Rabbah Gila Caine: What Chanukah Can Teach Canada About Celebrating Ourselves

by Rabbah Gila Caine 

(Edmonton) – The days are growing shorter. In Edmonton and in cities from coast to coast to coast, temperatures are dropping. And soon, something quite beautiful is about to unfold.

Jewish families across Canada will light the Chanukiah and place it in their windows. This is a moving annual ritual: a defiant assertion of light against the gathering darkness, echoing in its own way the ancient Menorah that once burned in our Temple in Jerusalem, centuries ago.

This light is meant to be seen. It is meant to be public.

Yet Chanukah raises a question that feels particularly urgent for Canada right now. What exactly is this light meant to illuminate? And perhaps more importantly, for whom is it shining?

The answer reveals something profound about Judaism—and about what our country very much needs to hear.

Among the “Abrahamic” faiths, Judaism stands apart in at least one crucial respect: it does not view itself as a missionary religion. We do not seek conversion. We do not attempt to remake others in our image. This is not cultural insularity, nor is it indifference to the wider world. Rather, it reflects something foundational to how Judaism understands its place within human society.

While some faiths, for their own theological reasons, have pursued spreading their message through expansion and conversion, Judaism has embraced a different attitude entirely: the defence of particularism—the right of peoples and cultures to remain distinctly themselves.

That is a real light we offer: An assertion that a people, a culture, a way of life has the inherent right to persist as itself, without apology and without expectation that others will join.

The psychologist Bill Plotkin explores this idea through the concept of individual ecological niches. Just as different species occupy irreplaceable positions within nature’s ecosystem, societies inhabit distinct niches, and so do individuals within a society. I would add that our soul—our neshamah—possesses a singular place in the cosmic order. A life well-lived means discovering and occupying that specific niche with integrity and skill. Nations have such niches. And among the nations, so do Jews.

This frames Chanukah as a moment of public declaration: an affirmation that Jewish life—with its particular rituals, texts and ways of being in the world—represents something vital and irreplaceable. Not superior to others. Not the only legitimate path. But distinctly ours, and worthy of illumination.

For Canada, this carries particular resonance.

In an era of increasing cultural anxiety, we face a fundamental choice about what kind of nation we wish to become. Chanukah offers a lesson worth heeding: we can celebrate and deepen our own cultural identity without diminishing others. The mistake we often make is treating cultural flourishing as a zero-sum game. It need not be. When I light my candles, I do not extinguish yours.

Canadians can stop apologising and stop worrying. Taking care of Canada, taking pride in Canada, investing our talents and resources in our own home does not mean we negate other places. It only means we are taking ourselves seriously.

This is the gift that Canadian Jews can offer the broader nation, and in dark times such light matters more than we might think.

This Chanukah, as flickering candle- lights appear in windows across Edmonton and beyond, they will carry that message. And in a country that increasingly needs to remember what binds us together, that is a light worth seeing.

Chag Sameach.

Rabbah Gila Caine is the Rabbi at Temple Beth Ora in Edmonton.