For First Time in 20 Years, No Lawsuits Cloud Menorah Display

On a crisp morning last week in a Beverly Hills park, Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin prepared for Hanukkah by haggling over building permits, examining electricity sources and excitedly directing workers assembling his 14-foot-high, 30-foot-wide steel and vinyl menorah.

For Cunin, this year’s endeavor, which begins with the first night of Hanukkah on Tuesday, needs to be even more impressive than in years past because the celebration is even more joyous: For the first time in more than 20 years, his organization is not suing or being sued over any of its holiday displays.

“It’s been a long, long battle,” Cunin said. “The founding fathers of our country founded a country based on freedom for all religions, not sterilized of all religion.”

But for some, putting a religious symbol in a public place has never been that simple.

The most recent battle over the Beverly Hills menorah came to an end less than a month ago, when a federal district court ruled in favor of Cunin’s group and struck down as unconstitutional a city provision that limited physical displays on city property to two consecutive days.

At issue was a 1996 ordinance the city passed in response to an earlier suit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Jewish Congress. Those groups claimed Beverly Hills’ lack of a clear code enabled it to show arbitrary preference for Cunin’s group, Chabad of California.

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Chabad has litigated for years for permission to place Hanukkah candelabra in such places as Los Angeles City Hall. It argued that Beverly Hills’ two-day limit effectively and unconstitutionally barred celebration of the Jewish holiday.

“Even Santa Claus knows that Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days,” said Chabad lawyer Marshall Grossman. “So the effect of the regulation was to permit virtually everything in the park except for a menorah.”

U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr., who ruled against the two-day limit, upheld the rest of Beverly Hills’ code on public displays.

So this year, Beverly Hills is faced with holding Chabad to a strict set of rules--if not about the duration of the display, then about the display itself.

The code requires such presentations to be under 14 feet high, attended at all times, taken down every night before 11 and not dependent upon permanent physical support structures.

Rabbi Cunin, glad to have his public celebration back for the full eight nights, is trying to be accommodating.

The menorah is broken into three separate metal frames for easy assembly. Three vinyl tarps, illustrated by colorful candles, will then be hung along the metal structures.

At the top of each “candle” will be a lamp, illuminated one at a time for each of the holiday’s eight nights. The whole structure will be lit from behind by floodlights, to best show off the color and artistry of the vinyl tarp.

“What we lost on height, we made up for on width,” Cunin said with a chuckle.

And when, during a pre-Hanukkah inspection of the structure, Beverly Hills officials balked at the size of the stage Cunin had planned for his band, Cunin immediately offered to make it smaller.

Likewise, Cunin said he had no problem moving his menorah forward so it wouldn’t block a nearby jogging path.

But he drew the line at inspectors’ requests for wind holes--circles cut into the fabric so that any high winds would flow through, rather than into, the structure.

“It would look terrible,” Cunin exclaimed, balking at how the floodlights would shine through the colored tarp. “It will look like some anti-Semite came by in the night and shot it full of holes.”

So in the spirit of peace, Cunin volunteered to disassemble the entire display if it’s threatened by wind.

Chabad’s legal opponents said their fight in the courts is finished for now.

Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said her organization is pleased that Beverly Hills has a law guaranteeing evenhanded treatment of public displays.

Douglas Mirell, an attorney who represents the American Jewish Congress, said the organization’s battles for separation between church and state will continue in the court of public opinion. Christmas trees and dreidels--which have not been held to be religious symbols--are fine on public property, the group argues. Crosses and menorahs don’t belong.

“In a battle over which religious symbols will predominate, the Jewish community will inevitably be the loser, because this is not a Jewish nation,” Mirell said. “It would be the height of hypocrisy for a Jewish organization to essentially wink at the unconstitutional practices of its co-religionists.”

Rabbi Cunin, pulling his black coat taut against the wind and patting his black hat down tight on his head as he watched over his menorah, said he doesn’t see it that way.

His large, beautiful menorah is a lovely thing for Jewish children to see, he said, just as enormous Christmas trees are wondrous for Christian children.

The strict regulations he can live with, he said.

“It’s a pain, but a little pain and suffering? It’s never easy to be a Jew.”