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My Hanukkah miracle is that I found my electric menorah. It's now in my window, where it belongs, with one light lit.
Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating!
I saw someone on my friends list mention that they don't know much about Hanukkah. Wikipedia has a solid run down here but, in a nut shell, the holiday celebrates the successful rebellion of the Jews against a violent oppressor from the Hellenistic empire, Antiochus IV.
We light the menorah, and call the holiday the "festival of lights" because, after the rebellion, the Jews were left to cleanse the Temple that was destroyed by the Greeks. Jewish law required olive oil to burn in the menorah all day and all night but there was only enough left for one day. Miraculously, the oil lasted the eight days and eight nights it took to prepare more oil.
One more note - this one about the dreidel. Though I don't believe there's concrete evidence, it's believed the dreidel was originally used to help teach Torah to young Jewish students. Under Greek rule, they were not permitted to study the Torah so, when soldiers came by, they'd quickly hide their study scrolls and start to play with their dreidels which are, in essence, spinning tops. Dreidels, today, have four Hebrew letters on them that stand for the saying, "A Great Miracle Happened There." In Israel, the dreidels have one different letter to stand for, "A Great Miracle Happened Here." There's a fun little gambling game to play with the dreidel though, as a kid, we mostly played with peanuts. :)
I had a nice dinner with a vendor tonight as a precursor to meetings all morning tomorrow. And I got good news! I had a trip to DC planned for Thursday that required me to catch a 6:30am flight there and an 8pm fight home. TRIP CANCELED. Win!
Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating!
I saw someone on my friends list mention that they don't know much about Hanukkah. Wikipedia has a solid run down here but, in a nut shell, the holiday celebrates the successful rebellion of the Jews against a violent oppressor from the Hellenistic empire, Antiochus IV.
We light the menorah, and call the holiday the "festival of lights" because, after the rebellion, the Jews were left to cleanse the Temple that was destroyed by the Greeks. Jewish law required olive oil to burn in the menorah all day and all night but there was only enough left for one day. Miraculously, the oil lasted the eight days and eight nights it took to prepare more oil.
One more note - this one about the dreidel. Though I don't believe there's concrete evidence, it's believed the dreidel was originally used to help teach Torah to young Jewish students. Under Greek rule, they were not permitted to study the Torah so, when soldiers came by, they'd quickly hide their study scrolls and start to play with their dreidels which are, in essence, spinning tops. Dreidels, today, have four Hebrew letters on them that stand for the saying, "A Great Miracle Happened There." In Israel, the dreidels have one different letter to stand for, "A Great Miracle Happened Here." There's a fun little gambling game to play with the dreidel though, as a kid, we mostly played with peanuts. :)
I had a nice dinner with a vendor tonight as a precursor to meetings all morning tomorrow. And I got good news! I had a trip to DC planned for Thursday that required me to catch a 6:30am flight there and an 8pm fight home. TRIP CANCELED. Win!
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