The Jewish Year: Passover, the High Holy Days and Hanukkah

The Jewish calendar is lunisolar, so festivals fall on different secular dates each year. Passover (Pesach), in spring, recalls the Exodus with a Seder meal at which families retell the story using the Haggadah, eat matzah (unleavened bread) and bitter herbs, and ask the Four Questions, traditionally voiced by the youngest child. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year in autumn, is marked by the blowing of the shofar (ram's horn), and ten days later comes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a 25-hour fast devoted to repentance and prayer.

Sukkot follows, when families eat in temporary huts recalling the desert journey. Hanukkah, in winter, commemorates the rededication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV in the 2nd century BCE; its eight nights of candles recall a tradition about oil that burned for eight days. Hanukkah is a minor festival religiously, though it gained prominence in some countries alongside Christmas.