DanielX9

The first night of Hanukkah is tonight. Or is it Chanukah? Xanike? Hanwcuh? Janice?

Well, being the very serious computer scientist I am, I realized that of course the only way to answer this question was to train a neural net. After all, now that we throw them at all sorts of problems that we really shouldn’t, let’s see if they can teach me the true meaning of Chanuqa.

There are 16 “not too weird” English spellings of this holiday, because you can sort of mix and match Ch vs. H at the start, number of n’s, number of k’s, and whether there’s an h at the end. But that’s simple enough that you’re not going to get anything interesting out of that. If you throw in Spanish spellings with a J at the start, French spellings that use ou for the second vowel, and a smattering of Yiddish transliterations like Khanike, you get a more interesting training set. But the magic really happens when you find shitposts. Because the truth is there’s nothing certain Jews like more than coming up with increasingly stupid spellings for the Festival of Lights. So Zhajnuquye? Ghanikehah? Xanixax? Hchkhkannuckwauaaha? All obviously in the training data.

I landed with a 51-word training set. This is generally too small for a neural net, but I discovered the online version of char-rnn (thanks, google), I lowered some (or, well, a lot) of parameters, and set it to train. It did spit back some of the training set or some combinations that led to actual weird but plausible spellings. But when I really cranked up the creativity parameter, there was some holiday magic.

So, without further ado, a neural net’s spellings for tonight’s holiday: annukah Januqua Gannuko channuuckka Hokaniqxe Ghhajnuoka Khaghajnike Zhajnuquqxcahhah Janiqqxchkhkhhahkkannuquke Hoogh

a freilichen chanukah

hanukka alegre

هانوكا سعيد

 حَنوکا مبارک

frohes chanukka

joyeux hanouka

buon chanukkà

bon hanukkà

feliz janucá

vrolijk chanoeka

mutlu hanuka

с счастливой Хануки

срећна Ханука  

Χαρούμενο Χανουκά

修殿節 快樂

हनुका मुबारक हो

happy hanukkah

Wow, thank you JewWhoHasItAll for posting this helpful guide! Now I can support my Christian students much better :)

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CRACKS KNUCKLES. STRETCHES ARMS. OKAY SO LIKE.

so like it’s something something bce and israel/judea/whatever you wanna call it has been INVADED BY THE GREEKS. specifically, invaded by a bro named antiochus, pronounced aunt-eye-oh-kiss, who is a dick.

thing about hanukkah is that, like, there’s the Historical Story, which is important and worthy of study and shit, and then there’s the Hanukkah Story, which is more fun

so in Historical Story the invasion by the greeks was pretty slow and there was a lot of hellenization of jewish culture and blah blah blah 

in Hanukkah Story the greeks SMASHED IN WITH A BUNCH OF SWORDS and were like FUCK YOUR TEMPLE. FUCK YOUR GOD. FUCK YOUR PASSOVER, AND ALSO, FUCK YOU. and they DESTROYED THE TEMPLE and let, like, pigs go running around in it? which, if you know literally anything about judaism: pigs in the temple. they set pigs on the fucking holy fucking temple.

ANyway, then a greek general was like “yo, okay, i am threatening you all with Death unless you sacrifice to zeus.” and everyone was very Stoic and Rebellious until one bro was like FINE!! I WILL SACRIFICE TO ZEUS, GIMME THE STATUE OF ZEUS, IMMA KILL AN ANIMAL AND GO YAY ZEUS. i’m not sure if this also happened in the temple, but i like to think of it happening in the temple, because sacrifices to an idol??? in the holy fucking temple???? and he is almost about to kill the animal WHEN

WHAM, here comes mattathias (a.k.a. matisyahu, a.k.a. no, not the rapper) and CUTS OFF THE BRO’S HEAD.

then he yells ANYONE WHO WANTS TO FIGHT BACK COME TO THE HILLS!!!! and FLEES to the hills along with his sons. their family name is MACCABEE and so they are known as the MACCABEES, which means THE SLEDGEHAMMERS, because this story was apparently NOT METAL ENOUGH ALREADY.

meanwhile the occupation continues. there is a chick named HANNAH, who i have loved for one thousand years because i can either identify with her or hannah-samuel’s-mother, who is boring.

hannah has SEVEN SONS, which is MORE THAN I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE. the greeks capture them all and go “EAT PORK. EAT IT. EAT IT.” hannah and her seven sons are like no!! wtf calm the fuck down with your pork

so the greeks, who have literally no chill, go “okay, we’re gonna torture son #1 until he eats pork.” which they do - except the son does not eat the pork?? and eventually he just like DIES and the greeks are like, WHAT THE FUCK, okay, TIME TO TRY THIS AGAIN.

so they try it with son #2 and it is EQUALLY INEFFECTIVE. NO PORK, NO EATING. the greeks are BEWILDERED, they go on to torture and kill sons #3 THROUGH #7. LITERALLY ALL OF THEM. NONE OF THEM EAT PORK.

the greeks are like “HANNAH. HANNAH. YOU HAVE JUST WATCHED ALL YOUR GODDAMN CHILDREN DIE. EAT THE DAMN BACON.”

but hannah is the most rad of all the jews. she goes “i will not eat your fucking pig because you KILL PEOPLE ABOUT IT. god DAMN calm the fuck down and LET US BE JEWISH LITERALLY WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE.”

the greeks have an elephant!! the greeks have A HUGE ARMY!! the greeks have a Whole Fucking Empire! the jews have, like, matisyahu and his five kids. (one of them is judah maccabee, who i like to think of as Very Hot.)

and we win.

[intermission: NO-OT BY MI-IGHT AND NO-O-OT BY POWER (TAKE A SHOWER!!!) BUT BY SPIIIIRIT ALONE (RUACH) SHALL WE ALL LIVE IN PEEEEAAAAAAAAAACE.]

so we kick! the greeks! out! of israel/judea/palestine/whatever! and we’re like FUCK YES WE’RE GONNA KICK THE PIGS OUT OF THE TEMPLE WE’RE GONNA CLEAN THE TEMPLE WE’RE GONNA MAKE THE TEMPLE NICE AS SHIT

okay. quick note on the law, for gentiles: one of the most important things about synagogues is that you always gotta have a light in it. it represents god, and it can’t ever, ever go out. it can be electric or fire or anything, but it cannot go out.

so the jews get into the temple and the light is fire, obviously, because electricity has not been invented yet, and the light is almost out.

Oh Shit, say the jews.

there’s oil to keep the light burning. there’s enough oil to keep the light burning for one day. the nearest supply of oil is eight days away, round-trip.

Oh Shit. say the jews.

i mean. what are you gonna do. they send off a guy on a horse to go for the oil. they light up the remaining oil. they scrub the temple floors, and kick the pigs out, and sit, and recover, and wait for the fire to go out.

the fire doesn’t go out.

for one day, it lasts. then for another. for eight fucking days the oil burns, and the horseman returns with the new supply, and the fire is still burning in the temple. the fire never goes out in the temple. we survive the entire invasion and the fire never goes out once.

most jewish stories are stories about survival. this one’s about a little more than that. because we could have assimilated; we could have hellenized. we could have worshiped their gods and eaten pork, and we would have lived.