Celebrity World Blog

A giant menorah will light the sky above 
New York on Wednesday to mark the start of Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday celebrated for eight days and nights.Jews celebrate Hanukkah by lighting candles each night in a menorah, an eight-branch candelabra with a ninth, elevated branch known as a shamash.Organizers will light the first candle of what they called the world's largest menorah at Central Park. Lighting of the menorah will be held at 5:30 p.m. daily through December 8The 32-foot high, gold-colored, 4,000 pound steel structure features genuine oil lamps, according to organizers. It has glass chimneys to protect the lights from strong winds.

The menorah marks Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights that mostly falls in December.
"The menorah stands as a symbol of freedom and democracy, strength and inspiration, delivering a timely and poignant message to each person on an individual basis," said Rabbi Shmuel M. Butman, director Lubavitch Youth Organization.
The shamash, which is lit first, is used to light the others candles each night of the holiday.
The holiday of Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after Syrians were chased out of the Holy Land. It also marks the eight days that a menorah burned with one day's worth of oil.
Read More: Giant menorah to mark start of Hanukkah

It's the first day of the festival of lights in Forest Hills and there is a lot to do. You can choose from any number of Hanukkah events across the community. You can head over to a ceremonial menorah lighting or celebrate a little more privately, and it's all available right on our events listing page and in our Hanukkah round-up.

In addition to all the holiday preparation and celebrating that's happening across your neighborhood, there's also quite a bit going on with everyone from police to the schools.
Here are five things you need to know today:
Read More: Dec. 1: Happy Hanukkah!

We’d like to wish a very Happy Hanukkah to everyone who is celebrating Hanukkah 2010…including many celebrity parents! When does Hanukkah start?
Hanukkah 2010 officially starts tonight at sundown. This is the earliest that the Hanukkah calendar has started in eight years. When Hanukkah 2010 , also know as Chanukah 2010, starts tonight, it kicks off the first of an eight-night Jewish Festival of Lights.

The following celebrities will be celebrating Hanukkah 2010, so we’d like to send Happy Hanukkah wishes their way!

Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, David Arquette, Brooke Burke, Mayim Bialik, Soleil Moon Frye, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kate Hudson, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name a few.
Read More: When Does Hanukkah Start: Happy Hanukkah To Celebrities Celebrating Hanukkah 2010!

 Adam Sandler told us in the Hanukkah Song that "so many Jews are in showbiz," but in the rush of Christmas spirit, it can be easy to forget the lowly Festival of Lights, which actually is not that big of a deal in terms of Jewish holidays, but has become so over the years to compete with the ever-present glow of the Christmas season.

Because nothing says holidays like spending way too much money on useless items, going into debt and stressing ourselves out -- and who does that better than Hollywood? -- here are just a few celebrities who will be lighting up the menorah tonight, playing a few rounds of dreidel and wolfing some latkes (potato pancakes):
Read More: Hanukkah 2010: Which Celebrities Are Kindling the Lights?

Hanukkah, the eight-day festival of lights, begins Wednesday after sundown. As coffee shops and shopping malls pump our aural pipes full of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Jewish Americans are once more faced with a winter of musical despair: Where is the Hanukkah music?

Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu offers up a theory over at NPR: Jewish American singer-songwriters have been too busy writing Christmas carols:

    "White Christmas," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Silver Bells" and "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting)" were all written by Jews. Both Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand have their own Christmas albums. The No. 1 bestselling Christmas album of all time is from Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, the Jewish smooth-jazz legend Kenny G.
Read More: Happy Hanukkah songs fight back

Whew - Hanukkah starts darn early this year! Why is that? Because Jewish holidays are based on the ancient Hebrew calendar, which accounts for leap year differently than the secular calendar. Hanukkah always begins on the eve of the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, and it celebrates “the triumph of light over darkness.”

In Hebrew, the word “Hanukkah” means “dedication” — specifically, the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed during Syrian-Greek rule in the 2nd century BCE. Following the Maccabean Revolt, “the victorious Israelites were able to reclaim their beloved Temple.” But they only found one tiny last remaining vial of pure olive oil needed to light the Temple’s menorah. Yet miraculously, the menorah continued to burn for eight days while a messenger journeyed to another region to fetch more oil.  So began the ritual of lighting one candle per night until all eight Hanukkah candles are lit. That taller candle you see in the middle of the Menorah is the Shamash, or “helper candle” used to light the others. Tonight, we use it to light the first candle only, tomorrow two candles, and so on.
Read More: Happy Hanukkah! (with Info and Fun Stuff)

Commonly known as the "Festival of Lights," the Jewish holiday Hanukkah is marked by lighting one candle on a nine-branched menorah for eight nights. Jewish families will come together at sundown today as they illuminate their homes and sing blessings of the first night. 

But the real meaning lies in its historical significance of being the first recorded struggle for the freedom of religion in Human history.

As Rabbi Emeritus Amiel Wohl of Temple Israel of New Rochelle explains, "In 165 BC the Greek Syrians, the successors to Alexander the Great who were ruling the holy land then— ancient Israel—wanted to destroy the Jewish religion. So they placed statues of the King in the temple and forced the Jews to worship the Greek gods. The Jews resisted. Their religion was being traduced."
"If they hadn't succeeded in throwing off the tyranny of the Greeks at that point, Christianity wouldn't have been born a century and a half later," he said.
What the Hanukkah story teaches us, Rabbi Wohl said, is that "the freedoms that the U.S. has understood have to be fought for in every generation because freedom really can't be passed down."
More than 2,000 years ago, Judah Macacabee and his army celebrated a victory over Jewish persecution. After restoring their ruined temple, the Jews found only a small amount of oil with which to light the candelabra, or great menorah. It is considered a miracle that the oil burned for eight days, and this miracle is celebrated as part of the festival.
Rabbi Robert Weiner, of the Temple Beth Am in Yorktown, said Hanukkah is a home celebration where each family celebrates with a ritual, and somehow everything is connected to oil to commemorate the miracle of the tiny flask of oil. 

Families will gather with friends and family, make fried potato latkes (similar to pancakes), jelly donuts (heavily made with oil), exchange gifts and play games.
Read More:  Hanukkah: Festival of Lights; Home Rituals Reflect Freedoms