“HAPPY HANOUKA”. The Hanukkah Festival of Lights has started. Date, wishes, prayer or even the meaning of the “miracle of the flask of oil” … Linternaute.com tells you more about its origin, but also how to wish it!
[Mis à jour le 29 novembre 2021 à 11h16] This year, Hanukkah, aka “Jewish festival of lights” is spreading from Sunday November 28 (evening) to Monday December 6. This celebration lasts eight days. Its date varies every year, because the Jewish calendar is based on the Moon, unlike the Sun of the Latin calendar. On the program of the Jewish liturgy, during this parenthesis, we find songs and blessings, dishes fried in oil, and above all, the traditional Jewish candlestick. Called “menorah”, it has nine branches. Each evening of the week, believers light one (the first ignites more precisely on the eve of the first full day of Hanukkah, the evening of November 28 this year). By illuminating the menorah a little more each day, practitioners of Judaism commemorate what they consider to be “the miracle of lights”.
Story of the miracle of lights, date, prayers, wishes for “Happy Hanukkah” … Linternaute.com tells you more about the subtleties of this major holiday of the Jewish religion. Navigate the page using the summary above.
The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is celebrated over eight days, from the 25th of the month of Kislev to the 2nd of the month of Tebeth in the Hebrew calendar. Generally, this niche of festivities corresponds to a week in the month of December in the Gregorian calendar currently used in our regions, and is located not far from Saint Nicolas of December 6. As Hanukkah takes place in winter shortly before Xmas, it has often been seen as the “Advent of Israel”, contextualizes the French poet of Jewish and Israeli origin Claude Vigée in the book “A basket of hops”. The first candle of the Hanukkah festival is lit on the eve of Kislev 25. A central candlestick then makes it possible to animate, one day after another, the lights of the eight other branches.
In 2021, Hanukkah begins on Sunday, November 28 and runs until Monday, December 6. The celebration therefore takes place several months after Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, considered by believers as the “holiest of Jewish holidays” and celebrated in 2021 on September 15 and 16 (see our special Yom Kippur file). In 2016, the Jewish Festival of Lights began on New Years Eve. Xmas (!), on a Saturday, in the middle of shabbat.
Symbolic, the fact of gradually lighting the traditional candlestick or making dishes in oil (the “latkes”, potato pancakes; and other donuts) for Hanukkah commemorate the “miracle of the flask of oil”. For believers in Judaism, this miracle took place 23 centuries ago, after the re-inauguration of the temple of Israel by the Jews. The latter then just recovered it, following an unexpected victory over the Greco-Syrian troops of Antiochus Epiphanes, who sought to subdue them. In the Judaic story, thanks to a small vial unearthed somehow far from the temple, a candlestick lights up the place of worship for eight days against a normal one.
During Hanukkah, the usual liturgy does not give rise to an additional prayer service: without a holy character and non-idle except in Israel, this feast is in fact not linked to any prayer ritual indicated in the Bible. They say she is rabbinical and not biblical. However, several readings are added to the ordinary liturgy., variable over time, to signal that Hanukkah is taking place. At the synagogue, we therefore begin to recite very specific prayers such as Al Hanissim, a blessing integrated into the Amida, the morning service prayer, but also to the Birkat Hamazon, a Jewish after-meal prayer; the Hallel, read every day in its entirety, as a praise and thank you and used for happy Jewish holidays; or the reading of very specific passages from the Torah, like the one on the sacrifices made at the time of the inauguration of the Temple. The latter had just been returned to the Jews after they had regained their independence from the Greeks, in the second century BC.
How do you wish Hanukkah? You can say “Hag Hanouka sameah” or “Hag sameah” for short, which means “Happy birthday” or “Hanouka samear” (“Good Hanukkah”). And if you want to take it a step further, offer a menorah to your friend or boyfriend celebrating Hanukkah, this inexpensive traditional candlestick, and the candles that go with it. Making donuts, accompanied by mint tea, is also a special treat during the Festival of Lights. But don’t panic: at each “edition” of these festivities, you have eight days to make a Hanukkah surprise to the loved one (s) possibly concerned …
The Jewish holiday Hanukkah celebrations for years to come will take place at very different dates from each other. Enot 2022 : from Sunday December 18 to Monday December 26; in 2023 : from Thursday December 7 to Friday December 15; in 2024 : from Wednesday December 25 to Thursday January 2.