This year’s annual Chanukah Wonderland at Chabad of Silver Spring features the usual festive refreshments, music, crafts and community. The Dec. 22 event also marks the Chabad school’s grand opening of the Library of Light.
Chanukah Wonderland is a morning full of Chanukah music and traditional holiday foods, including latkes, donuts and gelt (chocolate coins). Rabbi Berel Wolvovsky of Chabad of Silver Spring said that the activities at Chanukah Wonderland are often interactive, allowing children in the community to decorate Chanukah cookies and build a giant dreidel out of LEGO.
Other activities for the 100 to 200 attendees include a photo booth; crafts, such as making Chanukah bracelets, a menorah and dreidel gem art; and a gift-wrapping station for presents to be donated to patients of Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. In the past, Chanukah Wonderland featured an olive oil press demonstration.
“Kids get to see how olive oil is made,” Wolvovsky said. “These [activities] are bringing the traditions to life and having them experience it in a lively way.”
He added that it’s important for young children to experience Judaism in positive ways because these children are “far more likely” to connect with their religious identities as adults.
His wife, Chaya Wolvovsky, the co-director of Chabad of Silver Spring and director of The Gan Montessori, said she looks forward to Chanukah Wonderland every year, which she helps organize.
“We want to bring the joy of Chanukah to our community,” she said.
Even a pandemic didn’t stop this long-standing tradition, Rabbi Wolvovsky said, adding that he turned the 2020 Chanukah Wonderland into an outdoor drive-through experience.
“It means a lot to the kids and families in the community,” Rabbi Wolvovsky said. “It’s something they look forward to. It adds to the excitement and the light of Chanukah.”
He said Chanukah Wonderland engages children of all ages because it is outside the traditional synagogue setting, adding that it is more than just a fun kids’ event.
“We see families who come to the Chanukah Wonderland tend to participate in other things later on,” Rabbi Wolvovsky said, noting the happiness of the occasion.
Although the Wolvovskys are expecting several hundred attendees at their Chanukah Wonderland as usual, many community members will likely be traveling since Chanukah falls on Christmas Day this year during winter break, Chaya Wolvovsky said.
“We’re doing [the event] before Chanukah, to get in the spirit,” she said. “We want to be sure we get to start celebrating in advance.”
She said this year’s event includes the option for kids to make “travel menorahs” to take on vacation with them: “So wherever you are in the world, you can celebrate Chanukah.”
In the past, the local Chabad has hosted Chanukah Wonderland at the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza; this year’s event will take place at The Gan, which shares a building with Chabad.
Chaya Wolvovsky said the school space is “nice and big” to accommodate a large family-friendly event, an opportunity to connect with parents and children in The Gan community.
“I feel like young families are always looking for something fun to do on a Sunday,” she said. “There’ll be this atmosphere of gathering and having a fun time with family and friends.”
In addition to running the Chabad center, the Wolvovskys are also parents of young children.
“I love giving my children creative and meaningful opportunities away from those screens,” Chaya Wolvovsky said. “I love that they can have some association with Judaism being fun; Judaism is not about having to be quiet in a synagogue. It’s about connecting with our heritage, our culture, and especially with what’s going on in Israel today, I feel so strongly that our children should feel proud to be Jewish.”
She added that children should form an early connection with Judaism for this reason: “It really builds them for the future. The whole theme of Chanukah is about light, and how every child is a light that can add to this dark world.”
The new children’s library at The Gan connects to the Chanukah theme of light as well. During Chanukah Wonderland, Chabad of Silver Spring will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Library of Light, down the hall from the main event in the activity room.
The Library of Light is being dedicated in memory of Shneur Zalman Poltkin, a young boy who came to the Greater Washington area for treatment for an illness.
“The families of this town and of the community [were] very helpful to this family and this boy during that difficult time,” Rabbi Wolvovsky said. “We felt it was an appropriate time to open something like this in his memory. The theme of Chanukah is ‘we have the power to make things brighter.’ … This library is going to speak to that.”
The library features parenting books and educational, Jewish-themed books for toddlers through kindergartners. On Dec. 22, children and families will have the opportunity to borrow or purchase books from the library, which goes along with the Chanukah tradition of giving.
“I’m a real believer in early childhood education,” Chaya Wolvovsky said. “That’s what I do, starting young to give children positive, warm, happy experiences in the Jewish environment.”
