Chanukah • ×—× ×•×›×”
The Festival of Light
Chanukah 2024 starts at nightfall on December 25, 2024 and ends with nightfall on January 2, 2025
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Multimedia Chanukah Experience
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What are we celebrating?
Chanukah is the Jewish eight-day, wintertime “festival of lights,” celebrated with a nightly menorah lighting, special prayers and fried foods.
In the second century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Syrian-Greeks, who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs instead of mitzvah observance and belief in G‑d.
Against all odds, a small band of faithful but poorly armed Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G‑d.
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When they sought to light the Temple's Menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks. Miraculously, they lit the menorah and the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity.
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To commemorate and publicize these miracles, the sages instituted the festival of Chanukah.
How to Celebrate
You might not be able to light a Menorah with fire this year, (when in a facility where open flames are not allowed) but the world still needs your light.
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A Mitzvah is like a flame: each positive action infuses light and warmth into the world.​
By doing a Mitzvah each day, you are lighting your Chanukah candles.
Click through to view a meditation and mitzvah for each night!
Other Customs
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Since the Chanukah miracle involved oil, it is customary to eat foods fried in oil. The Eastern-European classic is the potato latke (pancake) garnished with applesauce or sour cream, and the reigning Israeli favorite is the jelly-filled sufganya (doughnut).
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It is customary to play with a “dreidel” (a four-sided spinning top bearing the Hebrew letters, nun, gimmel, hei and shin, an acronym for nes gadol hayah sham, “a great miracle happened there”). The game is usually played for a pot of coins, nuts, or other stuff, which is won or lost based on which letter the dreidel lands when it is spun.
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In today’s consumer-driven society, people tend to place great importance on giving Chanukah gifts. However, the tradition is actually to give Chanukah gelt, gifts of money, to children. In addition to rewarding positive behavior and devotion to Torah study, the cash gifts give the children the opportunity to give tzedakah (charity). This has also spawned the phenomenon of foil-covered “chocolate gelt.”
Looking for a Chanukah visit?
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Reach out to your local Chabad, or send us a message and we'll pass it along.
Some people are waiting for a final, apocalyptic war.
But the final war is fought
not on battlefields,
nor at sea,
nor in the skies above.
Neither is it a war between leaders or nations.
The final war is fought in the heart of each human being,
with the armies of his or her deeds in this world.
And with a simple decision:
Am I here to be swallowed alive into the meaningless confusion?
Or am I here to shine light?
The final war is the battle of Chanukah
and the miracle of light.
Wishing you a joyous and bright Chanukah!