The LOC.GOV Wise Guide : I Made You Out of Clay

In 2008, December 22 marks the first day of Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by the forces of Antiochus IV. Also referred to as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah recalls the miraculous event. According to the Talmud, a central text of Rabbinic Judaism, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil.

Statue of Liberty Hanukkah Lamp. New Jersey, design 1985, fabrication 2004, by Manfred Anson

“And Judas, and his brethren, and all the church of Israel decreed, that the day of the dedication of the altar should be kept in its season from year to year for eight days, from the five and twentieth day of the month of Casleu, with joy and gladness.” The First Book of the Maccabees, Old Testament, 4:59.

To commemorate and publicize these miracles, the sages instituted the festival of Hanukkah. At the heart of the festival is the nightly menorah lighting: a single flame on the first night, two on the second evening, and so on until the eighth night of Hanukkah, when all eight lights are kindled.

Hanukkah customs include eating foods fried in oil -- latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiot (doughnuts); playing with the dreidel (a spinning top on which are inscribed the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hei and shin, an acronym for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, "a great miracle happened there"); and the giving of Hanukkah gelt, gifts of money, to children.

Hanukkah begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. The Jewish calendar is primarily based on the lunar cycle, and its dates fluctuate with respect to other calendar systems. Thus, the first day of Hanukkah can fall anywhere between November 28 and December 26.

The Hebraic Section of the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division has long been recognized as one of the world's foremost centers for the study of Hebrew and Yiddish materials. Established in 1914 as part of the Division of Semitica and Oriental Literature, it grew from Jacob H. Schiff's 1912 gift of nearly 10,000 books and pamphlets from the private collection of a well-known bibliographer and bookseller Ephraim Deinard. The section houses works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic and Amharic. Holdings are especially strong in the areas of the Bible and rabbinics, liturgy, responsa, Jewish history and Hebrew language and literature.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 contains both personal recollections and examples of Yiddish folklore. Search the collection for “Jewish” to locate accounts of Jewish culture and traditions such as “A Genzil for the Holidays.”

The collection American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 features more than 70 unpublished Yiddish play-scripts. “Chanukah Party: A Drama in 4 Acts,” written in 1909 is one such play.

Southern Jews and the Americanization of Hanukkah was the subject of a lecture at the Library, which is now featured as a webcast. And, in commemoration of Jewish settlers’ emigration to the New World and their more than 350-year history as Americans, the Library presents the online exhibition “From Haven to Home,” which features more than two hundred treasures of American Judaica from the collections and examines the Jewish experience in the United States through the prisms of “Haven” and "Home.”

In addition, the online exhibition Scrolls From the Dead Sea offers a selection of scrolls from the late Second Temple period.

A. Hanukkah. 1950. Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Information: Reproduction No.: LC-USZ62-72019 (b&w film copy neg.); Call No.: LOT 4328 [item] [P&P]

B. Statue of Liberty Hanukkah Lamp. New Jersey, design 1985, fabrication 2004, by Manfred Anson. African and Middle Eastern Division. Reproduction Information: Reproduction information not available.