Roughly 200 people put up with the wet weather Sunday evening to watch the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah in Vancouver’s Esther Short Park. The menorah in this instance was an ice sculpture, nearly 6 feet tall.
The Chabad Jewish Center’s event kicked off at 4:30 p.m., when sculptor Jeff Helms of PDX Ice worked to build the menorah by stacking blocks of ice and then adding detail with a chainsaw and other power tools. “Snow?” Helms asked as he angled a sander along the sculpture, spraying tiny flecks of ice toward the crowd.
The Hanukkah celebration included music, food, a laser light show, and a message of hope from Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg. Referencing recent terrorist attacks in Paris and California, the rabbi told the group that through acts of kindness, light can overcome darkness.
Sunday was the first day of this year’s Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights that commemorates the long-ago rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem during the time of the Maccabean Revolt.
Each evening during the holiday another candle on the menorah is lit, and “every day we add one more good thing” to the world, Greenberg said. “Happy Hanukkah and God bless you.”
