Tausi Insider

Photo : tomertu ( Shutterstock ) Hanukkah (or Chanukah, if you prefer) is an eight-day long Jewish religious festival that usually takes place in late November or early December. It celebrates the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire and the re-dedication of the Second Temple that happened in the 2nd century BCE. That’s the strict definition of the holiday. In practice, in 2022 America, Hanukkah is the “festival of lights,” a winter celebration marked by gift-giving, delicious foods, candle-lighting, and the boring game of Dreidel (more on that below). Religiously, Hanukkah is a comparatively minor holiday, not nearly as significant as the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but it is a favorite among children, particularly American children (probably because of the presents). Theses days the holiday is marked in Jewish communities all over the world, but Jews in the U.S. are the undisputed Hanukkah kings and queens. When is Hanukkah th...

Photo : Olga Savina ( Shutterstock ) Menorahs can get messy. And o n top of whatever dusting you need to do for a decoration that spends most of the year in a box, candle wax is just a pain to clean up. Here’s how to clean all the different kinds of menorahs. How to clean silver menorahs Per Kosher.com , you can de-wax a silver menorah by putting it in the sink and pouring boiling water over top of it. Use a soft sponge to add some silver polish when you’re done, then a second sponge to clean it all with dish soap. Rinse it with hot water and dry it with a cloth. (You can also boil it in the water on the stove and just let the wax melt off and rise to the surface, where you can easily skim it off, but your menorah might be too big.) Before doing this, of course, plug your drain or lay down some tinfoil. Don’t remove the tinfoil and wax until the water has cooled down enough for you to touch it. When it’s time to store the menorah after Hanukkah, put it in a tightly-sealed plastic...