Beth Israel Congregation in Bath celebrated Hanukkah with multiple brilliant menorahs, a latke supper, and children’s games including dreidel and rebuilding the temple, using large jenga blocks.

Rabbi Lisa Vinikoor said her reform congregation draws members from the Bath-Brunswick area and throughout southern and central Maine. “We have people from around the Midcoast, but people come from as far away as Portland and Lewiston,” she said. “We live in Maine, and everyone is used to driving miles to get to where we need to go,” she laughed. “They are willing to drive to find a spiritual home that suits them.”

Seventy people joined together for many dishes including latkes; the potato pancakes are a staple of Hanukkah. Children played dreidel for prizes, and worked together to build a tall tower which fell regularly with loud clacks in the corner of the hall.

On Saturday night, the seventh night of Hanukkah’s eight nights, multiple menorahs along a long table were ablaze with light.

Hanukkah, a festival of lights, occurs in November or December. The festival commemorates the re-dedication, during the second century B.C.E., of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. According to legend, the Jewish people rose up against their Greek-Syrian oppressors with the Maccabean Revolt. Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew. It begins on the 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar. It does not appear in the Torah, written before the Maccabean Revolt.

According to ancient sources, in 168 B.C.E., Antiochus IV Epiphanes ordered that Jews worship Greek gods, a reversal from the policies of his father. His soldiers descended upon Jerusalem, massacring thousands of people and desecrating the city’s holy Second Temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs within its sacred walls. The Talmud relates that after the Maccabean Revolt, when Jews recaptured the temple, there was only one night’s worth of untainted olive oil to keep the menorah lit. Even so, the menorah’s light held for eight nights, enough time to procure more oil.