The Jewish community celebrates the holiday of light and goodness - Hanukkah. Eight candles were lit at the Sofia Synagogue in the ritual candelabrum called hanukkiah. The holiday lasts eight days. It symbolizes the connection of the Jews to the ancient Maccabees who succeeded in defending their faith and rebuilding the temple.

Children and adults gathered at the Sofia Central Synagogue in Sofia to celebrate Hanukkah.

Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova lit the first candle of Hanukkah. ‘It is my great honour to be with you all tonight to dive together in the Hanukkah feast and to relive the message of the victory of light and good. Good is where there is light. The light illuminates the way in which all together we must go as we have done it together in this city for decades. Harmony and understanding, wisdom and tolerance - this is the essence of the spiritual light that has illuminated and will illuminate our Sofia’, said the mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, this in her speech at the Synagogue. She lit the first candle in the ritual candelabrum on the altar.

‘We symbolically light the candles again to show that in our city we have no doubt what is good’, also said Fandakova. She thanked the Jewish community - all who ‘do good and strengthen the millennial spirit of Sofia, of our shared wisdom from the ages. We will together preserve what we have achieved and pass it on to our children and grandchildren - so that they can say one day - they believed and worked for good. For this good, which is unthinkable without the education of our children, without preparing them for life in a good school’, said the mayor of Sofia.

The event was attended by Assoc. Prof. Todor Chobanov, Deputy Mayor of Sofia, Dr. Alexander Oscar, Chairman of the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria Shalom, Sofia Cohen and many members of the Jewish community in Sofia.