Torch Brightens Hanukkah : Flame Brought From Israel Is Used to Light Menorahs for Jewish Celebration

People came from all over Orange and Los Angeles counties Sunday night, converging on the new Jewish Community Center.

Carrying candles and menorahs, they came to celebrate the first day (and second night) of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights.

“It’s an emotional time of year,” said Bernie Guzman, 28, of Buena Park. “You just have to be here.”

But there was one who had come farther than all the rest. He was Noam Dror, a 17-year-old from Israel who had flown into John Wayne Airport carrying a torch lighted at the sacred tomb of the Maccabees in the town of Modiin. Stepping off the plane, he was met by a group of young athletes who escorted him and the torch on a three-mile run from the airport to the center, where the crowd of waiting celebrants let go a huge cheer.

“I got tears in my eyes,” said Audrey Serepca-O’Brien, a teaching assistant from Irvine. “I was overwhelmed. It put me in touch with my Jewish heritage.”

Indeed, heritage was the catchword here. For more than 2,000 years, Jews have been observing Hanukkah as a celebration of religious freedom. The holiday stems from a time when Syrians took over the Temple in Jerusalem and commanded Jews to worship idols.

A leader named Judah the Maccabee (Hebrew for hammer ) put together an army, defeated the Syrians and smashed their idols. To celebrate the victory, the Jews lit the menorah, a candelabra used to illuminate the Temple. According to legend, a miracle occurred: although there was only enough oil for one day, the flame burned for eight. So Jews commemorate the victory each year by lighting candles on each of eight days.

In Israel, the holiday traditionally begins at the tomb of the Maccabees with the ceremonial lighting of torches, which are then carried by runners from town to town. In recent years, the light has reached the United States. This year for the first time, organizers said Sunday, the light was brought to the West Coast.

“What we are doing is educating the community about our heritage,” said Mali Leitner, who organized the event. A native of Israel, Leitner said the celebration was inspired by her own experiences as a torch runner in her youth. The timing was also appropriate, she said, to commemorate the opening of the new community center, which took place around Hanukkah time last year.

“We feel united for the first time,” Leitner said of the county’s burgeoning Jewish community. “We are under one roof. The meaning of Hanukkah is dedication.”

Many of the celebrants seemed dedicated, indeed, as they surged toward Dror, straining to light the candles of their own small menorahs with the flame that had come from Israel. When everybody’s menorah had been lit, the Israeli runner used it to ignite the center’s own 10-foot menorah, after which participants danced the hora, a lively Israeli folk dance.

“I think it’s great,” said Rabbi Moishe Engel, assistant principal of the Hebrew Academy in Westminster, who earlier had told the story of Hanukkah as part of a program that, among other things, included singers, tap dancers and a group of young ballerinas. “It more closely connects local happenings to history.”

To some in the crowd, Hanukkah’s message of religious freedom must have had a particular resonance. They were the Russian Jews, recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union where anti-Semitism is more the rule than the exception.

“I am so excited,” said Valentina Gurovitch of Laguna Niguel who, after 10 months in the United States, was celebrating her first Hanukkah in freedom. “It was wonderful. In Russia you don’t tell anyone you’re Jewish. Here you tell everyone !”