Bigger Text Smaller Text Print Email Email Share

Modern Festive Days

The four lesser festivals established after the fall of the Solomonic Temple

Purim

The Feast of Lots, Purim, celebrated on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar (or Adar Sheni, in leap years), commemorates the downfall of the Persian tyrant of Amalekite descent, Haman, who had planned (some two thousand three hundred years ago) to annihilate the Jews of the Persian Empire on those days. It is characterized by masquerading, feasting and imbibing alcoholic beverages somewhat beyond normal limits, i.e., ‘rejoicing’.

Hanukka

The Feast of Lights, Hanukka, celebrated by lighting candles for eight days beginning on the eve of the twenty-fifth day of Kislev (the ninth month, counting from Nissan), commemorates the purification of the Second Temple by the Hasmoneans after their defeat of the Seleucid Hellenes some 2175 years ago.

Yom Ha‘Atzma’ut

The Feast of Independence, ‘Atzma’ut, occurring on the fifth day of Iyar (the second month, counting from Nissan), commemorates the proclamation of the independent State of Israel over sixty-one years ago, viewed as the divinely-inspired restoration of Jewish sovereignty over parts of the Land of Israel for the first time since the great exile following the defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 C.E.

Yom Shihrur Yerushalayim

The Day of the Liberation and Reunification of Jerusalem, Yom Shihrur Yerushalayim, occurring on the twenty-eighth day of Iyar, commemorates the liberation of the eastern part of Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem – together with large stretches of the Land of Israel – from the yoke of Arab conquest over forty-two years ago and its reunification with the western part of the city, from which it had been forcibly separated for nineteen years by a concrete wall and sporadic Jordanian sniper shots.