Hanukkah goes to the beach with surfboard menorah in Laguna

Chabad Jewish Center of Laguna Beach introduced a menorah made of surfboards at Main Beach on Sunday to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, the eight-night Festival of Lights.

The festivities included a ventriloquist, dreidel cookie decorating, latkes and gelt.

A menorah is a candelabrum used to commemorate the victory in the second century B.C. by a small group of Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, that drove the Seleucid army from the Holy Land and reclaimed and rededicated the temple in Jerusalem.

When the Jews sought to light the temple’s menorah, they found only a one-day supply of sacred oil. However, it lasted eight days. Thus, the typical Hanukkah menorah has eight branches with an additional branch with which the others are lit.