Hanukkah Matata

Did you know that the 8-day Jewish celebration of Hanukkah isn't in the Hebrew Bible? It's origins are much more recent than that! This episode, we learn about how the celebration of Hanukkah began with the Maccabees, and how your Jewish friends and family celebrate today.

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

Be sure to check out Blackbird Farm and Apothecary on Facebook and Instagram.

**

Katie Dooley  00:09

atheist not doing it needed at Clay and went strain ready the day that I shall play. Hey, today on the holy watermelon podcast are talking about Hanukkah, right wanted that as our soft opening so I thought I'd oblige. I like it last episode we talked about Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of light. And now we're talking about Hanukkah, which is the Jewish festival of light. Yay,

Preston Meyer  00:47

yay. That's pretty awesome. I've been celebrating Hanukkah for a long time. Now you have and

Katie Dooley  00:54

it's always fun. Can I ask why you started doing that?

Preston Meyer  00:58

As I'm trying to remember the first thing that that really made me want to do it. And I think it was mostly about celebrating the dedication of the temple. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a few temples that were dedicated over Hanukkah, which, out of almost 200 temples, it's a very small handful that are dedicated over Hanukkah, which is the festival of celebration of the dedication of the temple, the temple. Yeah. So it's kind of cool. And the Edmonton temple fairly close to here is one of those very few that's dedicated over Hanukkah.

Katie Dooley  01:40

Interesting. Hanukkah means dedication. Exactly. Sounds very redundant.

Preston Meyer  01:48

If you didn't get there already, you're there. Now. You're

Katie Dooley  01:51

all here together now.

Preston Meyer  01:54

Yeah. And so this year, it ran from November 28 to December 6, which is the day that this episode will be reaching our listeners. Katie's double check. I

Katie Dooley  02:06

really don't know if I believe you. 22 Six, Okay, you're right. Yes, Hanukkah is over today. Yay. Happy.

Preston Meyer  02:22

So for those of you who have been celebrating Hanukkah, I hope you've been enjoying it.

Katie Dooley  02:28

So, so future, Katie, you'll have already gone to prescence Hanukkah party when she hasn't even confirmed if he's having it or not. That's cool. I definitely told you we were doing more traveling. Yeah, so that made me I'm not invited. Similar to Diwali, its Hanukkah is celebrated on the 25th day of Kislev of the Hebrew calendar. And the Hebrew calendar is also a lunar lunar calendar just like the Hindu and Muslim calendar. My from what I've read, it's basically only the Gregorian calendar, which is what we follow. That is a solar calendar. Everything else seems pretty lunar.

Preston Meyer  03:07

I mean, I've never looked into it, but I bet you there's a couple other solar calendars out there. So we

Katie Dooley  03:11

should do an episode on calendars, because some of them are tied to religions, right? Absolutely.

Preston Meyer  03:18

I mean, the Gregorian calendar is a religious calendar. It's basically the Catholic calendar. It's slightly different from the Julian calendar, which started out in Rome as well, but was basically yeah, it got abandoned by the Catholics and the Orthodox like, oh, we still like it for a while.

Katie Dooley  03:40

Anyway, that's a digression. But we'll maybe we'll do an episode on calendars. So just like Diwali, it's meant to be solid braided during the darkest days of the year, because it's the festival of light to help with both the metaphor and to make the light Salaat more spectacular.

Preston Meyer  03:56

Yeah, that's pretty great. So even though it happens in December, alongside huge holidays, like the ones you're familiar with Christmas and Diwali, and Kwanzaa, maybe if you if you know Kwanzaa it's relatively minor religious holiday in Judaism, especially compared to the High Holy Days of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and even Passover, though, those are kind of the big ones. And so Hanukkah, like Christmas is a great time to enjoy the fact that there is a holiday where you get to spend time with family and friends. And that's really kind of the big deal there. And

Katie Dooley  04:37

this was super interesting to me. Something I didn't know about Hanukkah before. And why it's less religious is that Hanukkah isn't mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at all. No, because the events that we celebrate happened after the book was written.

Preston Meyer  04:52

Yeah, pretty much. The Hanukkah story is recorded in the book of the Maccabees, which is found in the doodoo Deuterocanonical. Books, aka the Apocrypha found in the Greek literary tradition of the Jewish people in Alexandria, Egypt, preserved in the Septuagint. You

Katie Dooley  05:10

just said a lot of words, explained. So I'm sure some of our listeners need that explained as well.

Preston Meyer  05:15

All right, I'll start at the beginning of that list. Now go through my big words. Thank you. Deuterocanonical is a word that's used, especially by Catholics, where they differentiate those books that did make it into the Hebrew canon from those that didn't. So there's the Maccabees, for example, there's an alternate version of the book of Ezra, there's just a handful of stories about characters like Tobit. Judith, there's extensions to the book of Daniel, things like that, that we can find ancient sources saying, yeah, these things exist in the Greek literary tradition. But for some reason, we don't see them written in Hebrew. It's kind of weird. Interesting. Yeah. And so there's that distinction placed. And a similar distinction is made by Protestants. But they're like, no, no, no, if it's not in the Hebrew Bible, it's apocryphal. It's not even important. I actually, it kind of really bugged me in 2011. And 10 years ago, I bought the 400 anniversary edition reproduction of a King James Bible. And there was this huge section missing in the middle of the book, which is where the Apocrypha goes, because Zondervan, the people who publish this reproduction decided we don't like the Apocrypha, so we're just not gonna print that portion of this epic anniversary edition book. Oh, yeah, it was actually really frustrating for me. Because all of the work that goes into this book is actually really awesome. It looks really cool. It's got all kinds of really beautifully drawn family trees and stuff. And they just cut out all of the apocrypha. Yeah, it was a little frustrating. Septuagint is the Greek ish word,

Katie Dooley  07:20

meaning seven something 70. So yeah,

Preston Meyer  07:24

there's a tradition that is really hard to prove that 70 elders took 70 days to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. And they each did it individually, and all came up with the exact same text results. Yeah, and so yeah, that would totally be a miracle. Problem is, there's no way that that's true. There's loads of evidence that it took them many decades to complete this task in a way that everybody was satisfied with it. And there's just there's no way that they all would have reproduced the exact same Greek text from the Hebrew. But that's the story anyway.

Katie Dooley  08:19

All right. So what happens in the Hanukkah story? All

Preston Meyer  08:24

right. So most of the Hanukkah story is found in the Maccabees first Maccabees. And the story starts out celebrating Alexander the Great. And then it goes on to describe how awful his successors were to the people of Judea. Especially Antioch is the fourth epiphanies who is said to have outlawed the cult of Yahweh and 168 BCE, and killed 1000s of Jews and rededicated Jerusalem's temple to Zeus. So naturally, this gets the religious zealots all riled

Katie Dooley  08:55

up. And they call them Yahweh being the Jews. Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  08:59

And, and like, naturally, everybody would be really uncomfortable with it. But the people who were like really zealous for the religion, oh, would be furious. Yeah, they're absolutely incensed. And four brothers, from the priestly case to come to be known as the Maccabees, which means hammer. And because of their intense violence against not only their saluted rulers, but also against any Hellenized Jews. So eventually, these hammers managed to defeat the Seleucids and went about forcing anybody left in Judea to convert to Judaism under the threat of

Katie Dooley  09:36

death. So back and forth with violence. Yeah, these people were incredibly

Preston Meyer  09:41

violent. But they got stuff done. Yeah, anyway, after clearing out all the Hellenic paraphernalia out of the temple, the Maccabees selected their brother Jonathan to be their high priest. Still, not exactly from a family that had the right to that office? No. But they felt they deserved it because they did all the work. And it's hard to argue with the people with their

Katie Dooley  10:14

with the station with the muscle with the hammer. Exactly.

Preston Meyer  10:19

Eggs Exactly. So the solutions tried to take the city back, but failed. And eventually they agreed to restore today in Liberty. During all this time, the Jews were kept from offering sacrifices and observing the High Holy Days. So as soon as they could, they dedicated the temple in a ceremony that had previously been associated with the Feast of Tabernacles. And from that time forward, the anniversary was commemorated as Hanukkah. And that's more or less the story we have in the Maccabees condensed, real tight,

Katie Dooley  10:52

real tight. Your five minutes summary on why we celebrate.

Preston Meyer  11:04

I guess yeah, there's more to it. And that's a good thing.

Katie Dooley  11:09

Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, there's a whole political climate that historians and scholars have looked into that. Yeah, that's the rabbit hole for us.

Preston Meyer  11:19

Yeah. So Hanukkah being the dedication, after all of this celebrates the rededication in 165 BC. So, little over 2000 years ago, the miracle of Hanukkah is the menorah. There was only enough oil to keep them menorahs lamps lit for one day. But all their festivities would require that they have to keep the lamp lit, they could have put it off. They really could have it because it took that time to produce the oil they needed with the very specific recipe that they're supposed to use. Oh,

Katie Dooley  12:02

interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. That anything special? I thought they didn't have enough oil.

Preston Meyer  12:08

Yeah, there's herbs and whatnot mixed into it. It's interesting. It's your it's meant to culminate in a very specific scent experience in the temple. I think that's foreign to pretty much everybody on the planet today now isn't like we couldn't recreate it, as it's just not part of anybody's Temple experience in almost any popular religion today. People don't use sent very much in worship a lot. There's some people will use a sensor and burn a little bit of incense in the temple. Not quite the same.

Katie Dooley  12:44

I've told you my orthodox funeral story. Yes, yes. That's what I want to hear like scent isn't a big part of like, yes, it is. I can go back to a Ukrainian funeral.

Preston Meyer  12:51

Like, yeah, for sure. But this, this

Katie Dooley  12:56

particular oils, and it's not Yeah. Common anymore. Yeah. Well, I

Preston Meyer  13:01

don't think it's used anywhere. Interesting. Yeah. So anyway, it would take more than a week to get more of the oil they needed. But we can't delay this anymore. We need to rededicate the temple. So we're doing it now. And even though they had the one day's worth of oil, they had oil for the full eight days, there's two different versions of this, where they would use up the oil for the day, like just feed it into the lamps and just go and the vats would be empty, and then they just miraculously be full the next day. And the alternate story is that the VAT just never empty during that time.

Katie Dooley  13:47

Yeah, I read that it would miraculously be fooled again like the empty and then go back. That's the version I read in my research.

Preston Meyer  13:55

And today, instead of having oil lamps, most people use candles. And it still is lights, so we're still good. So this bit about the the oil and the lamps is not found in the Book of Maccabees. Instead, we find the oldest mentioned the oil miracle in the Talmud recorded about 600 years after the rebellion. So we're talking in the neighborhood of the fifth sixth century. See, so this

Katie Dooley  14:27

is kind of like the ascension of Mary where it's kind of become canon, but it's not actually in any of the books. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I'll just kind of go Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Right. Okay.

Preston Meyer  14:40

So, like you mentioned before, it's no reason for it to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It gets one singular mention in the New Testament. Barely in passing. It's more just to let you know that Jesus was doing a thing at a specific time. They didn't say that he actually celebrated Hanukkah. But in John chapter 10, verse 22, it says, And this thing happened during Hanukkah,

Katie Dooley  15:08

I pulled it out because I was really curious. It said, tell me if this is a, this is the New International Version. Okay. Then came the festival of dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus was in the temple for its walking in Solomon's column ad. Yeah, that's it. Aaron is

Preston Meyer  15:26

Yeah. It's, it's perfectly reasonable to translate the word as dedication, especially since we know this coming from a Greek text. But a really good translator would recognize, hey, maybe we shouldn't use the word Hanukkah in this particular verse.

Katie Dooley  15:44

Yes, and it's like, reemphasize if there was winter. Yeah, right. Like there's no doubt but Right. There's no other festival of dedication that they're mixing this up with. Right?

Preston Meyer  15:54

Yeah. There's a lot of people who really like to divorce Jesus from Judaism. And there's no good reason for it. He wasn't your rabbi. Yeah. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. traditional

Katie Dooley  16:11

Christianity is a cult of Judaism that just took off to its own thing.

Preston Meyer  16:15

Yeah. And so I found two Bibles, where the editor was really committed to making sure that you saw Jesus in His in the situation that he lived in. And so, use Hebrew words whenever it's appropriate, chose not to use Hellenized forms of names, but stuck with traditional Aramaic forms of names, and use Tonica instead of that dedication.

Katie Dooley  16:47

Let's talk about what a celebration looks like what your party's gonna be like.

Preston Meyer  16:55

So, when I celebrate Hanukkah, it's not exactly your traditional Jewish experiment to your party

Katie Dooley  17:02

after we record so there are no obligations to refrain from activities like you would on the Jewish Sabbath for Hanukkah. Most Jews will actually go to work but may come home early for celebrations because there are no religious reasons to be staying at home. Yeah, the menorah is a popular icon fixture in Hanukkah, Judaism. It is a candle holder and it has nine candles. So one for the for each night of Hanukkah, and this Shamash and I see that right, Chumash Amash. It's an extra candle that is used to light the other candles. The candle is lit on them not every night one on the first night, two on the second night, etc. and blessings are offered with the candles that are lit every single night. I thought you were gonna add more to this. Nope. I did. Did you? Yeah, I thought you were gonna give us a prayer. But there's actually a really good website I found that has dates, times and blessings for that. Well, it's past now that had all the dates, times and blessings for Hanukkah this year.

Preston Meyer  18:12

It has them for next year to have some furniture. So an interesting thing about the menorah is that there's a special menorah just for Hanukkah. A normal Jewish Menorah has seven lampstands. But the Hanu Kia, the Hanukkah menorah is the one with nine was

Katie Dooley  18:34

a regular menorah are used for I don't.

Preston Meyer  18:39

Usually you'll see them in synagogues and temples. They are modeled after the one that we see described in the Hebrew Bible. That's meant to bring light to the whole tabernacle.

Katie Dooley  18:53

boring chapter.

Preston Meyer  18:56

Yeah, you didn't enjoy that section very much at all. That's where it is. When added scribe describes everything in the template in excruciating detail. Yeah, yeah. It's very helpful for people who want to reproduce it. Not so helpful for people who just want to know the story, right?

Katie Dooley  19:15

I mean, it's helpful when you explain that there are different books for different reasons. And this just happens to me the floor plans chapter was a slog.

Preston Meyer  19:28

Yeah, so there are three special prayers that are offered for Hanukkah. There's a general prayer of gratitude for the Hanukkah miracle. There's a prayer of gratitude for our own living freedom today. And there's a blessing over the candles of the hanukkiah and gratitude for the persisting tradition that binds believers to their maker.

Katie Dooley  19:51

I got really excited about the food which you know, made all that shouldn't surprise you. I learned But we knew I knew what some of the traditional foods were latkes jelly doughnuts arugula are all customary Hanukkah foods, but I didn't realize that fried foods were popular because of the oil. Oh yeah, I like I didn't like connect the symbol as I just saw I was like we eat turkey like I don't know why we turkey. So I just thought it's like what people did traditionally but I like that it has the ties into the temple miracle. Yeah, one thing that also delicious,

Preston Meyer  20:29

right. One thing that I really appreciate about Judaism dietary tradition is that there's a reason for all of the things being the way they are food wise around the holidays, for passover, unleavened bread, and there's the story is we didn't have time for the bread Darius we had to get out of dodge. Dodge. So it's flatbread. Matzah, is basically just flour and water.

Katie Dooley  21:03

Yum.

Preston Meyer  21:06

If you want it to be delicious, you're gonna have to add something to it. And yeah, the oil for anything related to Hanukkah. Absolutely the deal. And the Holy barbecues every day at the temple back in the day. But what have been some good times to write.

Katie Dooley  21:24

This is why I get excited for your party. And I have heard of arugula before, but I didn't really get heard the word. You know, when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, rubella, but I was like, I don't actually know what that is. Oh, sounds

Preston Meyer  21:39

like arugula. That's what Brian said, when I didn't

Katie Dooley  21:43

get that doll. But I also took German which is so similar to Yiddish. Sure. I was like really left, okay. But then I read what they were and I was like, press the numbering and lose to your party. So it is Yiddish for little twists. And they are pastries that can be filled with they have a cream cheese base, and then you can fill them with basically anything you want. nuts, fruit, cinnamon, sugar, etc. And I was like, That sounds amazing. So I'm gonna make a bench for us to consume right?

Preston Meyer  22:12

I want to first see them. My instinct is to compare them to croissants, but there's so much more.

Katie Dooley  22:18

I just like the thought of cream cheese and cinnamon sugar and a baked pastry. So they know how to do it right. foodwise right. Another I think this is probably pretty popular if you went to secular school is knowing what the dreidel that I sang about earlier. We definitely like talked about the dreidel when we were in elementary school and learning about other people and we play dreidel president's party for you. It is a spinning top game played by junior Jewish children excuse me during Hanukkah. And it has four sides. And each side has a letter that represents the Hebrew words.

Preston Meyer  23:05

NES Gadol hayah Sham, which

Katie Dooley  23:09

means and I actually really liked this a great miracle happen there.

Preston Meyer  23:12

Yeah, there's a variant in Israel. That changes there to hear for what should be pretty obvious reasons. Because

Katie Dooley  23:20

that's that. That's how it happened. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  23:29

Yeah, so dreidel is kind of a cool name, I guess. Instead of calling it a top, dreidel is the Yiddish name basically means Turner.

Katie Dooley  23:38

Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I made that a claim.

Preston Meyer  23:43

And it's also called sev. Yvonne. It's Hebrew has the same meaning Turner. dreidel is also known by a couple of alternate Yiddish names, like destiny and a little Thoreau. And those were semi popular names until the holocaust of the 1940s when those names lost popularity for some pretty sad reasons. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  24:09

I read one story that tells that the dreidel game was used as a cover for children who were at the time this is in the winter 16 or 168 BCE for children that were illegally studying the Torah when Seleucid soldiers came by those studying would pretend to be playing the game so it actually you know there's a story that ties directly to Hanukkah and that just you know, we play board games at Christmas because we like to play board games at Christmas, right?

Preston Meyer  24:37

Yeah, it's it's a an interesting story. Unfortunately, it's not well documented at all for the late 19th century fine, so cute. It is cute story. But when something shows up because story. Story doesn't show up until 2000 years after the time at supposed to happen. It makes it hard to believe. Female last points, right? It's like St. Barbara that we talked about a few months ago fair, just like the story came up a long time after she was supposed to exist probably wasn't even real. Specially if you remember the details of that story, I'll

Katie Dooley  25:17

say I don't know like how you hide your Torah fast enough to whip out a tiny dreidel. Well, usually

Preston Meyer  25:24

they were on scrolls rather than quota. Yeah, okay, so you just quick roll up stuff and up somebody's sleeve. whip out

Katie Dooley  25:29

your dreidel. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  25:36

Thanks for that mind work. But this is an audio medium. I

Katie Dooley  25:42

don't know why we're laughing like all year old boys. Exactly. So how can you actually play Dreidel, Dreidel game? Cuz you could probably pick up a dreidel at the dollar store and absolutely

Preston Meyer  25:55

fine. When I do hand out drills in large indiscriminate quantities, I usually buy a whole bunch of one party city. real cheap. Nice. So yeah, you can find them all over the place. Oh, interesting thing. So there's some evidence that the game might have originated in Britain.

Katie Dooley  26:18

Interesting. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  26:22

And then moved to Germany where yudishe kids picked it up. I thought that was kind of nifty.

Katie Dooley  26:27

All right. Do you like British Jews or just like Britain in general? And I got a British kid interesting. Yeah. Really popular in the Jewish community and then move to interesting. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  26:43

If things move all over the place, though, there is evidence we have found some old tops in the Middle East. But they don't have letters. They're just numbered basically a fancy D for on top. So for those people who are selling dagger dice, your idea isn't new.

Katie Dooley  27:03

Well, I mean, the rules are simple enough, which we'll run through in just a moment. That there's probably yeah, that's, that's good. It's not exclusively Jewish. It's kind of a fun game. Yeah, like, like tax you know? Something? You mean Jax? Jax. Is that what I meant? The

Preston Meyer  27:20

one where you throw the bouncy ball and try and grab. Yeah. Don't think I've ever played Jack.

Katie Dooley  27:27

I was on a huge I was like, I was like eight and I was on the huge Jacks kick.

Preston Meyer  27:32

I had a huge pug collection. Oh, man. This is like we're going back more than 20 years now back on pugs were a thing people cared about. Oh,

Katie Dooley  27:45

but yeah, so I can kind of see it being like a jacks or a PA. Who knows how old dreidel really is. But right.

Preston Meyer  27:56

Traditionally, it's a gambling game. You've got a whole bunch of coins. Very often people play with chocolate coins. In fact, I bet you at this point that's more normal than any other option or probably like nickels. I bet you chocolate coins are used more. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, everyone, so everyone puts some coins in the pot before they spin the dreidel. And depending on which of the four sides comes up, you have to take a specific action. If none comes up, which is each of these names are letters in the Hebrew alphabet, none comes up. You mean you do nothing. Gimel you get the whole pot. Hey, you get half the pot, and Shin you add to the pot. Sometimes it's Shin there's a chance Shin Shin put one in. But some traditions you put one in for each of the three points on the top of the shin. So you put three in Oh, there's loads of variety in the game. Yeah. And in Israel, when they say a miracle happened here, there's a PE instead of a shin. And I mean, the fact that it sounds like the English word PE sounds pretty great. You put some in. If you run out of coins or guilt, you are out of the game. But people have been trying really hard to make dreidel more fun for adults too. And there's all kinds of variants here. You could totally make it a drink. I'm very confident that's the thing that people are doing. I've actually found some interesting ones that I thought I would share with you today too. There's a game called No Limit Texas Hold'em dreidel and so you've got two dribbles in a cup. Shake it up and spin your drills in your cup. And you keep your cup secret of course because this is Texas Hold'em poker with dreidels and then there's publicly spun dreidels to see what comes up and you're looking to get your poker hands. It's kind of like you're not gonna get runs, but like full house for a time. Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, people play this. And I will definitely be sharing some great videos related to all this dreidel nonsense on our Discord. Right, and some people just compete for the longest spin Droylsden real nice so they can if you're good at it. In fact, there's major league dreidel is a thing that's really kind of fun to Google. You can find some great resources and videos. There are semi serious dreidel tournaments for people of all ages, including a variety of regulated spinning surfaces, depending on the organization. The spin agog. Yeah, it's so awesome. Again, check the discord to see this thing or I want to google it yourself. So it's reminiscent of a Beyblade arena and you remember Beyblade

Katie Dooley  31:12

they do? Yeah.

Preston Meyer  31:16

So there's no artificial letter rip business, but you spin there shouldn't be. That would be cheating. Because part of the pain oh, blade.

Katie Dooley  31:26

Dre blade?

Preston Meyer  31:28

I mean, I part of me does really want to see that.

Katie Dooley  31:31

I mean, it's all luck anyway. Like, who cares if you spin shittier good, like the fates will decide. But

Preston Meyer  31:38

the real challenge that most people are playing with the synagogue is a time deal. The synagogue comes with a time time when not Yeah, not a gambler. So you spin and hope for the best. And you get credit for having the longest spin. But this thing also comes with little boards on it so you can have different mats within the synagogue. One of them looks like a skee ball. Shoot where you want it? You want the dreidel to land on a specific point value and you make money this way. Wow. There's a baseball one. Which is kind of nifty.

Katie Dooley  32:19

My mind is being blown right now.

Preston Meyer  32:21

People have put a lot of work into making dreidel more fun for everybody. And honestly, they're kicking ass. I've also seen a synth a dreidel board. It looks kind of like a combination of cornhole and shuffleboard where you spin the dreidel, and I couldn't find the rules for this. But the looks of it. It's it doesn't really matter which side of your dreidel comes up. But it is important that you're still spinning the dreidel across the board to your opponent's side, you're playing in teams of two by the way. And you want to spin your data across the board and have it land in a zone that is going to get you money instead of lose your money. You know, this

Katie Dooley  33:08

all came from kids who were like forced to play dreidel in the corner and got bored with the base game right? Absolutely.

Preston Meyer  33:18

Right, I really enjoy game design. I've been messing with game rules for ages and writing games on my own for a long time. And this is how I got my start to is finding a game that I figured this could be better. Could be better. I love that. Yeah. So dreidel has come a long way. And honestly it's made its biggest strides in the last 20 years

Katie Dooley  33:41

I'm I'm excited to see what we post on our Discord where you post on our Discord. Yeah. Moving on from the fast paced high stakes, we're also trying let's talk about gift giving a little bit for Hanukkah because I think this is something that I don't want to say it's like foreign but it's a little surprising because it happens at Christmas, or Diwali, which are two big gift giving celebrations. And Hanukkah really isn't a big gift giving holiday historically. With the exception of Hanukkah guilt during the Maccabean Revolt revolution. This is the only time in history that during the subjugation of the Jews that they were allowed to mint their own coins in their own state. So giving Hanukkah kilt is symbolic of that. That being said coins are either either real like here have a loony Preston, or chocolate cover coins. So even then, you know, don't say oh get anything but it's either chocolate or a little bit of cash.

Preston Meyer  34:53

I love how you say real money and then use our joke name for our coin

Katie Dooley  35:00

What do you call it?

Preston Meyer  35:01

Well, according to what I've seen on our stats, a whole third of our audience is down in the States $1.

Katie Dooley  35:12

Because we all have $1 bills. No, okay. Well, no, forget this. But when I was in Australia to break up like a $5 bill for loonies, yeah, to put in the washing machine, but they weren't doing right. And so I was like, I don't know what to ask for. Right? It's because they're called quarters, right? We don't call them 25 cent pieces. I mean, he said, people don't know. And they're called nickels. And they're called dimes. I was like, What is a $1? Coin called? Like, I literally kind

Preston Meyer  35:42

of Canada's the only place that has come up with a reasonable name. That's kind of ridiculous. $1 coin.

Katie Dooley  35:50

It's a loony name. But yeah, it was so yeah. Anyway, a $1 coin or whatever people call it. That's not.

Preston Meyer  35:57

I'm so glad we didn't call the $2 coin, the bury that on the table. That's what I was very convinced it was going to be when they first announced it. Like, and it's gonna have a polar bear on it. Well, obviously, it's the berry. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought that even though I was like, six at the

Katie Dooley  36:17

time, for a really long time called them the blue knees.

Preston Meyer  36:23

Because there were double. That's fantastic.

Katie Dooley  36:27

Anyway, well tell that to people like that sounds cool, because it sounds like a doubloon. Right. But we are digressing deeply because of Western influence and predominantly Christian Christmas influence. Gift giving has become more common in the Jewish Hanukkah tradition. However, it is still more often to get eight small gifts like think stocking stuffers. One every night, instead of having our massive consumer fest that is Christmas morning.

Preston Meyer  36:58

That's pretty easy to appreciate to earlier on in our marriage when we were, you know, feeling pretty tight for money, instead of having Christmas presents at all. Because there's so much pressure to get something big for Christmas. We did just go. Here's eight small things over the course of a week. And it was actually pretty nice. We've definitely

Katie Dooley  37:19

been stocking stuffers, ourselves as well. Yeah. If you are pressing don't feel like you should handle this. On a to party etiquette. Especially if you are going you know, to a Jewish families. To a Jewish Family's Home for Hanukkah, not just your buddy Preston, which is a little more chill. Talk us through some Hanukkah etiquette. Generally

Preston Meyer  37:42

speaking, if you're going to any religious flavored event, don't go in expecting that you know what to do, because it's next to Christmas. Because Hanukkah is not Christmas. Be willing to be told what to do. Which sounds just a little culty I guess. Use your best judgment when you're told what to do. I guess the caveat to that. But just be prepared to learn something new and have no experience. Yeah, definitely don't do anything that feels terribly Christmassy for Hanukkah. So red and green, your Christmas colors. I mean, you're probably not going to offend anybody. But it does make you look kind of ignorant.

Katie Dooley  38:39

I go more than kind of, but yes, yeah.

Preston Meyer  38:42

Instead, here's a hint. The Hanukkah colors are blue and white. If you ever forget that, feel free to Google the flag of Israel. That might give you a candy reminder. Google Hanukkah decor. Yeah. You've got some options there. Celebrating during Hanukkah is the best way to celebrate Hanukkah. If you wait till Christmas, you could be way off the mark. Sometimes Hanukkah is in November. And you'll occasionally see Thanksgiving aka events where people will combine Hanukkah with thanksgiving. And that's a more apt combination. I

Katie Dooley  39:22

mean, it started in November. It was quite early this year started in November. I seen it as sort of late as mid December. So yeah, it was an early one this year right after American Thanksgiving. Right.

Preston Meyer  39:37

And yes, not knowing how to Google things bad excuse for not knowing things. But we try and be helpful as much as we can keep this in mind for next year. Of course since Hanukkah is over today. There's

Katie Dooley  39:55

you could get some last I hope we got a nice Hanukkah and yeah,

Preston Meyer  39:58

and that's it. Have it. Yeah. So while Hanukkah is a festival of lights, and in a way that's kind of comparable to Diwali, celebrating a victory over cosmic darkness. There are some great layers that are universal universally observed among believers, including the celebration of religious freedom. Because of the victory of the Maccabees over this elucidates, there is the celebration of National resilience, despite millennia of persecution, there's so much of the history of Judaism and the Jewish people is just awful, so much so much torment from all of their neighbors, almost all of the time, constantly. It's a bit of a bummer. And yet, this people has done so well. And so surviving, and thriving. And thirdly, the celebration of God's persistent covenant is hugely important that even after all of the struggles, they can still rebuild that temple 2000 years ago. And for many Jews, there's the dream of rebuilding the temple again one day, and whether or not it'll be rededicated on Hanukkah, hard to say, the first time the temple was dedicated under King Solomon in Jerusalem, it was attached to the Feast of Tabernacles. So to say that there's a hard fast rule of when it has to be dedicated. It's, it's a little squishy there,

Katie Dooley  41:39

it'd be pretty symbolic to do it. In either of those two things. Yeah. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  41:45

Honestly, it'll be weird if it wasn't either of those two things.

Katie Dooley  41:48

Yes. Especially after this long. Right away a long time. Yeah. They're gonna keep waiting. Right?

Preston Meyer  41:57

I mean, it's, it's not on the horizon yet. But it's the thing people are talking about. But in the meantime, there's the temple in our hearts.

Katie Dooley  42:10

Good, right. There's

Preston Meyer  42:12

a lot of love in Hanukkah. And there's a lot of spelling variations of Hanukkah. Oh,

Katie Dooley  42:17

man, I spelt it wrong every single time. I do though, I did because I'm a two ends and 1k kind of person. And then it would tell me it was wrong and had to go back and change the tau one and two K's.

Preston Meyer  42:28

Right. The weird thing is that the spelling in Hebrew doesn't double up any of the consonants.

Katie Dooley  42:38

So I'm not not wrong.

Preston Meyer  42:40

There's so many very common spellings of Hanukkah. That if you've spelt it in a way that people can recognize that you're trying to say Hanukkah, you're just fine. Saying Jonica though, is how Chanukah is fine. Okay. It sounds weird to be English here, but it's fine.

Katie Dooley  43:09

Like you gave me makes me think. Okay, but

Preston Meyer  43:13

that C is attached to the h in the same way that we see lock in Scottish. It's a hard age rather than a weird aspirated edge. Noise.

Katie Dooley  43:31

Final thoughts about Hanukkah?

Preston Meyer  43:34

I love Hanukkah, we have a lot of fun every year. We didn't host a party last Hanukkah because of the whole pandemic situation. Yeah, that was a bummer for me because it's been such a staple in our house for years. But it's a pretty great time to spend time with friends, enjoy a great meal and get a little bit spiritual for a few minutes as we go through the story. And our tradition has always read a dedicatory prayer for a temple. We've made a point of reading the first dedicatory prayer when Solomon's Temple was first dedicated, and all the way up to Edmonton zone. Temple dedication. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  44:22

All right. If you want to watch some of these great Hanukkah dreidel fight videos, you should follow us on our Discord. Absolutely. If you want more amazing episodes like this, you can check out our Patreon for a subscription model to help support us or our Spreadshirt to buy some one off merch person merch purchases. Both help us keep this podcast going.

Preston Meyer  44:49

Happy Hanukkah.

Katie Dooley  44:51

Yes, happy Hanukkah. Pleased to be with you by the late Middle Ages

Preston Meyer  45:05

Hey, what do you still doing here? Well, your commitment will be rewarded. We're having a giveaway. Thanks to the lovely folks at Blackbird farm and apothecary. We have a pair of very sexy holy watermelon tumblers, and posters perfect for the holiday season. All you need to do is check out the posts on Instagram and Facebook. Follow us like the post and tag a friend and one entry per tag. It'd be great. The winner will be announced December 10 2021. Be sure to check out our friends at Blackbird farming apothecary on Facebook