Menorahs Go Public in Move From Tradition

The center court at the Woodland Hills Promenade shopping center was jammed Thursday night. But the throng was not looking for post-Christmas bargains. They were gathered for a Hanukkah ceremony as Rabbi Aaron Abend climbed up to make a final check of an 18-foot-tall menorah.

The observance was one of 300 public menorah-lighting events that have been staged over the last eight nights to help the Southland’s estimated 600,000 Jews mark Hanukkah.

In the past, Jews have celebrated the occasion privately in their homes with songs, prayers and gift-giving.

An energetic, Hasidic Jewish group called Chabad has tried to change that tradition, however.

If the ubiquitous Christmas tree can serve as a secularized holiday symbol for Christians, the nine-candle menorah can do the same for Jews, Chabad leaders have decided. They staged their first public menorah-lighting ceremony 14 years ago in San Francisco and have slowly expanded the ritual each December since then.

This year, group leaders cajoled shopping center managers from Ventura to Riverside into allowing public menorah-lighting ceremonies in malls. In July, they went to the U.S. Supreme Court to win permission to display the distinctive candelabrum in city halls.

“It’s been a revolution,” said Rabbi Boruch Schlomo Cunin, the group’s Westwood-based West Coast director who has endorsed attaching battery-operated Hanukkah menorahs to automobile roofs and outfitting offices and stores with electric ones.

“The lightings are not a religious ceremony. The religious side is when you light it in your home. It’s a celebration of freedom. Our message for the holidays is if everybody lights one little candle and makes one person happy, you light up a world of darkness.”

Custom calls for a new menorah candle to be lit from a central candle each night of Hanukkah. Because of this year’s large number of ceremonies, Cunin’s group has scrambled to get each menorah illuminated.

After Cunin lost his voice Sunday night at a large ceremony in Beverly Hills, he pressed actor Jon Voigt--who is not Jewish--into service as his stand-in for an observance Monday night at the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall, he said.

But the public menorah displays and ceremonies, which have included singing and dancing and appearances by clowns, have drawn criticism from some Jews.

Opponents complain that observances in shopping malls and on public property cheapen the menorah’s religious connotation and stretch the constitutional separation of church and state.

Known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah commemorates efforts 22 centuries ago by a Jewish tribe called the Maccabees to reclaim a temple from the Syrian Greeks in what is now Israel.

“It’s demeaning and debasing of the symbol in our view,” said Douglas E. Mirell, regional president of the American Jewish Congress, after a menorah was placed in the rotunda of Los Angeles City Hall two weeks ago. Mirell said most “mainstream Jewish organizations in Los Angeles” oppose menorah displays on public property.

But a public outcry followed a decision last week by Westlake Village to prohibit placement of a menorah next to its City Hall Christmas tree. Officials who had contended that Hanukkah was not a national holiday and lacked the secular appeal of Christmas backed down and placed a small menorah in the city offices Wednesday.

At the Promenade shopping center Thursday, the crowd sang a Hebrew song, “ Maoz Tzur ,” as actor David Glasser, 18, and his 11-year-old brother, Phillip, also an actor, took Abend’s place on the ladder and finally lit the menorah.

“This gives Jewish kids something to celebrate this time of year,” said onlooker Elisa Berkowitz of Woodland Hills, who stood near the back of the crowd with her husband, Barry, and their 2-year-old son, Adam. “This is not a religious event.”

Added Barry Berkowitz: “This is like bringing your kid to sit on Santa’s lap.”

From the mall’s second-floor balcony, Jeannette Gilleres of Chatsworth and Anita Lopez of Canoga Park watched the ceremonial lighting and the dancing that followed to the beat of a loudly amplified keyboard-and-drum combo.

The pair said they are not Jewish but had been invited to the ceremony by a Jewish friend, Nancy Lazarus, also of Canoga Park.

“This was a very nice touch for the holidays, very neat,” Gilleres said.

“I’d like to come back next year.”