From staff reports
Celebrating the 2022 Hanukkah season, Chabad Greater Hilton Head will host their second annual public menorah lighting on the waterfront in downtown Beaufort.
Chabad Greater Hilton Head will light a 9-foot public Hanukkah menorah at Hanry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in downtown Beaufort, at 5 p.m., on Sunday, Dec. 18, the first night of the eight-day Festival of Lights. The event will feature a performance by the enthralling Magic Mark, music, latkes and donuts. Complimentary Hanukkah menorahs and candles will be distributed as well for participants to light at home.
“Everyone is especially excited about Hanukkah this year,” Rabbi Mendel of Chabad Greater Hilton Head said in a news release. “People are preparing to celebrate with family and friends, to fill their homes with the light of Hanukkah, and there’s a palpable joy. The public Hanukkah celebration is about sharing this light and joy with the broader community and the entire Greater Hilton Head.”
Hanukkah 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 by passers immediately feel “the effect of the light, which illuminates the outside and the environment.”
Chabad-Lubavitch’s annual Hanukkah campaign has distributed millions of menorahs to Jews around the world, and erected thousands of public menorahs to share its universal message of light over darkness with humanity at large.
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
Throughout the State of South Carolina, Chabad will be presenting several Hanukkah events and celebrations, including celebrations in Bluffton and Hilton Head. For more information about Hanukkah and a local schedule of events, visit jewishhiltonhead.org/chanukkah.
About Hanukkah
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, begins this year on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 18 and concludes the evening of Monday, Dec. 26. 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 days. 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. Additional information about the Hanukkah holiday is available at www.Chabad.org/Hanukkah.
Want to Go?
What: Public Menorah Lighting
When: 5 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 18
Where: Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, Beaufort
Cost: Free, open to the public
