I’m 62 years old and I just heard about the Hanukkiah for the first time tonight on puppy dog pals. What the heck? How can I live my entire life and never have heard of this. I’ve been around plenty of Jewish people and we talked about Hanukkah plenty of times. I’ve known about the menorah. I’ve known about the dreidel. But I’ve never heard of the hanukkiah before tonight.
My wife, who has the nearest thing I’ve ever met to a photographic memory also had no knowledge of this term. She was born and raised in England I was born and raised in America. Neither of us lived in isolation.
What is going on?
Did a search. After reading a few articles, I think I can summarize it like this:
Menora means lamp, and is usually 7 candles. Hannukah menora is a lamp for hannukah and has 9 candles. It is usually called a hannukiah, but that’s hard for non-Hebrew speakers to say, so we usually hear menora or hannukah menora.
Edit: forgot to include the sources. I’ll try to find them all, but here’s the one that, though the shortest, said the most.
Edit: found two more of the sources (1, 2), but can’t refind the longest one. Sometimes, it’s very annoying not having history saved.
This is correct. A menorah is a general term for candelabra, a hanukkiah (pron. hah-nu-KEE-ah) is the specific type candelabra used for the holiday Hanukah ceremony. A hanukkiah has 8 lower candles and 1 upper candle (the shamas) for counting the 8 days of hanukah. That said, the terms are pretty interchangeable in modern times.
I had an uncle tell me this at hanukah decades ago and I thought it was a “fun fact.” Every hanukkiah is a menorah, but not every menorah is a hanukkiah. Y’know?
src: am jewish
Like squares are rectangles, but rectangles are not squares. :)
Exactly!