Over eight days from Thursday 10 to 18 December this year, the Jewish community of Melbourne is celebrating Hannukah, or Chanukah.

Pillars of Light, at Federation Square, provides Melburnians with an opportunity to come together over a multicultural celebration, to share the light, and focus on what unites us as a city, particularly after such a difficult year.

Maria Dimopoulos AM, Special Adviser, Multicultural Communities for the Victorian Government, spoke last Friday at the Pillars of Light.

“We all celebrate the light as symbol of love and multiculturalism, it is a celebration which began as conflict over 2000 years ago between the Seleucids and the community of Jews in Syria, which now brings us together,” Ms Dimopoulos said.

The celebrations this year are hosted by Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann from the Ark Centre and feature various speakers, artists and sportspeople.

Hannukah means “dedication” in Hebrew and is commemorated with the lighting of a candle in the Menorah each day representing the eight days that the Maccabees held out in the temple against the troops of the Greek Syrian Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV.

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L- R Vedran Drakulic OAM – Chief Executive Officer, Gandel Philanthropy, Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann from the Ark Centre and Fotis Kapetopoulos from Neos Kosmos

“We all celebrate the light as symbol of love and multiculturalism, it is a celebration which began as conflict over 2000 years ago between the Seleucids and the community of Jews in Syria, which now brings us together,” Ms Dimopoulos said.

About 2,200 years ago a war ensued between the Seleucid Emperor of Syria and the Jews, when a priestly family, the Maccabees, organized a successful rebellion against Emperor Antiochus IV who had placed Zeus in the Temple.

“We are all here to celebrate the diversity and unity of this great city, and what once was an attempt for the inheritors of Alexander the Great’s empire to suppress us has now become a bond of unity between the Greek and Jewish people,” said Rabbi Gabi to Neos Kosmos.

Across the eight nights, diverse Melbourne communities come together, including representation from the Muslim, Vietnamese, Greek, Indigenous and Chinese communities.

The Maccabees sought to rededicate the Temple to God, as the Greeks had been worshipping Zeus there. Antiochus IV, unlike his father who was allowed the Jewish population to continue to maintain its faith, sought to impose Greek ways on the Jewish community.

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As part of the rededication, they needed to relight the menorah, whose source of fuel was olive oil. The Maccabees only found a single jar of undefiled oil, and that oil was only enough to last a single day. Legend has it that the menorah stayed lit for eight days with a small vial of olive oil lasted eight days.

Many of the Hellenised Jews that fled to Greece after the Hannukah are called Romaniotes and represent the oldest Jewish community in Greece dating back to Alexander the Great and the Hannukah.