[The article below was first published in the Winnipeg Sun on Dec 18,2025 https://www.winnipegsun.com/opinion/spivak-chanukah-reminds-us-of-jewish-ties-to-israel-why-isn-t-that-story-told/article_e3f3aa05-8169-4b5e-abc3-0bde9ede650c.html ]
As Canada’s Jewish community begins to commemorate Chanukah, it is worth asking whether the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is prepared to tell the full story behind this ancient holiday—one that underscores the deep historical and spiritual connection of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in the land of Israel.
The question is especially timely given the Museum’s decision to mount a Nakba exhibit focused on the experiences of Palestinian Canadians. According to the Museum’s public materials, the exhibit centres on personal narratives of displacement. Personal stories are an important and legitimate component of human rights education. But when such narratives are presented without parallel historical context, they risk offering an incomplete picture—particularly on an issue as complex and contested as indigeneity.
Canada’s official foreign policy has long supported a negotiated two-state solution for two peoples. If the Museum is prepared to present one people’s claim to indigeneity through personal storytelling, it is reasonable to ask why it would not also present, concurrently, the equally well-documented historical evidence of Jewish indigeneity to the same land.
Chanukah itself tells that story.
The holiday commemorates the successful revolt of the Jewish Maccabees (167–160 BCE), who rose up in Judea against the Syrian-Greek Seleucid Empire under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The Seleucid attempt to suppress Jewish religious practice—including the desecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem—triggered a rebellion that began in Modi’in and ultimately led to the rededication of the Temple and a period of Jewish self-rule. Chanukah marks both spiritual resilience and national restoration.
These events took place in the second century BCE, demonstrating an established Jewish presence, religious life, and governance in Judea centuries before the emergence of Islam in the seventh century CE. The Maccabees fought to preserve Jewish practices such as Sabbath observance, dietary laws, and Temple worship—evidence of a distinct people rooted in the land long before later empires and religions arrived.
That history is not merely textual. It is archaeological.
Coins from the Hasmonean period, minted following the Maccabean Revolt, remain tangible evidence of Jewish sovereignty in the land. These coins bear Hebrew inscriptions and Jewish symbols, reflecting self-governance and national identity during the Second Temple period.
In June 2024, I met with the CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and brought with me an authenticated bronze prutah minted under John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean king and high priest. Such coins—produced between the second and first centuries BCE—carry inscriptions referencing Jewish religious authority and communal governance. They are widely recognized by historians and see regular display in major museums worldwide.
During that meeting, I argued that if the Museum was prepared to present an exhibit addressing Palestinian indigeneity through personal stories, it should also consider a contemporaneous exhibit addressing Jewish indigeneity through historical and archaeological evidence. Both peoples have narratives rooted in the land, and a national museum dedicated to human rights should strive to reflect that complexity.
I left the meeting unconvinced that the Museum was prepared to pursue such balance. While the discussion was cordial, it did not appear that a parallel exhibit on Jewish indigeneity was under serious consideration.
Chanukah reminds us that Jewish ties to the land of Israel are neither modern nor abstract. They are ancient, continuous, and well documented. A museum tasked with educating Canadians about human rights should be willing to tell that story alongside others—not instead of them, but in the spirit of fairness, context, and historical integrity.
Rhonda Spivak is the editor of the Winnipeg Jewish Review. She is a lawyer by training and previously practised constitutional law with the Manitoba Department of Justice. She was called to the Bar in Israel in 1996 after articling with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, where she worked on human rights cases on behalf of both Arab and Jewish clients.
