- Hey everyone.
Welcome to vlognukah.
Oooh what?
So first of all, happy Chanukah.
Yes I know this video is being uploaded on Christmas day
but it is also Chanukah
and I'm Jewish so
happy Chanukah.
Also my name is Hannah like Chanukah.
So vlogamas has just ended.
If you don't know what vlogamas is,
it's where YouTubers vlog or do a video
for every day in December leading up to Christmas.
I've never done vlogamas
but guess what!
I'm gonna do vlognukah which is a thing I just invented
and it's vlogging for the eight days of Chanukah.
Not vlogging.
I'm afraid you're not gonna get daily vlogs.
Video every day in Chanukah.
Before we begin,
I am drinking Kiddish wine.
This is Jewish kosher wine.
So Kiddish wine is what us Jews drink during services
like Shabbos and Passover and Chanukah
and any other Jewish festival that involves
saying a prayer and drinking wine.
One thing I will say
is that when we do those prayers
and we drink that wine,
we drink it out of a tiny little goblet
and we like say the prayer and then we drink the wine.
I don't think it's supposed to be drunk out
of big glasses in large quantities.
This is a learning curve for me
because this is delicious.
Kiddish wine is so sweet, it tastes like port.
So it's just like drinking juice.
So the purpose of this video is to
explain what Chanukah is, the story of Chanukah
and how we celebrate Chanukah.
The first thing I should mention
is that me and my family we are of Reform Judaism I think.
There's probably a lot more different types
but in my very basic Jew head
it's like Reform and Orthodox
and that's the difference between like very traditional
and a bit more chillaxed.
Also another thing is that like I don't know a lot
about Judaism in the sense of the theology
and the philosophy
and all of that stuff.
I know what I've been taught
and I know what I've been brought up with
and I know the traditions and the songs
and the things that me and my family do
and I feel like in Judaism every family
kind of does it different, especially the prayers
because we sing the prayers with like a certain tune to it
and then I'll meet like another Jewish friend
and they'll be like oh we sing that prayer
with this tune to it
and they have like a whole different tune
and just real exciting.
I love meeting other Jewish people.
Chanukah, what is Chanukah?
Chanukah is the Jewish festival of light.
It lasts for eight nights and eight days.
Jewish festivals always start in the evening
when sun sets.
So last night the 24th of December
was actually the first night of Chanukah
but the 25th of December was the first day of Chanukah.
When Chanukah happens,
changes every year.
It's usually in December-ish time.
It's kind of like how Easter changes.
It's always like in March, April
but it varies.
This year is quite a late one
like the final day of Chanukah is New Year's Day.
Whoa unheard of.
This is how we celebrate it.
Each night of Chanukah you light a new candle
on the hanukiah.
Hanukiah is a nine-candled thing.
The menorah is the one with seven.
Hanukiah has nine because it's got one middle one
and then it's got eight, four on either side
and each one of those eight represents a night
and each night you light that number of candles.
The middle candle is called the shamash.
Shamas, shamash.
I'm a good Jew.
You light that candle with a match or a lighter
or whatever
and then you take that candle
and then you light the other candles with it.
You go right to left.
Hebrew you read right to left
so you read it the opposite way that you read English.
So you light the candles right to left.
85 percent sure.
First night you take the shamash and you light candle one.
Second night you light two candles.
Third night three candles.
You get it.
As you're doing that,
you're saying the prayers and then you have a bit of
Kiddish wine and maybe bread or is that just the
Friday night thing?
Then what happens next?
Songs.
My faves are Sevivon sof sof sof,
and Ma O'tzur.
Absolute bangers.
Then I get a present.
This is what I don't know how it happens
it other Jewish families,
but in my family,
so you know how like Christmas everyone gets
each other presents.
For Chanukah it's like the older generations
get the younger generation presents.
So I don't buy anyone else Chanukah presents.
I just receive Chanukah presents
from my parents, from my grandparents,
from my great Grandma, from my aunties, uncles
and you get one present each night.
However, since becoming an adult and moving out,
I don't often get to spend all of the nights of Chanukah
at home because sometimes I'll be in London
or I was at uni and so I couldn't come home
for all of Chanukah.
So it's kind of a like if you're home
we'll give you a present
and then but I'm always home for Christmas day
so then we do Christmas as well
because my dad's family is not Jewish so.
Oo and then dreidel.
♫ Oh dreidel dreidel dreidel
♫ I made you out of clay
So you play dreidel,
that great game.
Here's a story.
I always used to get Chanukah gelt at Chanukah.
That to me was like a Chanukah thing.
Chanukah gelt
and then I remember being on the playground one day
when I was like 14, 15 in school
and all of the other kids had Chanukah gelt
and I was just like whoa, what's going on?
And I was like saying to my friends like
oh my God, you have Chanukah gelt too.
That's so cool
and they were like, what's Chanukah gelt
and I'm like that
and they're like what chocolate money?
And then I realised that it wasn't a special
Jewish thing, it was a Christmas chocolate thing
but my whole life chocolate money was Chanukah gelt.
Okay let's move on to the story of Chanukah
and why celebrate Chanukah.
The first thing you need to know about any
Jewish festival is
they tried to kill us,
we won,
let's eat.
That's the basics covered.
Except for Yom Kippur where we fast.
But most Jewish festivals revolve around food
and eating and there's usually specific foods
that you eat for that celebration.
I recently rewatched the Rugrats episode about Chanukah
as research and revision.
A Maccababy's gotta do what a Maccababy's gotta do.
A long time ago before Jesus was born,
maybe like a few hundred years before Jesus was born,
the Jews lived in the Middle east somewhere.
I don't want to name a country
because that's controversial
but the city of Jerusalem
was involved.
There was a king, a Syrian king
called King Antiochus.
It may be King Antiochus the 1st, 2nd, 3rd,
I don't know.
He was all like,
hey everyone.
You've gotta worship these Greek Gods now
and I'm going to erect a statue of myself
in the temple and you have to worship it
and the Jews were like
dude you have read the 10 commandments?
Like have you read them mate
because one of them says can't worship idols
and things like you just have to worship God.
You can't worship like statues and things
and so the Jewish people kind of have to be all like
secretive in their faith
because they were being forced by the Syrian king
to be all like you've gotta worship these Greek Gods
and they were all like nah mate.
Then there was a rebel group of Jews
and they were called the Maccabees.
No relation to the band The Maccabees.
Maybe the band The Maccabees
got inspiration.
Maybe they're Jewish.
So this rebel Jewish group called The Maccabees,
lead by I want to say Judas Maccabee
but also Judas is a different part of the Bible
but that just rings a bell to me.
There might have been a lot of guys called Judas
around that time, I don't know.
The Maccabees revolt
and the Maccabees are like now we'll fight you
and so they fought
and there was like a three year war
and everything was ruined
and it was horrible but the Jews won.
If you've been paying attention,
they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.
We'll get to the eating part in a bit.
So the Jews won.
The war is over and the Jews have managed to reclaim
Jerusalem for their own.
Woo, woo, woo.
But the temple is destroyed.
Don't know why I'm saying temple.
In every story I've heard they say temple
but Jews worship in a synagogue.
I don't know why that is.
In Jewish synagogues, in Jewish places of worship,
there is a light that is always on.
The everlasting light.
Back in those days they didn't have electricity
but what they did have was oil
and so the light was kept burning with oil.
Temple is destroyed
and they only find enough oil
to keep it alight for one day
and it's gonna take them like eight days
to get more oil
because they don't have Amazon Prime
but they light it anyway
and when they light they like rededicate the temple
to God and Chanukah from what I believe
means rededication
because it's about how they then rededicated the temple
to God.
This is when the miracle happens.
This is the good shit.
The light stays alight for eight days and eight nights.
It's the Chanukah miracle
and so then they manage to get more oil
and they can keep it alight
but the miracle is that the oil that should have
only lasted one day, lasted eight
and that's why we celebrate Chanukah for eight nights
and eight days.
Proper exciting stuff.
And then here we go with let's eat.
Getting on to the food bit now.
We eat oily foods at Chanukah
to celebrate the oil lasting.
So we have potato latkes which are like potato pancakes
and they're just like fried in a load of oil
and donuts.
A lot of potato pancakes and donuts.
Potato latkes are amazing.
I'm gonna do a whole video for vlognukah
about like Chanukah food and Chanukah games
and I'll probably make some latkes
although I think I do have like a very old video
of me making latkes on my channel somewhere.
But yeah.
That's Chanukah.
One of my favourite Jewish festivals.
I think my favorite's Passover.
Chanukah is cool though because it's kind of near Christmas
and I get presents
but the food at Passover is just like.
That's the story of Chanukah
and how we celebrate Chanukah at least in the
Witton family.
Anyway thank you guys for watching.
Please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
Let me know in the comments
if you're Jewish and you also celebrate Chanukah,
you also celebrate Christmas.
Did I manage to teach you anything about Chanukah?
Did you know this already or have you learned something?
That would be cool.
Happy vlognukah and I'll see you tomorrow.
Bye!
(soft music)