Many of the children who gathered at the Western Center for Russian Jewry in Denver on Sunday were too young to understand the significance of Hanukkah, but they won’t soon forget the holiday’s sweetness.

The children, their parents and their grandparents celebrated the Jewish Festival of Lights with a Candy Land-themed party at the WCRJ Community Center in the Hilltop neighborhood.

A path made of construction paper wound past 3-foot-tall replica lollipops and candy canes, a reminder of the board game, which is almost 70 years old. A cheerful, pink troll with a mock cotton candy headdress was on hand, as well as a bouncy castle.

Children made their own “gelt,” a traditional Hanukkah gift of chocolate coins wrapped in foil. And they filled the arms of a 10-foot menorah, a candelabrum with nine branches, with 50 pounds of gum balls.

The eight-day festival, which began Tuesday and will end this Wednesday night, celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple after the Jews drove the Syrians from Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago.

Israel at the time was “ruled by a dictator, and he didn’t want the Jewish people to have Sabbath,” Rabbi Mendy Sirota told the children.

The Syrians “vandalized the Temple, erected an idol on the altar, and desecrated its holiness with the blood of swine,” according to the website myjewishlearning.com.

Jews were subject to death if they studied Torah, observed the Sabbath or otherwise practiced their religion.

The Jews revolted and reclaimed the Temple Mount. During the rededication of the temple, the story goes, there was only enough oil to keep the menorah burning for a single day. But the flames continued to glow for eight nights.

The kids sat in small clusters and sorted gumballs from plastic trays into cardboard plates with each plate containing one color.

Then they trooped to the giant menorah, where the smaller children were held aloft so they could drop their gumballs into the hollow arms. The bigger kids stood on a step-ladder.

Sirota told them the “Torah and Jewish values are not only right for the world, but they will always be sweet. And they will always bring light to the world.”

Alla Shkolnik, 40, brought her 11-year-old daughter, Liyanna, who goes to Hebrew school at the community center, to the celebration. “It’s nice. They do something different every year, and they include everybody” not only those who are Orthodox Jews, she said.

“It is really cool,” Liyanna said. “Everybody comes together.”

Many of the parents and grandparents who attended were born in the former Soviet Union, where they were subject to anti-Semitism and barred from celebrating the holiday, Sirota said.

Their history gives the festival even more meaning to the Russian Jewish community because under Communism members had to struggle to maintain their Jewish identity, Sirota said.

The celebration was an opportunity to demonstrate to even the youngest children that “the values of Judaism and Torah should always be sweet in their lives,” he added.