Hanukkah is a festival of light that enters the home and remains there. It is a light that does not demand proof and does not require explanation. It is kindled candle by candle and quietly becomes part of family life, children’s joy, and the intimate space of the home. For this reason, Hanukkah is experienced not only as a historical memory, but as a living, embodied celebration.

Although classical sources never explicitly state that Hanukkah is connected to animals, in practice we constantly see this association. One only needs to open the internet and look at Hanukkah greeting cards, children’s books, illustrations, or festive images: animals appear next to the hanukkiah, near the candles, the dreidel, and Hanukkah treats. This is not a commandment and not a formal tradition, but a natural result of the fact that Hanukkah is a family-centered and, in many ways, a child-centered holiday. Wherever there is a home and children, animals often appear as part of the warm, living world in which the holiday is not merely remembered, but truly lived.

In Jewish tradition, animals have never been random images. Each tribe of Israel had its sign and its symbolic language. The lion is associated with the tribe of Judah, the House of David, and Jerusalem, and from this house the Messiah will come. The ox is associated with Joseph and the experience of life in Egypt. These images are not decorative; they speak of character, responsibility, and destiny.

The cat, too, is not foreign to Jewish tradition. The Talmud teaches: “If the Torah had not been given, we would have learned modesty from the cat” (Eruvin 100b). This statement is important not as poetic imagery, but as a moral observation. In Jewish thought, the cat is not an image of power or dominance, but an example of measure, tact, presence, and restraint.

This leads to a fundamental question: is there an animal connected not merely to Jewish tradition in general, nor to the Land of Israel in a broad sense, but directly to the festival of Hanukkah itself? If this question is examined not symbolically but factually, then at present such an animal exists only one. It is the Kanaani cat breed.

Kanaani is an Israeli cat breed based on cats descending from the African wildcat........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)