Hanukkah

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, lasts eight days from the twenty-fifth of Kislev, usually in December. It remembers the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid rulers in the second century BCE, and the tradition that a small jar of oil lasted eight days. A candle is lit each night on a nine-branched menorah (the hanukkiah), adding one candle on each night, and the ninth, the shamash, is used to light the others. Families sing, play dreidel and eat foods fried in oil such as latkes and sufganiyot.

The first candle is lit on the evening before the date given in our tables.

Dates for the next ten years

Questions people ask

Jewish holidays begin at sundown on the evening before the date shown. Dates follow the standard Hebrew calendar; communities outside Israel keep a second day of several festivals. Customs differ between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and other communities, and this is not a ruling: ask your rabbi.

Calendar converter · How the Hebrew calendar works