Shabbat or Sabbath is an essential Jewish holiday celebrated each week from Sundown on Friday to Sundown on Sunday. This time is spent with family, without electronics, travel, or communication outside the home.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and is celebrated in the Spring, according to the Lunar calendar. It is common to celebrate by eating apples with honey.
This is the Jewish Day of Atonement for ones' sins, and is considered the holiest time of the year. From Sundown to Sundown one day a year, Jews fast and spend the day in prayer, while repenting their sins for the year.
Passover celebrates the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt by Moses. The holiday consists of a Seder, where passages about the enslavement of Hebrews, the savior Moses, and the plagues sent by God to the Egyptians as punishment, and the eventual freeing of the Hebrews are read. During the Seder, traditions such as symbolically dropping wine on the Seder plate and eating bitter herbs accompany the readings. After the Seder, it is time to eat and relax.
Hannukah is the celebration of the survival of Jewish tradition during the Greek occupation of Israel. Traditionally, a candle is lit every night in Jewish temples. During the occupation, Rabbis were in hiding and unable to acquire candles or oil, but somehow their oil was able to last for 8 nights until the occupation was over. Now, Jews celebrate this victory by lighting one candle each night for 8 nights, usually in December according to the Lunar calendar.
Liberation Day celebrates the liberation of Jews from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland on January 27, 1945 by the Allied Forces. Auschwitz was the most deadly concentration camp, with 1.1 million Jews murdered over the course of the Holocaust.
