Hanukkah has long been my second-favorite holiday, right after Sukkot, the festival Hanukkah was modeled on, at least liturgically. I’ll tell you more about that in a moment. First, I want to share what I remember about celebrating Hanukkah more than 40 years ago, before it was relegated to second place.

I remember learning the stories of the brave Maccabees and the miracle of the oil from a hardcover children’s book that was published before I was born. I remember learning to play dreidel with my cousins, my dad teaching us how to spin it upside-down on its thin handle. I remember watching my Grandma grate potatoes by hand, learning the secret ingredient of her applesauce recipe.

Those warm memories remained undisturbed by my discovery of the “real story” of zealotry and bloody battles in the apocryphal Books of Maccabees and my study of the rabbinic revision of the story in the Talmud.

It was the revelation that the first Hanukkah in 164 BCE was an opportunity after four years for the Hasmoneans to celebrate a belated Sukkot in the rededicated Temple that solidified my appreciation of Hanukkah as a kind of make-up exam for Sukkot. Singing a full Hallel for eight days during this minor, man-made festival finally made sense to me! From that moment on, I’ve been an unwavering member of Team Sukkot.

Yet, as a self-identifying liturgy nerd (note my aside in the previous paragraph regarding the recitation of Hallel), I maintain a special fondness for Shabbat-Rosh Hodesh-Hanukkah, when we read from three sifrei torah (scrolls). While the Hanukkah Torah-Torah-Torah reading is not as rare an occurrence as Thanksgivukkah, it’s rare enough that I remember it happened two years in a row in 5779 and 5780, right before the pandemic, and hasn’t happened since.

Until now.

I’m especially excited about this Shabbat-Rosh Hodesh-Hanukkah because we post-modern Jews in Marlton will be reading from and rededicating three newly restored sifrei torah during an entire weekend of celebration.

As I prepared for my second Hanukkah in South Jersey, I found that the story of our Torah Restoration process has been an inspiration to me and to many members of CBT.

From the beginning, after finding a reputable Sofer (scribe) to examine our sifrei torah and identify three that were the best candidates for restoration, we’ve learned about the painstaking process, which includes cleaning the parchment to eliminate dust and dirt, and to make the letters more legible; using a computer scan to check for errors and making corrections as needed; and attaching each scroll to new atzei chaim, wooden rollers. When the process was completed—about a week before Rosh Hashanah—each sefer torah was delivered not only with a certificate of kashrut but also with a thumb drive containing its digital scan.

We’ve already read from each Torah during the first three months of 5786 and now, with great anticipation, we’re counting down to Shabbat-Rosh Hodesh-Hanukkah, the day before our community Torah Rededication Celebration, when we’ll read from all three.

[Pictured above: Sefer Torah #2, which will be displayed at our Sneak Peek Inside a Newly Restored Torah event]

This post originally appeared in the Jewish Community Voice, published by the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey.