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DURHAM — Beginning Friday at sundown, Jewish households across the world will light menorahs to celebrate Hanukkah. Menorahs all have eight candles plus a helper candle, but the size, shape, material and memories of each differ from home to home.
In Melissa Segal’s home, her three children will each light their own menorah.
Rabbi Leah Berkowitz will light the menorah she bought in Israel.
Rabbi Jennifer Feldman will light the menorah that was a gift from the first American female rabbi, plus a special new one made by Feldman’s son.
Bob Schwartz will light a menorah that uses oil. Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of one day’s oil lasting for eight days during the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Bini Silver will light the menorah his parents gave him as a child. He will also light his late father’s menorah, the most special menorah he owns. Silver’s father, Walter, was 11 years old when he and his family escaped from Nazi Germany. Walter Silver’s father was a lawyer and the family paid for forged documents to escape from Munich. But the law partner of Walter’s father ran off with the money. The Silver family was then smuggled out through an underground system, from Germany to France to Portugal and eventually into New York Harbor and on to Boston.
All Walter Silver was able to bring with him was a knapsack on his back with just a few necessities. In that knapsack was his menorah, passed down to him by his own father.
“He chose [to bring] that because Hanukkah was one of his favorite holidays, and he remembered lighting it. It brought back memories of his father and grandfather — good memories in Germany,” Bini Silver said.
Bini Silver was a child when he heard his family’s story of surviving the Holocaust.
“I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I remember one particular Hanukkah, lighting my own menorah,” Silver said. He noted the German-Jewish tradition of each household member lighting his or her own menorah. His menorah was given to him by his parents, who bought it during a trip to Israel.
“I asked my father where his menorah came from,” Silver said.
After Walter Silver died 20 years ago, his family still lit his menorah for him. Later, Bini Silver’s mother gave him the menorah. Silver is head of the Lerner Jewish Community Day School in Durham, and sometimes brings in his father’s menorah to tell the students its story.
Children often make their own menorah in religious school, as did Rabbi Feldman when she was a little girl. She still has the clay menorah she described as ugly but functional. The Feldman family has several menorahs, enough for everyone in the household plus guests to light their own. A special menorah is the one given to Feldman’s grandmother-in-law by Rabbi Sally J. Priesand, the first woman rabbi in the U.S. But Feldman’s favorite menorah is one she received last year, made by her son Solomon. He is 6 years old now.
“It’s the first one he made, out of putty and bolts. That’s very exciting,” she said.
She’ll also place a menorah in the window, to “shine the light out unto the world.” The primary custom of Hanukkah is to announce the miracle, said Feldman, who leads the Chapel Hill Kehillah, a Reconstructionist synagogue.
“It needs to shine into the night — to shine light in the darkness, to create light in the darkness,” she said.
Seeing a lit menorah in someone’s window gives a wonderful feeling of being part of a community of celebration, Feldman said.
Schwartz has attended community menorah lightings over the past few years organized by the Chabad of Chapel Hill and Durham, wearing a plush menorah hat he ordered from a catalogue. It brings attention, especially from children. He wore it to a Hanukkah party last weekend. On Friday he’ll be in New York for a bar mitzvah, but will be home later during the festival of lights and will light the oil menorah given as a gift from a cousin.
Schwartz said that people end up acquiring multiple menorahs as gifts over the years and keep their own from childhood, too.
Segal, who is executive director of the Chapel Hill Kehillah, bought menorahs for each of her three children, now 7, 10 and 12. Their menorahs are a paint palette, a Mickey and Minnie Mouse dreidel scene by a fireplace, and a little dinosaur.
It is important for children to each have their own menorah, she said. “Being able to participate in the ritual itself makes it that much more a part of you,” Segal said.
Other menorahs in the Segal house include one made from nuts and bolts, of people playing musical instruments. Another menorah is ceramic and depicts Ellis Island immigrants. They keep all their menorahs on display year-round in the dining room, and in the kitchen during Hanukkah.
Rabbi Berkowitz of Judea Reform Congregation in Durham said that she’ll light a menorah this Hanukkah she bought in Israel that is a ceramic scene of a Hasidic band.
“I think it is a joyous celebration of the holiday,” she said of her menorah. At Judea Reform, she has also encouraged the congregation to make a social justice menorah as well, and donate to a cause each night as they light a candle.
