From staff reports
To celebrate the 2023 Chanukah season, Chabad Greater Hilton Head will be holding its third annual Public Menorah Lighting at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in downtown Beaufort.
Chabad Greater Hilton Head will light a 9-foot public Chanukah menorah at 5 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 7, the first night of the eight-day Festival of Lights. The event will feature Grand Menorah Lighting music, latkes and donuts. Complimentary Chanukah menorahs and candles will be distributed as well for participants to light at home.
“Everyone is especially excited about Chanukah this year,” said Rabbi Mendel, Rabbi of Chabad Greater Hilton Head. “You see, the war in Israel is being fought everywhere. Our defense is not guns and bombs … it’s something much more powerful: our strength as a people. Standing together. Supporting one another. Celebrating, connecting, as we have done through the centuries … Just like the Maccabees of old. They fought their war, lit the Menorah, and reunited the community. Our community can rally around during Chanukah. It says ‘We are here! It boosts the pride and courage of everyone.’
“People are preparing to celebrate with family and friends, to fill their homes with the light of Chanukah, and there’s palpable joy. The public Chanukah celebration is about sharing this light and joy with the broader community and the entire Greater Hilton Head.”
Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, begins this year on the evening of Thursday, December 7th and concludes the evening of Friday, Dec. 15. It recalls the victory of a militarily weak Jewish people who defeated the Syrian-Greeks, who had overrun ancient Israel and sought to impose restrictions on the Jewish way of life and prohibit religious freedom. They also desecrated and defiled the Temple and the oils prepared for the lighting of the menorah, which was part of the daily service.
Upon recapturing the Temple, only one jar of undefiled oil was found, enough to burn only one day, but it lasted miraculously for eight. In commemoration, Jews celebrate Hanukkah for eight days by lighting an eight-branched candelabrum known as a menorah. Today, people of all faiths consider the holiday a symbol and message of the triumph of freedom over oppression, of spirit over matter, of light over darkness.
Chanukah emphasizes that each and every individual has the unique power to illuminate the entire world. It was to encourage this profound idea that the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, launched the Hanukkah awareness campaign in 1973, of which Beaufort’s public Hanukkah activities are a part of.
The menorah faces the street, the Rebbe notes, and so passers-by immediately feel “the effect of the light, which illuminates the outside and the environment.” In the half-century since, the Rebbe’s campaign has brought Chanukah into the mainstream and altered awareness and practice of the festival, returning what some mistakenly dismissed as a minor holiday to its roots as a public proclamation of the triumph of freedom over oppression and a mainstay of Jewish cultural and religious life.
Throughout the State of South Carolina, Chabad will be presenting several Chanukah events and celebrations, including celebrations in Bluffton and Hilton Head. For more information about Hanukkah and a local schedule of events, visit jewishhiltonhead.org/beaufort and jewishhiltonhead.org/chanukah.
Chabad Greater Hilton Head offers Jewish education, outreach and social service programming for families and individuals of all ages, backgrounds and affiliations. For more information visit Jewishhiltonhead.org or contact Rabbi Mendel at 843-301-1819 or rabbi@jewishhiltonhead.org.
