F6: Chanukah

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A Chanukah event

One of the nice things about Chanukah is that is quite easy to organise an event in school in which the whole assembly together could celebrate the festival. There are a variety of visual effects that could provide a focus for these activities. The obvious example is lighting the candles. All you need is to get hold of a chanukiah and light those lights. (Make sure to check this first with 'the powers that be' - the last thing you want would be to set of the fire alarm!). This could be accompanied by singing or readings. You could try and formulate the historical summary given earlier into a playlet or photocopy those paragraphs and ask members of the audience to create their own time line of events, using pens and paper.

- If you were feeling particularly rich and had access to a bakery, you could even give out doughnuts, a traditional Chanukah food due to the fact it is fried in oil. (Try eating a jam doughnut covered in sugar without licking your lips!).

- Finally, play the game of dreidel with everyone or in small groups - phone JAMS on 020 8446 1477 if you are not sure how to play. All in all, this could easily be made into a fun, festive event.

The Paranormal

- A useful way to begin discussing one attitude to nature is through a discussion of the X files. The playlet on the next page could provide a useful introduction to the topic. Stopping it half way you ask your audience in groups to complete the scene, continuing the Chanukah theme. What do they think it was that Mulder had found?

- Try and get your audience to be as creative as possible - maybe even acting out there ideas in small groups. (They may need some prompting. It could be a Chanukah kind of ghost; a Jewish version of Scrooge. Or perhaps a Genie in a Chanukah Lamp. How about a Maccabean soldier in a time warp, arriving in the twentieth century. The possibilities are endless...)

- On a more discussion- based level, there is room for a debate between Agent's Scully and Mulder in terms of their attitude to X-file cases. How do you relate to paranormal phenomena? Are you an Agent Scully, sceptical of the whole business and believe that there is a scientific explanation behind each X file case? Are you an Agent Mulder convinced there are many unexplained phenomena "out there" that science just cannot explain.

- Try and get your audience to relate their own weird and wonderful X-file cases.

- It is important to discuss why it is that some people are more fascinated by the paranormal than the normal. (You rarely see festivals being made over the fact that one can boil an egg!). Nature itself can be seen as miraculous and amazing, eve though it is expected, as the comparison between Adam's festival and the miracles of Chanukah has shown.

- You could begin a discussion by writing the word MIRACLE on the board and brainstorming any examples of miracles that people may have heard about. From this, ask people to try and see what all these events have in common; a definition of the term 'miracle'.

The winter solstice

Solstice mans "sun standing still" and the winter solstice is when, as a result of the earth's tilt, your hemisphere is leaning farthest away from the sun, and therefore the daylight is the shortest and the sun has its lowest arc in the sky. Now this may not mean to much to you, but to ancient people very dependent upon and aware of natural cycles, this was a significant time of year and was often turned into festivals to mark the cycles in nature. There are loads of alternative sites on the web discussing the meaning of the solstice today and suggesting weird and wonderful solstice rituals that are fun to read about. (One example can be found at www.nightkitchen.com. The family fertility ritual described there is not recommended for assembly use!). A discussion of the significance of such celebrations in the late twentieth century could follow on from your discussion of the miraculous. (It is ironic that there are so many solstice sites on the web - nature and technology coming together).

The rebel yell

The Israeli response to Chanukah described earlier is interesting. Is your image of Jews really one of powerful rebels or something different? In many ways, the celebration of Chanukah is a celebration of this rebellion and an early example of a struggle for religious freedom. A rather American response to the Chanukah story can be seen in the following quote, taken from a textbook designed to help American educators teach about Chanukah.

"Chanukah was the first struggle for religious freedom in the history of the world. It affirms the Universal truth that the only effective answer to oppression is to fight for and defend the very values and principles which that oppression tries to suppress".

- What do you think of this statement. Are there values for which you feel it s worth getting up and fighting for? Is this always the best response to oppression? One way to explore this response to Chanukah is to write the following time line on the board and discuss and compare each of the cases.

1220 BCE Jews leave Egypt
165 BCE Maccabean Revolt
1215 CE The Magna Carta
1776 CE American Revolution
1789 CE French Revolution

What do all these cases have in common? Does Chanukah really fit in well with the others? Are there any other cases you would like to add to this time line? What title would you give it?

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