Conejo Valley Gets Early Start on Hanukkah

Dancing, singing by a 70-member children’s choir and a menorah lighting ceremony filled out a joyous celebration of Jewish culture Sunday at the fifth annual Conejo Valley Hanukkah Festival.

More than 2,500 people attended the event at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Forty-five vendors sold crafts, jewelry, artwork and Judaica, and visitors ate traditional Jewish foods, made Hanukkah decorations, played games and listened to Yiddish and Israeli music.

“It’s a chance to feel connected to the Jewish community,” said Jennifer Kopczynski, 22, of Thousand Oaks, who came with her family to enjoy the festivities and buy Hanukkah decorations.

Her brothers, Joel, 15, Jonathan, 17, and Jeremy, 19, said the best part was the food.

Organizers began the festival five years ago as a gathering for members of all the temples in the Conejo Valley. A grant from the Jewish Federation Valley Alliance helped get the event off the ground, and each year volunteers from a different temple organize it.

Proceeds will go toward putting on next year’s festival.

It honors Hanukkah, the eight-day celebration that marks the rededication of the ancient Jerusalem temple after traditionalist Jews--called the Maccabees--defeated the Syrians in 165 BC.

The Hanukkah observance features the lighting of eight candles of the menorah, representing the number of days a single vial of oil lasted to light the sacred lamp in the ancient temple. Other traditions include spinning the four-sided tops called dreidels and serving potato pancakes called latkes, both of which have ties to the 165 BC revolt.

“It’s a joyous holiday, a light holiday, but the importance of religious freedom is as serious a message as there could be,” said Rabbi Richard Spiegel of Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks.

This year Hanukkah begins at sundown on Dec. 21.

Inside the Fred Kavli Theatre, the Conejo Valley Hanukkah Festival Children’s Choir sang for the lighting of the menorah, as rabbis from local temples ceremonially “lit” the lightbulbs which substituted for flames on the menorah’s four-foot candles.

Secular activities included a Jolly Jumper, climbing wall, a toy collection drive and a popular hands-on demonstration of 25 lizards, snakes and spiders--put on by Thousand Oaks resident Joe Martin, owner of Reptile Family. Martin’s demonstration drew squeals from his grade-school-age audiences as they petted boa constrictors, tarantulas and a cat-sized monitor lizard named Zilla.

Also popular was a homemade flight simulator--on loan from from the Zimmer Discovery Children’s Museum in Los Angeles--where children could dress up as Israeli pilots and imagine themselves in command of an aircraft.

“It’s almost like an airplane,” said 4-year-old Ian Sharon, of Agoura Hills, who sat in the cockpit’s folding chair, next to his stuffed doll co-pilot.