While the holidays are times for families to gather, Jewish students at UMass Dartmouth are celebrating Hanukkah while cramming for finals.

On Dec. 8, a group gathered at the Campus Center to light the third candle on the menorah as a group. The third night of the holiday also happened to fall on the final day of classes on campus. Finals begin at UMass on Dec. 10 and continued until Dec. 16.

“Finals week is stressful, so it doesn’t really feel like Hanukkah,” said Danielle Brown, 20, a sophomore from Easton.

Brown said that she had exchanged gifts with her parents during Thanksgiving break before she returned to campus. She wished she was home with her parents, celebrating the holiday.

“My parents lit the candles on the first night of Hanukkah, and they FaceTimed me, so I got to see it like that. But it wasn’t the same,” said Brown.

For students stuck in this position – and to give non-Jewish students a taste of the holiday – the Center for Jewish Culture provided students with a place to join together and celebrate.

“Hanukkah celebrates a miraculous victory for religious freedom,” said Rabbi Jacqueline Satlow, a professor and the director of the Center for Jewish Culture at UMass. “Just a few freedom fighters were able to defeat the Greek army.”

“It’s not only a celebration of that, it’s a celebration of the miraculous nature of light,” she said, adding that many winter holidays are based around the theme and symbolism of light and darkness.

“The Greeks had defiled the Temple in Jerusalem. When they went to clean it, they didn’t have enough oil to light the lamp. They only had enough for one day,” said Satlow. “The miracle was that the oil lasted for eight days – long enough for them to press olives and make more oil.”

One of the eight candles is lit every night using a central, ninth candle called a shamash. Foods cooked in oil such as latkes (potato pancakes) and suvganiyot (jelly doughnuts) are foods traditionally eaten around Hanukkah and were available to students at the Campus Center. Satlow also gave the students dreidels.

“One of the things that the Greeks didn’t allow the Jewish people to do was study the Torah,” said Mark Altabet, a professor at the School for Marine and Science Technology. “If the Greek soldiers would come, they would pull out the dreidel and make it look they were gambling instead of studying [the Torah].”

For many of the students present, it was an opportunity to get a feel for the holiday, even if they themselves were not Jewish. Aaron Locke, 22, a senior from Westminster, said he works as a resident assistant at Aspen Hall and wanted to get people together.

“We’re here to learn new things. I didn’t even know there was a Jewish presence on campus,” said Locke. “I’m an RA, so I’m trying to build community.”

As for Brown, she said she’d be returning home immediately after completing her finals.

“I’m going home this weekend, so I’ll get the tail-end of Hanukkah with my family,” she said. “But I gotta study.”