As you notice, the title is not “Merry Christmas” but there’s a reason for that. For those of you that don’t know, I’m jewish and therefore don’t celebrate Christmas. I have no problems with people that say Merry Christmas to me or people that celebrate it themselves. I used to celebrate Christmas growing up, so I understand how important it can be to some people. This will be my 13th year celebrating Hanukkah (sometimes spelled Chanukah) and like normal, I spend it by myself for the most part, which I guess isn’t a big deal because it was my decision after all. For those interested I’m going to write a little about Hanukkah, but if you don’t care or whatever, just ignore the stuff between the two lines.
Hebrew is read from Right to Left instead of Left to Right and to the right is how you would write Hanukkah in Hebrew. Hanukkah is celebrated from the 25th of Kislev until the 2nd or 3rd day of Tevet (Kislev can have 29 or 30 days). The below was ‘borrowed’ from Wikipedia… yeah, told you I was lazy.
Hanukkah is from the Hebrew word for “Dedication” or “Consecration” and marks the re-dedication of the Temple of Jerusalem after its desecration by the forces of Antiochus IV and commemorates the “miracle of the container of oil.” According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil.
If anyone is interested I need a new Dreidel 
A quick note on why there’s a difference in spelling pending on source. (Again, provided by Wikipedia)
In Hebrew, the word Hanukkah is written {removed cause it wont show correctly on the blog}. It is most commonly transliterated to English as Chanukah or Hanukkah, the latter because the sound represented by “CH”, similar to the Scottish pronunciation of “loch”) essentially does not exist in the modern English language. Furthermore, the letter “heth”, which is the first letter in the Hebrew spelling, is pronounced differently in modern Hebrew (voiceless uvular fricative) than in classical Hebrew (voiceless pharyngeal fricative), and neither of those sounds is unambiguously representable in English spelling. Moreover, the ‘kaf’ consonant is geminate in classical (but not modern) Hebrew. Adapting the classical Hebrew pronunciation with the geminate and pharyngeal Ḥeth can lead to the spelling “Hanukkah”; while adapting the modern Hebrew pronunciation with no geminate and velar Ḥeth leads to the spelling “Chanukah”. Variations include:
- Hanukkah (in North America, Australia – also very common in UK)
- Chanukah (in the UK, also common in North America)
Enough of that
and on to things about my life since this is what the blog is supposed to be about.
I’m still working on a couple sites for friends and for school which isn’t too bad, reminds me of “the good old days” and some of my fellow students read this blog now which I guess can be a good thing as well. It’s one of those “Ask the geek for help…” get your answer, then read about his fucked up life afterwards. Oh, and don’t take the ask the geek part wrong, I love feeling needed and it makes me smile when I know other students come to me for help.
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