BY JOHN SNYDER
OF PASCACK PRESS
Menorah lightings across the Pascack Valley, as worldwide, share a message of light, warmth, and community.
Valley Chabad invited the Woodcliff Lake community to its annual Chanukah Menorah Lighting and Celebration at Old Mill Pond Dec. 3, delivering on that message as well as donuts, hot latkes, gifts for the children, and a warm drink.
According to Valley Chabad Executive Director Rabbi Dov Drizin, “Just like the Maccabees, Chanukah reminds us that life’s darkest moments and greatest challenges can be brightened with steadfast faith and determination.”
Lightings at 9-foot-tall public menorahs also bloomed Sunday, Dec. 2, at Westwood Train Station; Tuesday, Dec. 4, at Tice’s Corner; and Wednesday, Dec. 5, at River Vale Community Center—complete with dinner, a children’s show, and towering showering chocolate gelt drop.
Community leaders lent their voice to the occasion, and hundreds danced, sang, and noshed the night away.
The lightings joined thousands sponsored by Chabad the world over, enabling children and adults of all walks of life to discover and enjoy this important holiday message of light and freedom.
Menorahs also grace homes the world over, whether with candles lit with care or by screwing in the little orange lightbulb varieties.
Chanukah, “the Festival of Lights,” recalls the victory more than 2,100 years ago of a militarily weak but spiritually strong Jewish people who defeated a ruthless enemy that had overrun ancient Israel and sought to prohibit religious freedom and force the Jewish people to accept a foreign religion.
Feel free to know it as an eight-day, wintertime festival of lights celebrated with a nightly menorah lighting, prayers, fried foods, and the spinning of the dreidel, a four-sided spinning top with a Hebrew letter on each side.
(The letters are Nun, Gimel, Hei, and Shin, which stand for the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham, translated as “A great miracle happened there”—referring to the storied transformation of a small quantity of oil to enough to light the Temple’s menorah for eight days, resanctifying the Second Temple.)
The holiday began this year the evening of Sunday, Dec. 2 and ends the evening of Monday, Dec. 10.
As for how to spell it, take your pick of Hanukkah and Chanukah, as both are valid approximations in English of how it shines in Hebrew.
Valley Chabad, in Woodcliff Lake and serving the Pascack Valley and Saddle River communities, says center is premised on the idea that every individual has an indispensable contribution to make to the totality of the human experience.
It offers Jewish education, outreach and social service programming for families and individuals of all ages, backgrounds and affiliations.
For more information, call (201) 476-0157, write moshe@valleychabad.org, or visit ValleyChabad.org.