Chanukah: The Festival of Lights

A Chanukah Menorah, or Chanukia (CC0 image via Wikipedia)

Chanukah, also known as the Festival of Rededication, or the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day holiday that generally falls sometime in December (in the Hebrew calendar, the 25th of Kislev). This year it starts on Sunday evening, December 2 and ends in the evening of December 10th. It celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple after the successful revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire. To rededicate the Temple, oil was needed to relight the menorah inside, and there was very little left – only enough to burn for one day.  However, the oil that was used burned for eight days, and to celebrate this, a festival was created – Chanukah.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From GST student Md. Zahidul Haque, on the origin and celebration of Thanksgiving:

Americans celebrate this public holiday as a harvest festival on the 4^th Thursday in November each year in the United States. The First Thanksgiving day was celebrated by the Pilgrims in the new world in 1621 after their first harvest. After the USA became independent, Congress recommended one day each year as Thanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. Canadians also celebrate this day on the second Monday of October. Up to today, we believe that this day is for the celebration of Pilgrims and offering foods to Native Americans. It is also a day of gratitude as well the respect to Native Americans for teaching the Pilgrims how to cook. At that time the pilgrims couldn’t survive without the help of Native Americans.

In New York City, my family and I celebrate this day by joining with our child’s school or family or friend’s homes. For this year’s celebration, we will get together in a common place for dinner. We will make traditional food like carved turkeys, pumpkin pie, corn, vegetables, fruits, as well as some other Indian fried dishes, then serve each other and have dessert at the end of the meal. So every year we are waiting for this day to celebrate.

Wishing everybody a happy, safe, and delicious Thanksgiving weekend!

All Touro library locations will be closed 11/22-11/23.

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month: Veterans Day

Flag in a 3D-printed holder, created at our Bay Shore Library

Here are some facts regarding our veterans:

• 16 million Americans served in World War II
• The youngest of WW2 veterans will be 90 this year (if they enlisted in 1945 at age 17)
• At age 112, Richard Arvin Overton is the oldest verified World War II veteran
• We are losing 372 WW II veterans per day
• There are still about 496,77 veterans from WWII living

How does Daylight Savings Time affect us?

Coming this Sunday, you have to set your clock one hour back again!

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

The controversial policy of daylight saving is one of the most widespread in the world, “used by 77 countries and regions with a combined population in excess of 1.5 billion”¹. The biggest argument in favor of this policy was the impact on electricity consumption. But have you ever wondered how changing the time abrupt affects us,  both mentally and physically?

Comment if you agree or disagree with daylight savings.