Its that time of the year again! The holidays are right around the corner, which means their will soon be beautiful lit menorahs on windowsills, the smell of potato pancakes from a mile away, and an uncountable number of happy kids opening their presents with their favorite family and friends around. Their is a good amount of students at WJ who celebrate Hanukkah every year, but each student and their family celebrates it a little bit different.
Hanukkah is a holiday where Jewish families and friends come together to celebrate the festival of lights for eight days and nights. To celebrate the festival of lights, the menorah or “hanukkiyah” is lit every night from left to right, but placed from right to left. Every Jewish family has their own way of celebrating Hanukkah every year. Some families choose to recite the blessings when lighting the Menorah, before eating. Playing with dreidels is a fun activity that some people like to partake in on Hanukkah. Players take turns spinning the dreidel, each side of the dreidel bears a Hebrew letter which tells the players whether to put in or take out candies, gelt, or money. (whatever you’re playing the game with). It’s tradition in some homes that everyone receives a gift on every night of Hanukkah, in other homes that is only true for some of the nights while other families choose not to give gifts. Another Hanukkah tradition that some people choose to participate in is eating foods cooked in oil. Some of the most common Hanukkah foods are latkes dipped in applesauce or sour cream and powdered or jelly donuts.
Every year my family likes to celebrate each night of Hanukkah with different family friends or local extended family members. Every year we will have company for at least three out of the eight nights. The rest of the nights are usually spent going to family friends’ houses and celebrating with them, or just with me, my brother, my mom, my dad and my dog at our house. My brother and I have our own Menorah’s and my parents share one. We always light all three of them and sit them on a nice table in our living room . I don’t think Hanukkah would feel the same if my family used different Menorahs. When I think of Hanukkah the first thing that comes to mind is my Menorah with little boys and girls as the candle holders. It’s special to me because my grandma and grandpa got it for me from Israel and I’ve been using it since I was little.
“ Every year we have the first dinner at our house with most of our family. Then we light the candles and say the prayers. After that we go and get our gifts, depending on how many we got, (which is usually one or two presents to open). Then we eat some yummy food and then get dessert. Then we stay up really late and just chill, and eat potato pancakes!” freshman Ali Becker said.
The yearly traditions that each family makes out of the the given Hanukkah rituals are what makes Hanukkah so fun, something that kids get so excited about and look forward to. No one family’s traditions will be exactly like another family’s traditions, that’s the beauty of them.
“I always have a dreidel contest with my family with m&ms. We sing blessings and my mom makes really good latkes,” sophomore Sarah Epstein said.
Their are some clear similarities and differences between Becker and Epstein’s yearly Hanukkah traditions. Both Epstein and Becker recite the Hanukkah blessings before eating, and they both eat latkes (potato pancakes). Something different between Becker and Epstein is that Epstein plays the dreidel game and uses m&ms as the “ante” (or thing being gambled and traded). It is so interesting that everyone’s traditions can be so similar yet so different from each others at the same time.
“We go to my cousin’s houses with my whole family, and then we eat a big dinner and talk, then we open presents together in the living room. After all that we have a lot of dessert,” sophomore Ella Cohn said.
One thing that all these traditions have in common is that they take Hanukkah as a time to come together with family and loved ones because it’s not every day that we get to be together with our family, eat yummy food, laugh and smile with one another. Also, being Jewish is one thing that those families have in common, so it’s nice coming together and sharing their religious celebrations every night for eight nights.
photo credit: pintrest
caption: One of the many Hanukkah traditions is to light one candle on a menorah every night for eight days.
