BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: On our calendar: Hanukkah, which begins next Friday night. According to the story, in the second century B.C., Jews recaptured their temple in Jerusalem. They relit the lamps with only a one-day supply of oil. But the candles burned for eight days -- hence, the eight days of Hanukkah. We visited the Jewish Museum in New York, where children joined in a Hanukkah sing-along.

SUSAN BRAUNSTEIN (Curator of Archaeology and Judaica, Jewish Museum of New York): The central ritual of the holiday of Hanukkah is the lighting of the lights. That is our commandment, to light these lights.

There is a tradition in Judaism that if you are going to perform the commandments, you should do it in the most beautiful way possible. Hanukkah lamps actually are a wonderful representation of the Jewish experience over time, through the centuries.

They represent a basic tradition fulfilling a commandment to light eight lights, so they must have eight lights. But the way they're formed, the materials that they're made from, and the designs that we find on them are really taken from the countries in which Jews lived. Jews wanted to continue to observe their religion despite the fact that they were scattered in the four corners of the earth.