Kids also stuffed dreidels with sandy candy and built menorahs out of marshmallows. And there were potato latkes with apple sauce, jelly doughnuts, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and sprinkles.
Now that’s sweet. And it all fits the theme of Hanukkah, according to Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg of the Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County, because Hanukkah is a time for celebration.
To learn more about the Chabad Jewish Center, visit its website.
“Always, we should practice our religion out of joy, not out of guilt,” Greenberg told the crowd of approximately 200 that turned up despite chilly weather and drizzling rain.
He said freedom of religion is spreading all over the world, and Jews are able to celebrate Hanukkah as never before. This was the sixth annual menorah lighting in Vancouver, he said.
The eight-day holiday of Hanukkah recalls the unlikely victory of a small band of Maccabees over the army of Syrian King Antiochus in the year 165 B.C., the subsequent rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem — and, chiefly, the miracle that occurred during that rededication, as one night’s worth of oil burned for eight nights. Hanukkah is known as the “festival of lights” and involves lighting a menorah candle on each of the eight nights of the holiday — plus a ninth central candle.
The start of the holiday varies on the modern-day calendar between late November and late December.
Today, Greenberg said, Hanukkah is a celebration of “good over evil, light over darkness and spirituality over materialism.”
Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt was on hand to help light the menorah in Esther Short Park. He confided in the crowd that his heritage is Jewish on his father’s side, and he tested out a little Yiddish he picked up at a quick tutorial — during a Rotary Club meeting earlier in the day.
Inside the Hilton Vancouver Washington, the crowd quickly overstuffed the banquet room allotted for it, and extra tables had to be rolled in. A klezmer trio of violin, accordion and clarinet kept the atmosphere festive as people ate and children got ready for a dreidel (a type of top) tournament.
Marty Rifkin of Vancouver said the Jewish community in Clark County is small but very active.
“When you get a celebration like this together, everybody turns up,” he said.
Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County is a local nonprofit organization dedicated to Jewish education and culture.
