PULTEVENT
Hanukkah party games: 7 ideas for families and friends
The fifth night, in a narrow terraced house in north London. Six candles are burning in the window, five plus the shamash, and the menorah is the one my friend Dana's grandfather brought over, slightly bent on one side. The blessings are done. The latkes are on the table in a pile that was taller ten minutes ago, with applesauce at one end and sour cream at the other, and the table has quietly split into two camps along that line. Her father-in-law, who is not Jewish and has been going to this party for twenty years, is losing at dreidel to a six-year-old and taking it personally.
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A Hanukkah party runs on a different rhythm from most winter parties. There's a fixed moment at the start, when the candles are lit and the blessings said, and many families like to sit with the candles for a while before anything else happens. The games come after that, and they need to fit around food, children, gelt and the dreidel that has been spinning on the coffee table since dessert. None of what follows replaces any of that. It fills the part of the evening after the lighting, when the room is warm and full and somebody asks what's next.
I run these games with PULTEVENT: a laptop browser connected to the TV, the game on the big screen, and guests answering on their own phones after scanning a QR code. No app, no account. The phones need internet. One thing to plan for honestly: if one of the eight nights falls on a Friday, many families don't use phones or screens from Friday sundown until Saturday night, so put the screen games on a different night of the eight.
7 Hanukkah party games for the evening after the lighting
1 The Hanukkah quiz
Ten questions answered from phones, four options each: what the word Hanukkah means, how many branches the Hanukkah menorah has, which letters are on a dreidel, what gelt means in Yiddish.
How to run it. Write it in the quiz builder using the fact list further down. Read each answer out when it's revealed, because the explanation is half the fun.
It gives guests who didn't grow up with the festival the story, and gives the ones who did a chance to show off.
2 True or false, Hanukkah edition
Statements on the TV, true or false on the phones. 'Hanukkah always falls in December.' False. 'The candles are placed from right to left and lit starting with the newest one.' True, in common practice.
How to run it. Include a couple that even the family's resident expert has to think about.
Quick rounds, lots of arguing, and the arguments are about real things.
3 The dreidel tournament
Real dreidels on the table, real gelt, played the traditional way. The screen's job is the team scoreboard, so the whole room can see which table is ahead after each round.
How to run it. At the end of each round, each table reports its gelt count and you enter it. Keep the spinning off the screen, where it belongs.
Dreidel is already the game everyone plays. A shared scoreboard turns six separate games into one tournament.
4 Latkes or sufganiyot: the vote
The great debates, settled by phone vote with the bars growing on the TV. Latkes or sufganiyot. Applesauce or sour cream. Jam or custard in the doughnut. Crispy edges or soft middle.
How to run it. Make it anonymous. People will vote against their own grandmother's recipe only if nobody knows.
Every guest has an opinion, including the ones who've been quiet all evening.
5 A story for every candle
The guest wheel spins on the screen and stops on a name. That person tells a short Hanukkah memory: the year the menorah set off the smoke alarm, the first latkes they ever made, a grandparent's version of the story.
How to run it. Load the guest names in advance. Anyone can pass, and a wink from the host to the wheel is allowed.
It brings out the family history that gets told once a year and nowhere else.
6 Whose Hanukkah photo is it
Old photos from past Hanukkahs and baby pictures of the people in the room. Guests guess who's in each one before you reveal it.
How to run it. Ask for the photos privately a week before, and don't let anyone post them in the family chat.
The best laughs are always the 1980s haircuts next to the menorah.
7 Messages from far away
Grandparents in Tel Aviv, a cousin at college who couldn't get home, an aunt in Buenos Aires. Their short clips play on the TV as one-tap buttons between games.
How to run it. Ask each person to light their own candles on camera if they're filming on one of the eight nights. It links the two rooms.
A festival about light in the dark is a festival about family, too. This brings the missing ones in.
After the candles, not instead
The lighting and blessings come first. The screen stays dark until they're done.
A quiz that gets the facts right
Nine branches, 25 Kislev, the letters on the dreidel. Answers you can check, no fuzzy trivia.
Good for mixed rooms
Friends and partners who didn't grow up with Hanukkah learn the story as they play.
Family far away on the screen
Short videos from grandparents in another country, played between rounds.
Quiz facts you can rely on
Hanukkah means 'dedication'. It remembers the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabees' revolt against the Seleucid Greek rulers in the second century BCE. According to the Talmud, there was only enough pure oil to keep the Temple lamp burning for one day, and it lasted eight, which is why the festival has eight nights and why fried food is part of it.
The Hanukkah menorah, also called a hanukkiah, has nine branches: one for each night, plus the shamash, the helper candle used to light the others. The festival starts on the 25th of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar, which is why its dates move around on the everyday calendar, anywhere from late November to late December. Many families put the menorah in a window so the light can be seen from the street.
A dreidel has four Hebrew letters: nun, gimel, hei and shin, standing for 'a great miracle happened there'. In Israel the last letter is pe, for 'a great miracle happened here'. In the game, nun means nothing, gimel takes the whole pot, hei takes half and shin means you put one in. Gelt is Yiddish for money. Sufganiyot are jam-filled doughnuts, especially popular in Israel. Latkes are potato pancakes fried in oil.
Respect the order of the evening
Hanukkah isn't one of the festivals commanded in the Torah, and work is allowed on it, but the candle lighting still matters to people, and I treat it that way. The host console stays on a quiet splash screen with a caption like 'Happy Hanukkah from the Levys' until the candles are lit and people have eaten. If the family says a blessing over the food or sings after the lighting, wait for it to finish. Ask the family how they do it before the evening, not during.
"When do you want the games?"
"After the candles and after the latkes. Before the kids fall asleep on the sofa."
Shabbat and the eight nights
Over eight nights, at least one will usually be a Friday. In families who keep Shabbat, the Hanukkah candles on Friday are lit before the Shabbat candles, before sundown, and phones and screens stay off until Saturday night. So plan the screen party for a weeknight or for Saturday after Shabbat ends. It's also a nice night for it: the Saturday-night party after havdalah is a tradition in plenty of communities.
For interfaith families and friends
Many Hanukkah parties now include partners, in-laws and friends who didn't grow up Jewish. The quiz does a lot of quiet work here: people learn why there are nine branches and what the letters on the dreidel mean without anyone having to give a lecture. Avoid framing Hanukkah as a version of Christmas. It has its own story, its own food and its own games, and those are more interesting anyway.
Synagogue, school and community parties
For a larger party in a community hall or a Hebrew school, use a projector and play in teams by table, with one phone per table if the kids are young. The dreidel tournament and the latke vote scale up well. In a hall of sixty, the scoreboard does the job of a referee and the host keeps the pace.
Getting ready before the first night
Load the quiz, the photos and the video messages in the free 3-day demo, no card needed, and run it once on your own TV. If it suits your family, the full version is a one-time license with no subscription, so it's there again next year. Pricing is on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run a Hanukkah games evening on the TV
- 1
Pick a night of the eight that isn't Shabbat, and ask the family how they run the lighting.
- 2
Write the quiz and true-or-false rounds, and collect photos and video messages.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the TV, test the Wi-Fi, and set a quiet splash screen.
- 4
Light the candles and eat first, with the screen games waiting.
- 5
Play the quiz, the latke vote and the story wheel while the dreidel tournament runs at the tables.
- 6
Finish with the scoreboard results and the video messages from family far away.
FAQ
When should the games start?
Can we play on Shabbat?
Is there a ready-made Hanukkah quiz?
Do guests need an app?
Does the dreidel game run on the screen?
Can grandparents abroad join in?
How much does it cost?
See also
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