Hanukkiah
The nine-branched lamp lit at Hanukkah: eight lights, one for each night of the festival, and a ninth, the shamash, that lights the others.
Meaning
A hanukkiah is the lamp used only for the Hanukkah lights. One light is added on each night of the eight-night festival until all eight burn on the last evening, each kindled from the shamash, Hebrew for “servant”. The eight lights stand at the same height; the shamash is usually set higher or to one side. My Jewish Learning puts the difference from the Temple Menorah this way: every hanukkiah is a menorah, but not every menorah is a hanukkiah. The Talmud calls the Hanukkah light “a lamp for a person and their home” (Shabbat 21b) and sets it by the doorway, opposite the mezuzah (Shabbat 22a).
Origin and history
Hanukkah commemorates Judah Maccabee’s rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. The custom of kindling lights at the festival was first recorded in the first century CE, and the first Hanukkah lamps were probably clay, according to the Jewish Museum in New York. A talmudic rule against making them look like the Temple menorah had been set aside by medieval times, when lamps with eight and nine branches became common.
Rabbinical authorities prescribed what lamps could be made of, from gold and silver down to acorn shells, but put no limits on decoration. The Jewish Museum’s collection of nearly 1,050 lamps, the largest in the world, includes lead lamps from Germany and Eastern Europe that were melted down after the holiday and recast the next year, and a lamp made in 1942 in the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto from wood stolen from the Nazis. Some antique European lamps have ten holders.
Which way is it lit?
By custom the candles go into the hanukkiah from right to left, the way Hebrew is written, and are lit from left to right, so the newest candle, for the current night, is lit first. My Jewish Learning describes two practices: in Ashkenazi communities the shamash is lit first and used to light the others; in Sephardi communities a separate candle lights them and the shamash is lit last.
Read next
- Next in Jewish symbolsTablets of the CovenantTwo tablets side by side for the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, usually placed above the ark in a synagogue.
- In Hanukkah symbolsDreidelA four-sided spinning top played with at Hanukkah. Its Hebrew letters, nun, gimel, hei and shin, stand for “a great miracle happened there”; in Israel a pei replaces the shin, for “a great miracle happened here”.
See also
Cruse of oil, Gelt, Latkes, Sufganiyot, Menorah, Kinara.
Sources
- The Hanukkiah (Hanukkah Menorah), My Jewish Learning, article
- Menorah, Contemporary American Religion (Judith R. Baskin), Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, entry “Menorah”, Contemporary American Religion
- Accumulations: Hanukkah Lamps (exhibition release), The Jewish Museum, New York, exhibition release
- The Menorah Comes Home, A Year of Zohar, My Jewish Learning and Sefaria, essay
- How to Light the Hanukkah Candles, My Jewish Learning, article
- Chanukah (Dictionary of American History), Regina M. Faden, Dictionary of American History, Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, entry “Chanukah”, Dictionary of American History
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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