Happy Chanukah (and why I transliterate the Hebrew this way)

On 23 December 2014 we light the final Chanukah candles to celebrate a great victory for religious freedom that occurred some 22 centuries ago. As I wish a very Happy Chanukah to all, I beg you to indulge me for a relatively minor complaint, namely, how some people mispronounce the name of our holiday and how it is, IMHO, misspelled by the major media!

Too many people (including some in my Jewish congregation who should know better) say "Hanaka" as if it is "Canada" in disguise, with an "H" for a "C" and a "k" for a "d"!

And, if that isn't bad enough, the media and Wikipedia (and sometimes even the newsletter of my Jewish congregation) spell it with an "H" at the beginning and a double "kk" in the middle, which, if you know anything about the Hebrew spelling, makes no sense at all.

In Hebrew, the name of our holiday is written with vowel points as "חֲנֻכָּה" (or as "חנוכה" without vowel points).

As my graphic above demonstrates, the first letter "חֲ" is the Hebrew Chet, which is a back-of-the-throat guttural sound (like the "ch" in the Scottish "loch") that has no directly equivalent English letter representation. There have been efforts to represent that sound as "Kh" (which I find ugly) or "Ḥ" (a dot or line under the letter "H"), but, why not stick with what, until the past decade or so, has been traditional, "Ch"? The vowel points under the letter stand for the short "ah" sound.

The second letter "נֻ" is the Hebrew Nun, which sounds like the English "n". The vowel points beneath it are sounded like the English "u" (or the "oo" in "too").

The third letter "כָּ" is the Hebrew Kaf, which sounds like the English "k". (Please note there is only ONE "כָּ", so there is no basis for the double "kk" misused by the media nowadays.)The vowel points under it are sounded like the English long "aw" in the traditional Ashkenazim pronunciation my wife and I learned as children, or "ah" in the Sephardi pronunciation that was adopted by the time our daughters went to Hebrew school.

The final letter "ה" is the Hebrew Hey, which sounds like the English "h".

Put them all together and you get Chanukah!

This past Sunday our Jewish congregation hosted a ceremonial lighting of the large Chanukah Menorah in the Spanish Springs Town Square in The Villages, FL. Despite some scattered showers, we had a huge turnout and a good time was had by all. The Chanukah spelling conflict is nicely illustrated in the songbook we prepared for the occasion, where "Chanukah" appears some 27 times, and the "kk" version appears only 10 times!

Ira Glickstein

Happy Chanukah

Chanukah, the Jewish "Festival of Lights" celebrating a great victory for religious freedom in the second century BC, comes early this year.

This evening we had the pleasure of enjoying the lighting of the first candle with our triplet grand-daughters. Of course we ate traditional latkes (potato pancakes). Our grandchildren's Rabbi is anything but traditional. Not only is she a woman, but a woman married to a woman! Definitely not my grandfather's kind of Rabbi, but she is wonderful!

We hope everyone enjoys the winter holiday season with friends and family.

Chanukah is not an "important" Jewish holiday as it celebrates an event that occurred after the Hebrew Bible was completed. However, in modern times, in competition with Christmas, Chanukah has assumed major proportions.

I think it is fair to say that both Christmas and Chanukah really co-opt the Roman "Saturnalia" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia . That winter holiday is based on the Greek "rebirth of the Sun" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice). The ancients noticed that the Sun rose lower and lower as November and December wore on. There was a danger, if the trend continued, the Sun would not rise at all, and everyone would freeze. So, around the winter solstice, when the Sun begins to rise higher and higher, everybody lighted candles and were thankful the Sun was reborn.

So, "Yo Saturnalia", and "Merry Christmas", and "Happy Chanukah" and, for all the atheists in our group, have a "Wonderful Winter Solstice" (or, fellow Seinfeld fans, "Festivus for the Rest of Us")!

The Glickstein Family

PS: Note on English spelling of Chanukah (vs Hanukkah or Hanuka, ...)

The Hebrew Spelling is:

Reading from right to left, we have the consonant CHet (throat-clearing gutteral sound like the Scottish loch and German Bach) with the vowel A below it; the consonant Nun; the vowel U (as in blue); the consonant Kaf with the vowel Ah below it; and, finally, the consonant Hey. When I was a child, it was always written as "Chanukah".

However, some linguists got into the act and decided that "CH" was not the best way to represent the gutteral Hebrew sound the way it had traditionally been represented in loch or Bach. They used an H with a mark over it. Well, that got simplified into a plain H, and, as a result, many people pronounce it as "Hanuka".

The problem with that spelling is there are only six letters! You need eight if you are going to put one letter on each of the eight candles. So someone, who must have been unaware of the Hebrew, added an extra K in the middle and an H at the end, and the result is HANUKKAH which has become the standard spelling in major US media. Please note there is only one Kaf in the Hebrew spelling, so there is no justification for the double KK.

Please, as a Christian friend told me: "Put Christ back in Christmas and the CH back in Chanukah!"