Hanukkah in Tanzania

Hanukkah

By Amisadai

Hanukkah is a Festival of Light. Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah. It is in early December and lasts 8 days.

The Jews are celebrating the miracle of the oil in the temple in 165 BC. After winning the battle against the Syrians and Greeks, the Jews took back the temple and wanted to rededicate it to God. But there was only enough oil to last one day. It was a miracle that God made it last for eight days.  So today, Jews, to remember those 8 days light a Menorah. They light 9 candles.

People today play a game called “Dreidl.” This is a game that is played with a spinning top which has nine sides and four sides have a Hebrew word on. SHIN means “put one in,” HEY means “take half,” GIMEL  means “take everything,” and NUN means “do nothing.”  Each player starts with ten “gelt” (money or sweets) and the winner is the one who wins all the gelt.

At Hanukkah people eat fried food like doughnuts, Hamantashen (which are small biscuits with jam in the middle) and fried potato cakes called latkes. They eat fried foods because they are remembering the miracle of the oil.

 We celebrated Hanukkah this year. It was fun!

Food (L to R) Latkes, jam donuts, hamentashen biscuits.
Louisa made the menorah. We are holding our dreidls.