First of Eight Candles Lit as Festival of Lights Begins

Despite legal battles that disrupted one ceremony and threatened a second, the celebration of Hanukkah began in the Southland on Friday with public and private lightings of menorahs that symbolize the eight-day festival of lights.

In Los Angeles, Councilman Gilbert Lindsay and members of Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish educational and social service organization, lit one branch of a huge menorah on the City Hall steps in a ceremony witnessed by 100 people, including 60 immigrants from the Soviet Union.

Another menorah--this one a relic nearly 200 years old that was rescued from the Great Synagogue of Katowitz, Poland, during the Holocaust--was unveiled in the rotunda of City Hall.

Lindsay Lights Candle

The 86-year-old Lindsay, wearing a brown velvet yarmulke on his head, gamely climbed a ladder to light the first candle. Traditionally, one branch of the menorah is lit on each of the eight nights of Hanukkah. The ninth prong of the menorah holds the lighting candle.

“All men are God’s children that have freedom and love in their hearts,” Lindsay said.

In Santa Ana, a last-minute dispute forced the cancellation of a formal Hanukkah ceremony in a public park, but a rabbi and other witnesses informally marked the start of the celebration by lighting a small menorah in protest.

Both lighting ceremonies had been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, which contends that the holding of a religious ceremony in a taxpayer-owned setting violates the constitutional division of church and state.

One year ago, the ACLU and the American Jewish Congress took the Los Angeles City Hall menorah lighting issue to court. Superior Court Judge Irving Shimer ruled that a menorah could be displayed inside City Hall. But Shimer said it could not be lit because the act of lighting it would constitute a religious ceremony forbidden in taxpayer-owned buildings.

The lighting of one outside City Hall, however, was allowed on the grounds that the outer area was a public park where religion could be freely expressed.

Contested Again This Year

This year, the ACLU again contested the display inside City Hall, but a week ago Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien allowed the menorah’s display, saying it “will undoubtedly educate and enlighten citizens, and this serves a valuable public purpose.”

Legal battles or not, the City Hall menorah display made Ruben Korchmaro’s 81st birthday particularly special. He was watching something he thought he would never see.

“I’m seeing it for the first time here in a public place,” said Korchmaro, a small bespectacled man in a brown striped suit who immigrated five years ago from the Soviet Union. There, he said, “It would never have been allowed.”

“In Russia we used to light the candles in the cellar,” said Rabbi Naftali Estulin, who also watched the ceremony.

While the indoor candelabra was brass, topped with a double-headed eagle, the one lit outside City Hall was about 15 feet high, made of metal pipes painted gold.

In Santa Ana, there was no such public menorah.

A 10-foot, gold plastic menorah had earlier been placed in the city’s Sasscer Park, but city workers removed it Friday after the ACLU threatened to sue if a planned candle-lighting ceremony occurred.

Ceremony Conducted

Protesters brought in a small menorah and the ceremony was conducted anyway.

Rabbi David Eliezrie, who lit the candle, vowed to pursue unspecified “legal options” next week in an effort to return the original menorah to the park.

Eliezrie’s lawyer, Daniel B. Spitzer, said Santa Ana City Atty. Edward Cooper had given him a “simple choice” concerning the large candelabra Friday morning. “He said, ‘Either you remove it, or I will.’ ”

While the Chabad congregation of Anaheim, the Orthodox Hassidic group that erected the menorah, first agreed to remove it, the group later changed its mind, Spitzer said.

“We decided we should not roll over, that it was illegitimate for the city to roll over to the ACLU’s demand,” Spitzer said

Eliezrie pointed to a living pine tree decorated with lights 50 feet from the spot where the portable menorah stood.

“We are not challenging the city’s right to have a Christmas tree,” he said. “We live in a pluralistic society. We feel if there is a Christmas tree, there is no reason there shouldn’t be a Hanukkah menorah.”

‘Religious Symbol’

Meir J. Westreich, ACLU of Southern California vice president, said a tree is decoration while the menorah is a “religious symbol.” Westreich said the group complained to Santa Ana officials because the menorah would have remained in the park after the planned lighting ceremony.

“It becomes an endorsement when they (city officials) either are giving any kind of special access that they do not generally allow to everybody, or after the demonstration, they allow a continuing display on public property,” Westreich said.

“Then it creates the appearance that this is associated with the owners of the property, who are the public,” he said.

Hanukkah celebrates the successful Jewish revolt against the Greek-dominated Syrians in 165 BC. The menorah became the symbol of Hanukkah because, according to legend, the lamp in the Jerusalem Temple that was liberated during the struggle burned for eight days when there was sacred oil enough for only a single day’s lighting.