Jewish Holidays

People customarily give charity in the month of Adar in commemoration of the half-shekel that each individual would donate to the Temple, in Adar, to fund public offerings.

The light of Chanuka becomes dark in Tevet but it never disappears.

The custom of all Jewry, since the geonic period, is to fast on the thirteenth of Adar in commemoration of the fasts that Esther observed before approaching King Aĥashverosh to annul the decree against the Jewish peopleand the fast that the Jews observed on the thirteenth of Adar of that year.

Even though the Torah commands us to wipe out the descendants of Amalek, if an Amalekite agrees to observe the seven Noahide laws, he no longer has the status of an Amalekite, and one may not kill him.

The Jewish war against Greek culture continued with its battle against Christianity, which is a blend of Jewish and Greek-Roman ideas, and continues today as well. The leading culture today is Western culture, built on the foundations of Christian culture. And so the points of difference that exist today between Torah and Western culture are also based on the points of struggle between Greek and Jewish philosophy.

What is Chanuka really all about? Does it revolve around the miracle of the oil lasting for 8 days instead of just 1?