City Hall Plaza Glows with Chanukah Lights

While the streets of downtown Palo Alto were quiet Sunday as most residents were at home for Christmas, about 100 people turned out for a menorah lighting. Chabad of Greater South Bay organized the annual event which included music, dancing, latkes (potato pancakes) and face painting.

Rabbi Zalman Levin used a torch to light the candles in City Hall Plaza and led the participants in saying the blessings. He explained that we light one additional candle every night until the eighth and last night of the holiday. “Increasing the number of candles reminds us to always increase in mitzvot (good deeds) every day,” he said.

Alex Axelrod, who emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1979, said that his family was not permitted to practice Judaism under Communist rule. Consequently he had no prior knowledge of any Jewish holidays. Once he arrived in the U.S. he went on “a quest for identity," he said, and is now proud to celebrate the holiday with his fellow Jews.

Chanukah is celebrated by Jews worldwide to commemorate the victory for religious freedom that occurred in 165 BCE. According to tradition, a miracle happened after the Jews reclaimed and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been defiled by the Syrian-Greek occupiers. Only a one-day supply of pure olive oil could be found for the rededication, but that small quantity burned miraculously for eight days.

Chanukah is actually a minor Jewish holiday but it generally falls very close to Christmas and in the United States it tends to get major attention and considerable gift giving.

Norman Silverman, a Palo Alto resident who grew up in South Africa, said it “wasn’t a big deal there.” However, he calls it “a reminder of the spiritual survival of the Jewish people.”

He said he had visited a Jewish community in Rome whose ancestors date back to the Hasmonean dynasty that was established with the overthrow of the Syrian-Greeks in 165 BCE. “These people represent an unbroken spiritual chain,” Silverman said.