Jewish holidays and a CU Freebie

Jewish holidays have almost all their origins in escape and/or victory from a great tragedy. Escape from slavery, escape from genocide etc. A good thing about them though is, some of them take 8 days! Take for example Passover. Right now..we are almost at the end of the 8 day Succoth holiday. And because of the Recession probably my company gave us 8 days vacation!

We also build our booth last week reminding us of "G-d's benevolence in providing for all the Jews' needs in the desert" on their exodus out of Egypt. Sadly the day after we got a huge storm and the succah decided to travel a few meters. As we had repaired the damage we got a big rain shower the day after and everything was drenched. In only rained briefly two weeks ago and exactly when in the succah we got our first big rainshower this season. Anyway, tomorrow we"ll celebrate Simhat Torah, the 8th day after 7 days Succoth and then back to work!

Succah in bad weather.

The 4 species, lulav and etrog at a side-table.

Two of the kids at the dinner table in the succah. Badly lit but it was evening.

As I was home all week during Succoth I was able to catch up a lot with my graphics and bring a daily freebie. I"ll probably won't have the time when I get back to my office job on Wednesday, but here is a freebie reminding us of the next Jewish holiday that takes 8 days :) Sadly I won't have free days with that one, but it is one of my favorite holidays! Hanukah.

The Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, and may occur from late November to late December on the Gregorian calendar.

The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a special candelabrum, the Hanukiah, one light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on the final night. An extra light called a shamash, (Hebrew: "guard" or "servant") is also lit each night, and is given a distinct location, usually higher or lower than the others. The purpose of the extra light is to adhere to the prohibition, specified in the Talmud (Tracate Shabbat 21b-23a), against using the Hanukkah lights for anything other than publicizing and meditating on the Hanukkah story. (The shamash is used to light the other lights.)

A Hanukiah candelabrum has therefore 9 arms, whereas a Menorah, the candelabrum that was lit in the Holy Temple has only 7.

The template is around 2000 pixels, png format. 

For Personal and commercial use.