We grew up in Taiwan, and we knew that Christmas was coming from an early age,
(how could we miss it?!😆Especially after becoming parents..🤑)
Before, we introduced the original prototype of Santa Claus, which came from “Turkey”,
(Not Scandinavian! Nor America! )
Today, let’s introduce another festival that most Taiwanese are unfamiliar with, J
ewish Hanukkah! (Hanukah / Chanukah) 🕎
Like our Lunar New Year, the Jewish “Hanukkah” or “Hanukkah” will change every year,
and this year (time of writing) 2016 will be celebrated on the evening of 12/24 for eight consecutive days to 1 /1 In the early morning,
as for why it is so long to celebrate eight days?
That’s how it all started…
In the 2nd century BC, the present area of Israel was conquered by the Greek army,
the second ruler was not as enlightened as the first, forced all Jews to convert from monotheism to Greek polytheism,
and destroyed and rebuilt many Temple..
This move aroused the dissatisfaction of the devout Jewish people
(but there is a saying that the Jews were divided into two factions at that time,
the pro-Greek and the conservative, and it was the infighting of the two factions that caused the military suppression incident),
The Jewish peasant soldiers headed by Macabee succeeded in wiping out the large Greek army and restoring order to the temple.
Just when they were rebuilding the most important temple,
they found that they used to light the holy fire
similar to the concept of lighting a lamp,
The fuel used in the temple only needs to be extracted directly from the olive tree
and only after religious ceremonies can be used.
The whole production process takes eight days,
just when everyone is worried about the holy flame When it will go out, a miracle occurs,
the fuel that was originally only one day burned for eight full days!
This is why Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days!
There is an animated version of the introduction here, the style of painting is especially attractive to young boys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-mM_p0SlXE&t=4s
Today’s Jews celebrate Hanukkah, just like when we were children,
they would play the game of dice. The “Dreidel top” is a must-play for Hanukkah!
The four sides of the top are written in Hebrew, נ (nun) / ג (gimel) / ה (hei) / ש (shin),
these four words together mean “a miracle happened here”
So in class, we also made our own Dreidel, using the grains as chips,
and played Dreidel! Maybe next time during the Chinese New Year, everyone can play this way at home!
There are a lot of Dreidel templates and gameplay rules here for reference.
