A large menorah will be lit this weekend in a downtown Kelowna park to mark the start of the Jewish holiday Hanukah.
The nine-foot high menorah will be erected—as it has been for the last few years—in Stuart Park across from City Hall. Following the 5 p.m. lighting on Dec. 6, there will be a community celebration for the first night of Hanukkah.
The lighting ceremony will feature Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick, members of Kelowna city council and other dignitaries and community leaders.
“We can brighten up the lives of many, many people around us and it will never ever diminish our own brightness,” said Rabbi Shmuly Hecht of Chabad Okanagan, the organization sponsoring the event.
“As we celebrate this holiday with out brothers and sisters around the world, we are forever grateful to this country (Canada) which prides itself with the rights to religious freedom.”
Kelowna’s menorah is one of thousands of large public menorahs throughout the world being lit this year, including in front of the White House in Washington D.C, which attracts some 4,000 people, and, more poignantly, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which has attracted as many as 20,000 French Jews. Paris was seen of a horrific series of terrorist attacks last month in which 140 people died.
