Chanukah starts in Roslindale Square

For the fourth year in a row, local Jews gathered in Adams Park in Roslindale to light menorahs to start the eight-day holiday of Chanukah. Several people brought their own menorahs from home for lighting inside a tent at the official start of the evening around 4:12 p.m.. Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B'nai Torah in West Roxbury led roughly 30 people in Chanukah blessings as people inside the tent with menorahs lit the shamash, the candle used each night to light the other candles, and then the night's candle.

Penzner said the holiday, which commemorates the victory of the Jews over occupying Syrian Greeks, is a celebration of both that which unites Jews - and of the differences that make people unique. Penzner noted that Chanukah is hardly the only December religious holiday that celebrates lightness over the darkness, and said they all have to do not only with vanquishing the literal darkness of short winter days but the darkness that many people have to fight.

No sufganiyot, but this being New England, there were Dunkin' Munchkins.