Bible in the kitu the writings is that when the Jewish people went to put together when the rabbis put together canonized the books of the Bible it was under Roman control the Jews were under Roman control and the Jews felt it was not politic to put into their Bible a story of the defeat of the group that would one day ultimately become the Roman Empire and the other reason why people and historians believe hanuka is not in the Bible is the hmon haonan dynasty the Bible itself the Jewish Bible is all about the monarchy of King David who according to the Jewish tradition will ultimately the Messiah will ultimately come from King David so the Bible is all about the monarchy and the kingship of King David and then Solomon Etc and that the rabbis did not want to confuse the issue by putting another monarchy the hasm monian monarchy into the Jewish Bible but that's the history of the macbes and their fight against the Syrian Empire a fight in which the real Miracle of the events is that a small group of committed Jews believed so passionately and deeply in their right to live as free Jews that they were able to defeat the great Syrian Army and ultimately gain total Independence for the Jewish people and as I said the story of Hanukah is one of the great heroic human stories of all time a story that establishes the right of minority cultures to retain their own identities and traditions and ways of life when the majority culture may be of some other tradition and when the United States of America established the Bill of Rights and one of which is freedom of religion and the principle that the majority has no right to establish a state religion don't miss the significance of this amazing liberating principle namely the majority does not have the right to impose its own ethnicity or culture or religious Traditions beliefs and practices upon any minority group within this great country of ours there's no greater reason why Jews have been so welcomed in America have thrived in America than this reason that the majority which has obviously been Christian the majority understands that even though it is in the majority minorities such as Jews have the right the constitutional right the inalienable right to their own ethnicity and traditions this was the lesson which the macbes fought for and died for and taught the world and by the way and I want to talk to you for a moment about the sociology of American Jewish life it's ironic that at this season of hanuka which celebrates the principles of ethnic and religious independence of not succumbing to the majority in terms of the way one lives life not to their religious Traditions or their beliefs it's ironic that this is the season many American Jews find it most difficult to refrain from Christian expressions of the holiday season this this is the season when many Jews wish they were able to participate in the American Christian holiday of Christmas and you'll often hear the argument Christmas isn't a religious holiday anymore it's it's been secularized it's been commercialized it's an American holiday a holiday of good cheer of presents colored lights decorated trees stockings full of presents wonderful wonderful music and songs and did that Jew Irving Berlin know how to write a song I mean I'm in Hallmark buying birthday cards and hanuka cards and throughout the store I hear Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole singing I'm dreaming of a white Christmas or I'll Be Home for Christmas and the tears are just streaming down my face I mean Dr Dr Dr is cute cute but can you top chestnuts roasting by an open fire and it's no wonder that many Jews wish they could really be part of a Christmas celebration and for a while there was a the hanuka bush as a Christmas tree alternative though everyone understood it was a Christmas Bush and when Jews tell me they simply think a decorated tree is pretty my response is you're right have one in your home in March no no no no no not March December we all understand why Christmas is beautiful and no Jew should be afraid of acknowledging Christmas is beautiful but it's not Jewish it's beautiful but it's not ours other people are entitled to their beautiful things their beautiful holidays their beautiful music and we as Jews can appreciate all of it so long as we know it isn't ours and am I critical of a Jew who visits Christian friends at Christmas time who may help decorate a neighbor's tree might be invited to be there when the presents are opened may even receive a Christmas present I am not in the least critical so long as the Jew gives in return a hanuka present even under the tree a hanuka present for Christmas is a Christian holiday celebrating from a Christian's perspective the birth of their Messiah who was actually sent by God to save all humanity and to say that Christmas is an American holiday that it's now so commercialized its void of religious significance is to insult Christians everywhere and to trivialize all those Christians who attend midnight mass on Christmas Eve to welcome the birth to celebrate the birth of their savior Christmas Is Beautiful the Christmas spirit is wonderful it should last all year long Rockefeller Center is Magic at Christmas time Barbara stri singing Silent Night is a real religious experience except that when Barbara strian sang silent night in Central Park it was on a warm Summer's night any Jew may say Christmas is beautiful it's just not mine and in any Jewish Home where parents are striving to create a holistic sense of Jewish identity for themselves and their children parents have to understand that Christmas does not belong in a Jewish home and I know there are many who watch Jewish 101 you may be watching right now who who are in mixed marriages where one spouse may be Jewish and the other spouse may be Christian and I'm not here to tell you how to live your life every family has to determine the styles that work best for them but I am saying that if there are parents who are striving to create a sense of Jewish identity for their homes and for their children and for themselves then in such a family it's better not to bring Christmas into the home and if need be one needs to find ways of participating in the holiday to the homes of others for whom Christmas is an authentic expression of their own identities and I say all this in the context of the meaning of the maab struggle and what they truly fought for and the real Miracle of hanuka which we celebrate we celebrate at this season how strong The Surge within the human heart and mind is to retain one's own sense of particularism particular identity especially when one is in the minority and so finally we get back to Judah and theim who found they had reconquered the Temple Mount from Antiochus and the syrians and they cleansed the Temple of all idolatry and we established it as adonai's home on earth that is what hanuka is about Jewish strength reclaiming Jewish self identity now the Hebrew word for dedication is kanuka that's how the holiday gets its name from the rededication of the temple by the mccabes in the year 164 BCE and in that year the mccabes had been unable earlier to celebrate the eight day holiday of suot they were forbidden from celebrating suot which happened to be the very holiday upon which King Solomon had dedicated the first temple in Jerusalem when he dedicated the Temple and so the mccabes decided to call Hanukah their second suot and just as Solomon had done the makabe celebrated for eight nights and eight days Allah suot that's the history of hanuka and why we celebrate the holiday for eight nights and 8 days but there's also the beautiful story Legend of hanuka told to Delight both child and adult alike how when it came time to rekindle the seven branched manur in the temple a manora which is never to stop burning a symbol of God's Eternal presence The Story Goes that the macbes could only find enough pure olive oil to light the manura for one day while it would take 8 days for new olive oil to be brought to Jerusalem from the north but the mccabes decided it was important to light the manur even for one night and so they did and then lo and behold the one night's worth of oil burn burned not for one night but miraculously for all eight nights until the new oil could arrive and whether one understands this story to be a beautiful legend or whether One Believes the story recounts a miracle the truth of Hanukah remains Eternal the truth of Triumph of human will of human conviction of human understanding and commitment that testifies to the sanctity and dignity of every human being and of the Jewish commitment to a tradition that has transcended every possible brutality to shine as brightly today as it did for the mccabes nearly 2200 years ago at this season so how do Jews celebrate celebrate hanuka and the answer is with a manora a calabra called aukia and here you can see on this table a number of Manas uh this here is a very traditional looking manur but it's actually a kukia a Manor tends to have seven branches celebrating Shabbat and the kanuka manur has nine places for candles and that's why it's called the and it's hard to see this at the moment but I'm going to show you we're going to take this and move it a little bit this way so you give a little bit of depth this right here is the shamash the shamash is used to light the other candles and in every man the shamash is removable so if we pull back and see the entire hanuk man you can see here that I have a shamash in my hand and one lights the shamash first and then uses the light from the shamash the flame from the shamash to light the candles on the kanuk and what I've done here is I've put all eight candles into the kukia and I want you to imagine you are facing the manur the hanuka and I'm standing behind it and I'm going to now turn a little bit this way hopefully the candles will not fall out so now pretend you are facing the manora of the kukia and interestingly enough and I'll show you this here if I were in front of the the manura we would put the candles in and we'd start one night two nights three nights four nights so the candles are placed in the kukia from right to left and the one on the left always represents the candle for the night we are celebrating so if we were celebrating for example two nights of Hanukah only the first two candles would be in the manura on the third night we had third candle fourth night the fourth candle until the eighth night would have all eight candles and one always Begins by lighting the candle that represents the night we are celebrating and then we move backwards from left to right so the candles are placed in the kanuk from right to left but they're lit from left to right and on the one hand there is no manura police that will come to your house and say wait a minute you put the candles in the wrong or you you lit them in the wrong order but for those of you who care that's the way the tradition suggests we always build up toward the night we're celebrating and we always begin by lighting the candle which represents the night we're celebrating in honor of that night and then work backwards and then there's one other thing that you should just know this is personal for me it somehow it drives me crazy sometimes so I'm going to tell you about it but you can decide whether it's important to you or not the Jewish tradition says that every candle of the kanuk the manur is to be lit by the shamash shamash means caretaker there's a sh Marsh in a synagogue sometimes and very often you put the candles in the manura inevitably some candle goes out some C candle Falls and there's a tendency to take the candle that has fallen and to pick it up and to light it from an adjacent candle not from the shamash now I say again there's no Han police No One's Gonna Come screaming to your home how dare you light a kanuka candle from another kanuka candle but there is something beautiful about the Integrity of the kanuka candles and the tradition says they're only to be lit by the shamash a candle Falls a candle goes out you put the candle back you take the shamash again and you relight it you never light another kanuka candle with another kanuka candle only the shamash I offer it to you if it makes sense to you you'll do it um and again whenever I see somebody I just like stop use the shamash that's what it's there for so the kukia and uh let's go back to the table the kukia has eight candles for all the eight nights we light them in this direction and there's always a shamash which is used to light the other candles and when I was growing up basically this was the style of minora or kukia that I always saw but the reality is that there can be many forms of kukia in fact if you go to the diaspora Museum in Jerusalem you will see over the course of history the Jewish people built their manur in every conceivable shape now here's one that is so interesting because it represents this was given to me as a gift by a very special man I love who works here at Shalom TV Serge Goldberg knows that I am a baseball fanatic and so Serge Goldberg I'm gonna try to pick this up Serge Goldberg bought me for this Hanukah a baseball theme and there goes the C candle a baseball themed minur and so there's always the shamash which tends to be higher than the other cam candles can you come in on this we'll pick it up in a minute but there's this baseball that has the shamash in it and the shamash is used to light the other candles and in this bat that you see there are holes and I'm sorry not in the bat in The Baseballs in front of the bat there is holes and you just put the candles in and this would be for the second night of kanuka as you face the kukia the manura and we would take the shamash from the big baseball we would light the shamash with a flame and then we would come and light the second candle then the first candle and we put the shamash back for the second night and here's another kukia another manur and again they can be any shape at all and this one represents people singing and rejoicing in my mind at the Western Wall on the holiday of kanuka and here I've set it up for one night the first night of kanuka here is the shaman thank you Igor the shamash and on the first night we would simply take the candle and light the first candle of kanuka and then put the shamash back and then on all succeeding nights we would simply add a candle whoops h a candle from uh right to left and light them from left to right by the way in many homes there are many kukas many different Manas and each person liks his own manur or the family gets together and different members of the family light different candles in the same kukia the same manur there are all kinds of individual family traditions and on every night of kanuka there are two blessings that we recite as we light the kanuka candles two blessings the first blessing bless is the holiday of kanuka and the Second Blessing is thankful for the Miracles that were made for our ancestors at this season many years ago and the two blessings go as follows blessed are thou Adonai our god king of the universe who has made us holy with his Commandments and has commanded us to kle the lights of kanuka and the Second Blessing goeson elu blessed art thou Adon our god king of the universe who made miracles for our ancestors in those days at this season and the melody is one you may have heard very [Music] often [Music] El [Music] sh the Second [Music] Blessing [Music] El [Music] and on the first night of kanuka as is often true on the first night of holidays there is one more additional blessing said only on the first night and that blessing is called theanu and the shanu is recited on all happy joyous occasions and it goes elu [Music] manuu blessed art thou god king of the universe who has kept us in life sustained us and enabled us to reach this joyous season and the sheu goes like this [Music] [Music] elu Lo man h [Music] and different families had different Melodies there's no Melody given at Mount Si any Melody that you've grown up with is the right Melody for any of these blessings or songs but the idea is that a family sings Them Together recites blessings to remember the specialness of the holiday the specialness of the meaning of hanuka and after the candles are lit whether it's the first night or the eighth night songs are sung normally translated Rock of Ages [Music] or who can we call who can we tell the things that befell us who can tell us or I had a little drel I made it out of clay and when it's dry and ready oh Dr I shall play Dr now Dr and by the way let say eag girl let me you can see the letters on the four corners of the drel each letter represents another word beginning with the letter nun which stands for NES Miracle the gimel is for Gad great or big the third letter is the he which represents the word h was although very often you'll hear it translated as happened and the fourth letter is the Hebrew letter Shin which stands for the word sham which means there as in the word over there so it's n Gad Haya sham A great miracle miracle great hayya happened there where in Judea where Judah the mabes and and all those who followed them were able to defeat the mighty Syrian Empire and again the legend of the kanuka light the manura burning for eight nights on one night's worth of oil and uh we spin the the Dr by the way we have other drel here this is a blue drle and the letters are still there in fact on this Dr they actually put the words nce G ha and the Sham there we go let's spin the red one stay with me eager here we go and there you see the drle spinning and it will fall on one of its [Music] letters and many families play that however the drel falls and whatever letter is facing up tells you what you've won some people use candy coins some people use pennies I don't know maybe in your house you use you know $50 bills whatever it is but there's a pot peanuts toothpicks and if you get a nun you get nothing if you get a gimmel you get everything if you get a hay you get half the pot and if you get a shin depending on how serious Dr players you are in your home you either match the pot or you at least put one of whatever you're playing with into the pot and the next person spins and we also developed a drele game many of you may play it's a a drele relay race and let's say there are four people on each side the first person spins the drele and the second person has his own drel ready to spin and when the first drle drops the second person on the team spins and the team with the drle spinning the long after for example four people on each te spin whichever team still is spinning the Dr when the other teams fourth Dr drops they win that's the drele relay game a great way of getting many people involved in a drle game all together and that was created by a friend of mine named Bob Erikson who basically isn't involved in Jewish observant but when it came to drel he came up with the D drel relay game a very Jewish type of thing to have happened anyway that's the drel and the drel is also played on the night of kanuka but then again there's one more very important custom for the holiday of kanuka presence kanuka is about giving young people especially children presents and if there any of you who say well isn't that sort of you know a Christmas type of thing done on kanuka the answer is no in Eastern Europe every night of kanuka they would give their children something called kanuka gelt guilt is a Yiddish word for money and kanuka Gilt was given every night of kanuka all eight nights you gave your children a present now in America Jews tend to do everything bigger maybe better and so we give our children all kinds of presents but I am of the conviction that a child should get at least something even if it's just some guilt a quarter a dollar5 doar whatever depending on the age of the child a child should get something all eight nights of kanuka and you know families again do it their way some give a nice present each of the eight nights some families reserve the first and eighth night for the big presents and during the intermediate six nights they give a small present or again a cash gift of gelt but kanuka is to the Delight of children a time to receive presents even if there were no Christmas so here are just some hanuka presents that we have to give out to our staff later this month and if you've C celebrated kanuka you also know that there is something called kanuka gelt which is chocolate coins that are given to young people to celebrate the holiday of hanuka and you know you can go to a store and buy bags of coins individually or you can get actually boxes of coins depending on how many people are going to be celebrating kanuka with you and at your house and there's always food Jews always eat the first thing we did before we left Egypt is to eat the night we became Jews before we left Egypt we were told to eat nothing happens in Jewish life without eating in America Eastern European tradition tells us we should eat potato pancakes called Lotus lus potato pancakes some eat it with applesauce some eat it with sour cream in America Jews have found even more exotic ways to spice up their lus by the way in Israel they eat something called sufganiot jelly donuts delicious so many Jews in America now eat Lotus and jelly donuts on kanuka and according to the Jewish tradition the man or kanuk is placed in the home in the window so all passers by can see this is a Jewish tradition that precedes Jews Coming to America you put the manur in the window to show that there's a Jewish Family in the home who understands the Miracles of hanuka legendary and historical and the Jewish people's communal commit commitment to a world in which no Antiochus anywhere on Earth will ever extinguish the Divine Light that burns within the soul of every child woman and man who walks this beautiful Divine Earth finally for me and I believe for many others there's one more element to kanuka in my K my congre ation we celebrate kanuka with every family bringing auk their manora to a congregational manura lighting and when every manura has been lit on this long table covered with tin foil we shouldn't create a fire and all the lights of the room are out all the children come to stand by age in back of the table their beautiful faces a glow as they behold hold all the candles burning before them and for all the parents and adults present grandparents what we're looking at is our Jewish future our children standing together in the light of hanuka and then at this moment as we Behold our Jewish future we also pause to recall all those macbes throughout Jewish history especially the modern mccabes the men and women who have defended both the state of Israel and indeed as in tbbi showed us all the entire Jewish people all over the world the people of the state of Israel and at that moment together we recite the MERS KES in honor and memory of all whove died Al kidush Hashem sanctifying the name of God throughout Jewish history the macbes of your the macbes of today and all those who died Al Kush Hashem in the flame of the Shah and then we [Music] singk the national anthem of not only the state of Israel but the Jewish people understanding that we are today free proud Jews in large measure because of those who have come before us who gave everything they had and believed in so that we can now stand at the manur this year to celebrate Jewish freedom and Jewish life and the reality of a Jewish state of Israel for any of you who have family members who've made Supreme sacrifices especially the sacrifice of life for our sake for the sake of the Jewish people indeed for the sake of humanity this is a day when you and your loved ones are remembered for Good by all of us and this too is the message of khoka I'm Mark goab be well my friends and have a wonderful khoka [Music] holiday

Channel: JBS

Views: 22,710

Keywords: hanukkah, chanukah, holiday, jewish101, jew101, 101, judaism, rabbi mark s. golub, rabbi golub, shalomtv, shalom, tv, jewish

Id: 0kc1Ybp4f3I

Length: 57min 56sec (3476 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2011