You tube has several videos of Hanukah songs celebrations of choirs and dance troupes.
My favourites are:
1 The Western Wall in Jerusalem, 2021.
2 Dance troupe in a large empty shopping mall outdoor square. I think it is Chicago.
3 The Maplewood Glee club. It starts slowly. I spun to the end and found the terrific fun dancing up and down the aisles.
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Hanukah for kids. This video explains that Jews were from Judea; the menorah, lit by the servant candle in the middle, which is above or below the others, from right to left, like Hebrew writing.
The first king of united Israel was David. (He killed Goliath. Later he eluded and was reconciled with Saul).
David had many wives and sons. (The Hebrew bible gives the story of Bathsheba who David saw bathing, before he made her pregnant and married her, and says Solomon was one of their younger sons. The Koran does not mention Bathsheba.)
The six point star is called by Jews the Star of David or Shield of David. (One theory is that it is a good luck symbol or amulet and the six points symbolically trap bad luck.)
1 The First Temple - Success
The first temple was built by King Solomon. The six point star is known to Muslims as the Seal of Solomon.
The Greek-Syrian King Antiochus 3 was happy to receive tribute money and let the Jews rule with their laws and keep their religion and temple, and priests.
2 Desecration - Disaster
Greek-Syrian Antiochus 4 of Syria (He reversed the sympathy and freedom of worship shown towards Jews by his father, Antiochus 3)
The second temple was not destroyed but defiled. The second temple was desecrated with a statue of Zeus and sacrifice of a pig.
3 The capture of Jerusalem and the temple - Success
Years of fighting resulted, led by Jewish Judas Maccabeus, one of five sons of the temple's high priest.
Judah means from Judea. (Not to be confused with Judas Iscariot who came along 70 year later with Jesus.)
The story goes that Jewish people who met to plan their campaigns pretended they were playing with four-sided spinning tops called dreidls.
On a Manhattan railway station platform, several santas with red hats and costumes and a blue costume representing the four sides of a dreidl or spinning top.
4 Success -Light - Re-dedication of the second temple
(Hanukah means dedication).
The story goes that
5 Success -
Jesus attended the dedication ceremony as recorded in The New Testament.
6 Disaster
The Romans outnumbered the Jews, killing off fighters and leaders who might be rabble rousers, including Jesus.
7 Romans beseiged the last of the groups whose last stand, and mass-suicide, stories say to avoid torture and slavery, was at hilltop Massada, a popular tourist spot.
8 Josephus, the Jewish leader in Jerusalem, instead of being a slave of the Romans, surrendered, or betrayed his troops to Titus. Josephus promised to be a devoted Roman, and admirer of Titus, and to write the story of Titus's success.
9 The Jews were slaughtered, with non-combatants taken as slaves to Rome with their Temple Hanukiah, which you can see on Titus's Arch. Josephus became VIP of the Romans and wrote the history of how Roman Titus won the war.
10 The video also mentions the destruction of the second temple a few years after Jesus, in AD (meaning year of our lord, ie after the death of Jesus. You may recall that Jesus was crucified as King of the Jews, seen by the Romans as a potential leader of a rebellion against the Roman rule. All that is left of the temple is the foundation stones, called the Wailing wall.
The great wall is the centre for public ceremonies and a place of pilgrimage for private prayers. You can see the Hanukiah projected onto the Wailing wall in videos.
Some say that when the groom stamps on a wineglass to break it during the Jewish wedding ceremony it is a reminder of the destruction of the second temple. Symbolically there will be a life and a married life of ups and down, as the English ceremony says, for better and worse), some say all of these things.)
Despite sad times of the past and probably more to come in the future, at Hanukah we light candles to celebrate the light in the darkness. (The same as in all religions, such as Diwali or Deepavali for the Hindus.
You need 45 candles. You can buy them gold frosted, a mixture of blue and white or many colours.
In public places, to prevent the candles being blown out by gusts of wind, or toppling over, failing to light, starting a fire, we move into electric lights. You can also have an electric light menorah at home.
My Hindu tenants in the UK set off the fire alarm with a fire for their baby ceremony. My grandmother set fire to the curtains with candles on the table and my mother would not allow candles in the house. I think my family once set off alarms in a hotel in the USA by lighting hand held sparklers on New Year's Eve.
If in doubt, about whether you are likely to set off fire alarms, or if you are cautious about not starting a fire, stick to electric menorahs. The advantage is that you won't have to spend on candles next year.
About the author of this blog post
Angela Lansbury
