Türkiye’s Jewish neighborhood, concentrated in Istanbul, noticed the eighth day of Hanukkah on Sunday evening at Bebek Park within the metropolis. The neighborhood’s leaders, joined by native directors, members of different minorities and diplomats stationed in Istanbul, attended the ceremony the place they lit candles.
Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva, who had fallen ailing earlier, joined the ceremony through videoconference and thanked members for “sharing this splendid evening (with the Jewish neighborhood).”
Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, co-leader of the Turkish Jewish neighborhood, mentioned they have been happy to watch the evening in Türkiye and lamented the truth that their Jewish brothers and sisters elsewhere have been unable to mark it, “like those in Ukraine.”
“We wanted to set up a video link with Ukraine, with a place with a large Jewish community and asked a friend to light a candle there and read a message for Hanukkah. But he told us that he had to go to the community center to light the candle and he had none at home, “nor he did not have electricity … But he could not go to the center either as the city he lived in was under bombardment,” he mentioned.
Sunday was the final day of Hanukkah in accordance with the Jewish calendar, throughout which the trustworthy noticed the day by lighting all eight candles on the menorah.
Hanukkah is well known by Jews worldwide for eight days and nights and falls on the twenty fifth day of the Jewish month of Kislev, which coincides with late November to late December on the secular calendar.
In Hebrew, Hanukkah means “dedication,” as the vacation celebrates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem following the Jewish victory in opposition to the Seleucid monarchy in 165 B.C. Often known as the Festival of Lights, the vacation is well known with the lighting of the menorah, conventional meals, video games and items.
Members of the Jewish neighborhood in Türkiye are principally descendants of Sephardic Jews that took shelter within the Ottoman Empire after fleeing Spain centuries in the past. Their numbers, primarily concentrated in Istanbul these days, dwindled attributable to a pogrom a long time in the past and migration to Israel. In 2015, the neighborhood publicly celebrated Hanukkah for the primary time in a long time in a ceremony held in Istanbul, the place two synagogues have been the goal of terrorist assaults in 2003.
