By: Annabelle Honet and Rachel London

Hanukkah honors the struggle of ancient Jews to restore the Temple of Jerusalem. Long ago, Judea was ruled by the Syrian king Antiochus, who said that Jews should give up worshipping Yahweh and worship the Greek gods instead. The Jews not wanting to do this refused to abandon Yahweh. They decided to do something about it. A man named Judah Maccabee got a group of people together to fight back. Those people Judah gathered got more people to join, and soon they had an army. For three years, the Jews battled the Syrians for control of Judea. Finally, the Jews won. They cleaned the Temple of Jerusalem, removing all Greek symbols and putting the Jewish symbols back. The job was finished on the 25th day of the month of Kislev. This is the day Hanukkah is celebrated. To help celebrate, Judah and his followers lit an oil lamp. The amount of oil they had was low and only should have lasted one day, but the lamp stayed lit for eight days. To celebrate this event, Jews today have Eight Days of Hanukkah and call it the "Festival of Lights.“ They light a special eight-candle holder called a Chanukiah. People today give each other gifts and presents, make special foods, and have special dinners. Source:

One of the Jewish traditions is to light eight candles, one for each night. There is an extra candle in the middle called the shammus or the helper candle. Each night you place one candle on the Chanukiah and add one more for each night until the last night. You sing three songs the first night when you light the candles and two every other night. Another tradition of the holiday is playing dreidel. Most people play for pennies, M&Ms or chocolate coins. A dreidel is marked with four Hebrew letters: Nun, Gimel, Hei and Shin. The next slide is marked with instructions on how to play dreidel. It is traditional to eat fried foods on Hanukkah because of the importance of oil to the holiday. Source:

The letters also stand for the Yiddish words nit (nothing), gantz (all), halb (half) and shtell (put), which is also how you play. A person spins the dreidel. If it lands on Nun, nothing happens; on Gimel you get everything in the middle; on Hei, you get half of what is in the middle; and on Shin, you put one in the middle. When the middle is empty, everybody puts one in. Keep playing until one person has everything. Once someone wins you can re-divide the prize. Source: