The eight days of Hanukkah

Lindis · Nov 28, 2021

Does anybody celebrate Hanukkah here?

Pisa · Nov 28, 2021

Lindis said: ↑

Does anybody celebrate Hanukkah here?
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I used to celebrate Hanukkah, for a while. I don't light candles anymore, but if I'm somewhere where people do light candles, I enjoy the ceremony.

modernpaladin · Nov 28, 2021

Structured ceremonial observance of anything kinda ruins a holiday for me. I mostly just celebrate not having to work by not working.

Lindis · Nov 28, 2021

Do you enjoy eating latkes?

Pisa · Nov 28, 2021

modernpaladin said: ↑

Structured ceremonial observance of anything kinda ruins a holiday for me. I mostly just celebrate not having to work by not working.
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Hanukkah is not about strict ceremonial observance, like other religious holidays. It's one of the two holidays that require people to share with complete strangers. The other is Sukkot.

Imagine bankers at a small local branch of a bank stop working half an hour before closure and mingle with their customers, singing together as a candle is lit in a big hanukkiah in the lobby. Then we all ate jam-filled doughnuts. It was incredibly nice, even though I, and everybody else, knew that business will resume shortly as usual.

I love Hanukkah.

Pisa · Nov 28, 2021

Lindis said: ↑

Do you enjoy eating latkes?
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No. I like the jam-filled doughnuts (sufganiyah).

Zorro · Nov 29, 2021

HANUKKAH: Armed Jews Week.

Tonight is the fourth night of Armed Jews Week, or as it is more popularly known, Hanukkah. Hanukkah is an eight-day celebration of the Jewish revolution against Syria in the second century B.C. The Syrian government (a remnant of Alexander the Great's empire) attempted to wipe out the Jewish religion by forcing the Jews to conform to Greek culture. Some of them refused, and a tiny militia, led by Judah the Maccabee ("the hammer") began a guerilla war.

The Jewish militia grew in force, and repeatedly destroyed much larger Syrian armies which were sent to smash the revolution. Syria's King Antiochus decided that the Jewish people were so much trouble that he would just get rid of them entirely--slaughtering as many as necessary, and selling all the rest into slavery. But his wicked plans failed, and after years of war, the Jews won their independence.

During the years of Syrian tyranny, Syrian officers enjoyed the droit du seigneur--the authority to deflower virgin Jewish brides on their wedding nights, before they could join their husbands. So some stories which Jewish families retell at Hanukkah, such as the Book of Judith, extol brave Jewish women who went to the tent of enemy officers who were expecting sex--but who instead met their deaths as the hands of lone Jewish women.
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A powerful heritage.

During centuries of oppression in Christian and Moslem lands, many Jews adopted attitudes of passivity and helplessness. Those attitudes began to change in the late nineteenth century, with the growth of the Zionist movement.

Zionists believed that Jews had become disconnected from the physical world. That the Jews had no homeland was the most extreme manifestation of the disconnection, but the disconnect could be seen on many levels. Often pale and weak, Jewish boys were easy targets for bullies. Usually passive and timid, Jewish communities were easy targets for mobs. The root cause of Jewish physical weakness and of disrespect by gentiles was the Jewish lack of self-respect.

The Zionists set out to restore a Jewish homeland, and they recognized that such a project would require a widespread change in Jewish consciousness.

So in counties such as Russia and Israel (which was ruled as colony by the Ottoman Empire and then by the British), Zionists organized Jewish self-defense groups. Many of the young Jewish men and women who would lead the resistance to Hitler were members of these Zionist self-defense youth groups in the 1930s in Eastern Europe.

Although there is a widespread myth that Jews in the Holocaust were passive, they were actually more active than any other conquered people. In 1942-43, Jews constituted half of all the partisans in Poland. Overall, about thirty thousand Jewish partisans fought in Eastern Europe. There were armed revolts in over forty different ghettos, mostly in Eastern Poland.

In other parts of Europe, Jews likewise joined the resistance at much higher rates than the rest of the population. Unlike in Eastern Europe, though, Jews were generally able to participate as individuals in the national resistance, rather than having to fight in separate units.

For example, in France, Jews amounted to than one percent of French population, but comprised about 15-20 percent of the French Resistance.
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A Time To Fight.

In Greece too, Jews were disproportionately involved in the resistance. In Thessaly, a Jewish partisan unit in the mountains was led by the septuagenarian Rabbi Moshe Pesah, who carried his own rifle. The Athenian Jew Jacques Costis led the team which demolished the Gorgopotamos Bridge, thereby breaking the link between the mainland and Peloponnesian Peninsula, and interfering with the delivery of supplies to Rommel's Afrika Korps.

One of the great centers of resistance was Vilna, Lithuania, which before the Nazi conquest had been an outstanding center of Jewish learning, compared by some to Jerusalem.

Plans for resistance began in January 1942. The Jews' only weapons were smuggled in from nearby German arms factories where the Jews performed slave labor. Hopeful of liberation by the Russian army, many of the Vilna Jews did not support the partisans. Partisan resistance postponed by three weeks the German plans to transport all the inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto to death camps, but the deportation of 40,000 Jews was accomplished by the end of September 1943.

A young poet named Abba Kovner led the resistance movement known as the Avengers in the woods around Vilna. His lieutenants, and bedmates, were teenage girls, Vitka Kempner and Ruzka Korczak.

The Avengers were the first partisans in Nazi Europe to blow up a German train.

Towards the end of the war, the Avengers shepherded huge numbers of Jews to Palestine, in violation of the British blockade.

Before the war, Ruzka had belonged to left-wing Zionist youth group called "The Young Guard" (HaShomer HaTza'ir) which trained Jews in self-defense, and taught the older boys how to shoot. Abba was not religious, but he was a fervent Zionist, loving to read the Bible stories of Jewish warriors, and aiming to emulate the Jewish Bible heroes.
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Zorro · Nov 29, 2021

Krav Maga

In the Vilna Ghetto, it was Abba Kovner who first saw that the tightening of the Nazi oppression was not just a temporary imposition by a local German official; it was a step towards the total destruction of the Jews. The only way out, he argued, was "Revolt and armed defense. This is the only way which promises any dignity for our people."

Other Jews countered that revolt was hopeless because the Germans were so strong, and that collective reprisals by the Germans would just lead to more Jewish deaths. Ruzka Korczak retorted that the stories of Jewish heroism could not remain only "a part of our ancient history. They must be part of our real life as well." The next generation of Jews must have something to admire. "How good will they be if their entire history is one of slaughter and extermination? We cannot allow that. It must also have heroic struggles, self-defense, war, even death with honor."

Vilna was typical, in that the young people were usually the ones who wanted to fight, and the elders usually counseled against causing trouble. Most of the partisan leaders and fighters were young.
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Youth counsel action, Age counsels caution. In this case the youth were right.

Niuta Teitelbaum was a beautiful 24-year-old Jewish Polish woman who looked like she was sixteen. Known as "Little Wanda with the Braids," she was an expert smuggler of people and weapons, and instructed women's partisan cells. Her units blew up trains, artillery emplacements, and other German targets.

Once, wearing traditional Polish clothing and a kerchief on her hair, she talked her way past a series of Gestapo guards, whispering that she was going to see the SS commander on "private business." Alone with the commander in his office, she drew a revolver, shot him dead, and calmly left the building.
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Resolute courage.

Because generation after generation after generation of Jewish families told their children the heroic Hanukkah stories of Judah the Maccabee and Judith, the spirit of freedom and resistance lived in modern heroes such as Abba Kovner and Niuta Teitelbaum.

At the annual Passover Seder, Jewish families say:

In every generation, each person must look upon himself or herself as if he or she personally had come out of Egypt. As the Book of Exodus says, "You shall tell your children on that day: it is because of what the Eternal One did for me when I went forth from Egypt." For it was not our fathers and mothers alone whom the Holy One redeemed. We too were redeemed along with them.

The point has a broader application than just for Jews at Passover. Hanukkah teaches that God's redemption of the Jewish people is a continuing act of history--and so does Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust. The resistance proved to the world that Jews were active fighters, and not mere passive victims. That resistance (most famously, in the Warsaw Ghetto) was an indispensable step towards the rebirth of the modern state of Israel.

The Books of Maccabees and the Book of Judith are part of the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Orthodox Bibles; the stories of resistance to the Nazis are part of the heritage of freedom-loving people everywhere. So as Jewish families light Menorah candles during the eight days of Hanukkah, may people of good will, of all faiths, use the time as an occasion to teach their children about the inspiring Jewish and Gentile men and women who, even in the darkest times, have kept alive the sacred light of freedom.
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Amen

Jolly Penguin · Nov 29, 2021

Pisa said: ↑

No. I like the jam-filled doughnuts (sufganiyah).
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I used to be addicted to jelly donuts (at Tim Hortons). I never imagined them to be Jewish

Lindis · Dec 1, 2021

We are well into Hanukkah now.
Or Chanukka, as we write it in Germany.

DennisTate · Dec 2, 2021

Lindis said: ↑

Does anybody celebrate Hanukkah here?
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Good question.....
I think about Hanukkah a lot and have read quite a bit about it but
until I am living closer to a synagogue it would be challenging to get more so into the celebration.

A buddy of mine just sent me an interesting article on Hanukkah....

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/20...-they-didnt-teach-you-hebrew-frontpagemagcom/

The History of Hanukkah They Didn't Teach You in Hebrew School
Delving into the history of Hanukkah to understand the deeper meaning of the holiday.

Lindis · Dec 2, 2021

I have celebrated Hanukkah several times at the synagogue here.

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

Hanukkah is here again!
So: Happy Hanukkah to everybody!

And: Masel tov!

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

Pisa said: ↑

I used to celebrate Hanukkah, for a while. I don't light candles anymore, but if I'm somewhere where people do light candles, I enjoy the ceremony.
Click to expand...

Same with me!

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

Pisa said: ↑

No. I like the jam-filled doughnuts (sufganiyah).
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Both are German, more or less!

jam-filled doughnuts (sufganiyah) = Berliner in German
Latkes = Kartoffelpuffer mit Apfelmus in German

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

@ Advent Crown

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/colours-of-the-candles-of-the-advent-crown.605978/

Lighting the Advent Crown is similar to lighting the Menorah.

Polydectes · Dec 20, 2022

The only thing I know about Hanukkah was when I was in elementary school and there was a Jewish boy and our class actually named Shamas. And I guess he kind of felt like he was being left out right around the holidays cuz the celebration was giving up and she went on to talk to us about Hanukkah and the Jewish meeting and actually what this particular boys name meant. Come to find out the teacher actually had a Jewish sister-in-law or something those she got to learn a lot more about it.

But thanks everyone for sharing I would like to learn more.

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

DennisTate said: ↑

Good question.....
I think about Hanukkah a lot and have read quite a bit about it but
until I am living closer to a synagogue it would be challenging to get more so into the celebration.

A buddy of mine just sent me an interesting article on Hanukkah....

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/20...-they-didnt-teach-you-hebrew-frontpagemagcom/

The History of Hanukkah They Didn't Teach You in Hebrew School
Delving into the history of Hanukkah to understand the deeper meaning of the holiday.
Click to expand...

I will read the article again now.

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

And that is the miracle of Hanukkah:

But they lacked pure oil which would take eight days to produce. They scoured the Temple from top to bottom looking for oil that had not been defiled. They didn’t want to cut corners through the use of impure oil, and they didn’t want to delay the service any longer. Finally, they found one jar that was sealed and pure, but it was only enough for one day (roughly 40 oz). With their goal of continuing to go above and beyond, they used all the oil at the rededication of the temple while continuing to look for more oil and beginning the eight-day process to get more oil. Lo and behold, a great miracle happened there and the one jar of oil lasted the full eight days needed to produce more pure oil. The next year, Hanukkah was established as a holiday by Yochanan the High Priest (one of the Hasmonean brothers), and R’ Yehoshua Ben Perachya and Nitai HaArbeli who together led the Sanhedrin9.
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More about it:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/history-hanukkah-they-didnt-teach-you-hebrew-frontpagemagcom/

Lindis · Dec 20, 2022

How to say Happy Hanukkah in Hebrew

How to say Happy Hanukkah in Hebrew
You can wish someone a happy Hanukkah by saying chag sameach, which is pronounced [ khag sah–meh-ahkh ]. This expression means “happy holiday.” If you want to make it a bit more Hanukkah-specific, you can say chag Hanukkah sameach, pronounced [ khag khah-nuh-kuh sah–meh-ahkh ], instead.
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https://www.thesaurus.com/e/ways-to-say/hanukkah-greetings/

chag sameach, then!

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The eight days of Hanukkah

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