Giant menorahs, helicopters, candy cannons announce the arrival of Hanukkah

In the face of growing antisemitism, many Jews are taking to the streets and making the eight-day Festival of Lights very public and very flashy.

By Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — Hundreds of kids bundled in parkas and hats stood by in frigid temperatures as the helicopter swooped down into the snow-covered field outside Columbus, Ohio.

Seconds later, out popped a local rabbi in a burgundy cape and white headband, portraying Judah Maccabee, the Jewish rebel who, according to Hanukkah legend, cleansed the Jerusalem temple of Hellenizers.

The festivities, on the eve of the eight-day Festival of Lights that began Sunday (Dec. 18), was likely one of the country’s most elaborate. It featured a candy cannon that shot 8,000 pieces of Hanukkah gelt — chocolate coins in gold foil — and dreidels to kids who rushed out to collect them.

But the competition is heavy this year. Hanukkah, a relatively unimportant holiday theologically, has been marked this December by very public and very flashy Hanukkah kickoffs. In cities such as Greensboro, North Carolina, and State College, Pennsylvania, Hanukkah began with parades of automobile convoys. Outside New York City’s Plaza Hotel, a 36-foot menorah — the world’s largest — was illuminated over the weekend.

Sunday’s football match between the Washington Commanders and New York Giants featured a first-ever Hanukkah menorah lighting.

Hanukkah celebrates an ancient military victory in which a band of Jewish rebels led by Judah Maccabee rose up against their Greek-Syrian oppressors who had defiled the Jerusalem temple with statues of Greek gods. The rebels rededicated the temple and lit the candelabra with a small flask of consecrated oil that miraculously lasted for eight days.

American Jews have typically marked the holiday at home around the table, lighting the menorah candles and eating fried foods such as potato latkes and jelly doughnuts.

But in the face of antisemitism, many rabbis felt it was important this year to show a more robust — even muscular — display of Jewish pride. They reminded congregants not to shirk from the commandment that they place a menorah in the window to show the world that they’re Jewish and proud of it.

Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, who played Judah Maccabee at the Columbus event, said surging antisemitism has demanded a strong, public statement this Hanukkah.

“The best response is doing public events where we bring our Jewish identity and pride and show the world that light will overcome darkness and love and inclusion will overcome darkness and bigotry,” said Kaltmann, of Columbus’ Lori Schottenstein Chabad Center.

The same day the Columbus celebration took place, the words “Jews Not Welcome” were painted on an entrance sign at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, only the latest in a months-long rash of antisemitic occurrences, which included statements from celebrity artists and athletes, and former president Donald Trump’s dinner with the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes, both of whom have spoken adoringly of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

“Together we must stand up against the disturbing rise in antisemitism, and together we must stand up against bigotry in any of its forms,” Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is Jewish, said at a menorah-lighting event at the Ellipse, just south of the White House, Sunday.

At Monday’s annual White House Hanukkah party, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were expected to debut the first menorah to be added to the permanent historical archive of the White House.

On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff hosted the first Hanukkah party ever at the vice-presidential residence at Washington’s Naval Observatory.

According to Jewish tradition, Hanukkah candles must be displayed in the front-facing windows in the early evening hours when they will be most visible to passersby.

“Hanukkah is about standing up for being Jewish and doing it when it’s hard,” Rabbi Eric Solomon of Raleigh, North Carolina’s Beth Meyer Synagogue, said in an Instagram post.

Solomon said he normally sees his job as showing people that Judaism can be meaningful, joyous, fun, even easy.

But Judaism isn’t always easy, he said. And Hanukkah demands that Jews stand up to intolerance and bigotry and fight back.

“This is the time to put it in the window,” said Solomon, referring to the menorah, sometimes called a hanukkiah. “If we want to live in an America that honors diversity, then we have to put a hanukkiah in the window and invite others to put their identities in the window, too.”

In Columbus, Kaltmann had hoped to go even further. He originally had a vision of a skydiving Judah Maccabee and filed for a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration. In the end, winds and cold weather scuttled that plan. He hoped that fire sparklers and a fog machine made up for the magic.

First published Dec. 19, 2022