BANGOR, Maine — Rebecca Siemers would like some snow for Hanukkah.
The 11-year-old daughter of Rabbi Bill Siemers said Sunday after lighting the first candle of the holiday that besides hoping for snow, she plans to spend some time spinning the dreidel and winning a few coins.
Like Jewish families around the world, the Siemers began celebrating the Festival of Lights after the sunset on Sunday. Because they have a collection of menorahs, each member of the family — Bill, his wife, Deborah, Rebecca and 6-year-old Daniel — was able to light a candle.
“The great thing about Hanukkah is that it is family time,” the rabbi said. “It’s done in the home, it’s not a synagogue-centered holiday.”
Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem by Judah Maccabee in 165 B.C. after the temple had been destroyed by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria. The oil found in the temple should have lasted just one day but miraculously burned for eight.
The holiday lasts eight days, with an additional candle in a menorah lit each night by the shamash, or servant candle, and includes the exchanging of gifts.
“The first candle doesn’t seem to create a whole lot of light, but there’s more every night,” Rabbi Siemers, who has been the rabbi at Beth Israel for about 18 months, said Sunday as his wife struck a match and lit the shamash on the four menorahs.
The holiday also celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality, according to a website about Jewish practices, Chabad.org.
It is a minor religious holiday, but its December celebration has given it more significance as a cultural tradition, especially in Western countries where Christmas and all its religious and secular trappings dominate public and private activities.
The first Hanukkah gifts were coins, nuts and sweets that families in Eastern Europe used hundreds of years ago as they played with the dreidel. Spinning the dreidel, or top, is a popular Hanukkah game in which each player takes turns trying to acquire the treats heaped in the kitty.
Depending on which side the dreidel topples over on, the spinner gets “nisht” or nothing in the kitty, “gantz” or all of the kitty, “halb” or half the pot, or “shpil,” which means play again, the rabbi said, using Yiddish terms.
Other traditions include eating foods cooked in oil, such as latkes or potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts.
The synagogue will hold a community Hanukkah celebration at Beth Israel, 144 York St., from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13.
“Families will bring their own menorahs and light seven candles that night,” the rabbi said Sunday. “We will make quite a bit of light that night.”