Jewish Holidays - MSN Encarta

What does Rosh Hashanah mean?

Beginning of the Year

Auld Lang Syne

Happy New Year

End of An Era

Also known as the Festival of Lights, this December holiday is commemorated by the lighting of eight candles on a candelabrum called a menorah.

Festival of Lights (Image credit: Richard T. Nowitz/Photo Researchers, Inc.)

Purim

Passover

Sukkot

Hanukkah

One of the main symbols of Passover is the eating of this flat, unleavened bread, which represents the unrisen bread hastily baked and eaten by the Israelites before their hurried escape from Egypt:

Passover Seder (Image credit: Leland Bobbe/Getty Images)

Challah

Matzo

Rugelach

Bialy

The sounding of the shofar, a trumpet made from a ram's horn, is part of the synagogue service for which two holiest days in Judaism:

Sounding the Shofar (Image credit: Ted Spiegel/Corbis)

Hanukkah (Festival of Lights) and Purim (Festival of Lots)

Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Pentecost)

Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)

Shabbat (The Sabbath) and Aseret Yemei Teshuva (Ten Days of Repentance)

The cornerstone of Jewish religion and law, these sacred scrolls--also called the Pentateuch and the Five Books of Moses--are made up of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible:

What is this? (Image credit: The Jewish Museum/Art Resource, NY)

Tanakh

Torah

Nevi'im

Talmud

During the celebration of Hanukkah, children may play a game of chance with a spinning top called a:

Dreidel

Knish

Bubkes

Schtick

On this High Holy Day, the most solemn and sacred of all Jewish holidays, fasting begins at sundown and ends at sundown the following day:

Fast of Gedaliah

Shavuot

Purim

Yom Kippur

This joyous and celebratory feast, usually falling in March, commemorates the delivery of the Persian Jews from annihilation during the reign of Xerxes I:

Rosh Chodesh

Purim

Pesach

Sefirah

Shabuoth--or Pentecost--a springtime holiday taking place seven weeks after Passover, is observed by reading the Book of Ruth and the Torah portion regarding the Ten Commandments. What does the Shabuoth's symbolic meal consist of?

Dairy foods

Kosher foods

Bagels and lox

Chopped liver and gefilte fish

This holiday, a major fast day in Judaism, commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, both of which occurred in the same month, on the 9th day, 656 years apart.

Tenth of Tevet

Tu Bishvat

Tisha b'Av

Seventeenth of Tamuz