Chanukah is an eight day holiday, so that means there must be a time when we are halfway through it. So that’s the end of the fourth day, right? Not so fast. If we think about the lighting of the menorah each night, there is a point in the holiday when we have lit half of the candles we will light throughout all of Chanukah. Is that also the end of the fourth night? If not, can you figure out which candle on which night that happens?

Solution: It happens when lighting the third candle on the sixth night.

We light a total of 36 candles throughout Chanukah: 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8.

That means that half of the candles is 36 divided by 2 which is 18. After the fifth night, we have lit 15 candles since 1+2+3+4+5=15. That means that after the third candle of the sixth night we have reached the halfway point in the number of candles, since 15+3=18.

Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach.

Ari Blinder is a math educator living in Highland Park and the owner of Math for the Masses, an innovative math tutoring and consulting company. For more information, visit www.math4masses.com. Ari can be reached at [email protected].