ḤANUKKAH ("dedication") is the Jewish winter festival that falls on the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev and lasts for eight days. It celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the forces of Antiochus after a three-year battle in the second century BCE. The major sources on the festival's origin are two apocryphal books, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. It is stated there (2 Mc. 10:6–8) that the altar was rededicated and the festival of eight days introduced because during the war the Jews were unable to celebrate the eight-day festival of Sukkot. Thus in the earliest period there is no reference to Ḥanukkah as a feast of lights. That it became such is due to the Talmudic legend (B.T., Shab. 21b) that the Maccabees found only one small jar of oil for the kindling of the menorah ("candelabrum") in the Temple. This was sealed with the...