But as the Hanukkah story also reminds us, that freedom can vanish almost overnight. See Shaar Hakavanos ibid and Taz ibid 2) Should one always start with the candle that is on the right side. 1) Should one always light first the candle that is nearest to the doorway. Even now, we are lucky to live in a place where what constituted an act of defiance for Akiva and Rachel Posner can exist here as a quotidian exercise of religious freedom. Background: The debate regarding the positioning of the candles on the Menorah from right to left or left to right, is due to several factors. But many Jews still live in the diaspora, including more than six million here in America.
“That exile ended with the establishment of the state.” “Until 70 years ago, we were in exile,” he said. The menorah symbolizes the strength and continuity of our nation, the idea that it is strong and will conquer all its enemies.” “Whether it’s the Greeks on Hanukkah or the Nazis in Germany, they want the same thing - to destroy the nation of Israel,” he added. “It demonstrates the continuity of Jewish history.” “The same light that my great-grandparents lit in the exile in Germany is the light that so many light today in Israel,” he told me. Optimally, the Hanukkah candles are lit outside the door, but also in a window. The significance of lighting it in his home in Beit Shemesh, Israel, so many decades after his ancestors lit it as an act of resistance, did not escape him. When my kids were younger, they used to have their own version of the. I spoke by phone with the Posners’ great-grandson, Akiva Baruch Mansbach, who was named for Rabbi Posner and lights the menorah every year. But each year, right before Hanukkah, the family takes the menorah back and puts it to good use. The rabbis also discussed foot traffic in marketplaces: They wanted to make sure that people lit their candles when pedestrians were flooding the streets.įor 51 weeks of the year, the menorah belongs to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
MY MENORAH CANDLES AS SEEN FROM OUTSIDE MY WINDOW HOW TO
The Talmud contains detailed guidelines of how to publicize the miracle, with extensive commentary on where the menorah would be most visible to people walking by. Miraculously, the small supply burned for eight. As tradition has it, when the Holy Temple was being rededicated and its golden menorah lit, there was only enough oil to last for one day. One of the essential components of Hanukkah is “persumei nisa,” or publicizing the miracle - the miracle being the triumph of a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, who led a revolt and conquered their Seleucid persecutors in the second century before the Common Era. Plus, the act of putting our menorahs in the window would be an opportunity to rekindle the core Jewish belief of welcoming the stranger. Directly across the street was a Nazi flag. Recalling that my mother’s parents, Joseph and Rebecca, had been strangers here about a century ago, I felt that the welcoming menorah light represented the freedom for which they had left everything behind. Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel, lit the menorah and placed it on their window sill. In its multigenerational life, its light has also touched the darkness. Tonight, and for the next seven nights, millions of Jews around the world will light a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah.
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