Hanukkah Day 7: Chai

Chai is the Hebrew word meaning "life." (And is the root of one of the most famous Hebrew toasts, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.) The word is made up of two Hebrew letters, chet (the one that looks like the pi symbol) and yud (the one that looks like an apostrophe). Because each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a corresponding numerical value, chai also refers to the number 18 (chet = 8, yud = 10) and is a special number in Jewish tradition with many Jews often making charitable donations of $18.