Roundup of Chanuka Activities

Members of the Lubavitcher movement distributed an estimated 900,000 Chanuka kits to Jews on five continents for the holiday this year, an official of the Hasidic organization has reported. The international effort was undertaken as part of the ongoing effort by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, to combat assimilation among Jews.

The campaign was highlighted in the New York metropolitan area through the Lubavitch Youth Organization by deployment of 20 vans, each equipped with a 10-foot high menorah, which cruised through business and residential sections manned by Lubavitch rabbinical students.

Visits were made by the Lubavitch Hasidim to shopping centers, office buildings, public meeting places, hospitals, nursing homes, college campuses and homes. Major rallies were conducted for children. The movement’s department for Israeli affairs conducted a number of programs for resident Israelis. One such rally in the Queens Jewish Center in Forest Hills drew 1000 participants. The program was conducted in Hebrew.

Over 100,000 kits were distributed in the New York City area and 75,000 in other east coast cities. The Lubavitch office in Los Angeles arranged for distribution of 100,000 kits in Los Angeles and 50,000 kits in other California cities.

Some 100,000 kits were distributed in Britain and several thousand more in France, Belgium, Holland and West Germany. More than 60,000 kits were distributed in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela; 50,000 kits in Australia and South Africa and some 400,000 kits in Israel, the Lubavitch organization spokesman reported. All the literature was in the language of the given country and developed by local Lubavitch offices.

CHANUKA TORCH ARRIVES FROM ISRAEL

A Chanuka torch kindled at Modiin was placed aboard an El Al airliner at Ben Gurion Airport and arrived in New York in time for the start of Chanuka. The Chanuka torch relay from the Kennedy Airport culminated with a mass celebration at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. The relay here was organized by the New York regional office of the American Zionist Youth Foundation in co-sponsorship with Masada, the youth movement of the Zionist Organization of America.

Prior to the mass celebration, the torch was used by Mayor Abraham Beame to light the first Chanuka candle at a ceremony at City Hall. The torch was accompanied from Israel by Dan Brenner, Israeli swimming star and champion in the Asian Games competition.

A Christian-Jewish venture focusing on the Holocaust and what has occurred since, was highlighted by an ecumenical program which featured the lighting of the first Chanuka candle and songs by a Jewish choir in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s upper west side. The program marked the first publication by the church, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and KTAV Publishing House Inc, of a new book titled “Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?”

The book contains reflections and papers on the Holocaust by many of the world’s leading historians, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers theologians and writers, including Alfred Kazin, Michael D. Ryan, Elie Wiesel, Claire Huchet-Bishop and Gregory Baum. Much of the material presented originally at a symposium hosted-by Dean James Norton at the church two years ago.

WORLD’S LARGEST MENORAH

In Philadelphia, the Lubavitcher movement lit the first candle on what it called the world’s largest menorah. The 22 1/2-foot high. 17 1/2-foot wide menorah was put up on Independence Mall between the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall as an official project of the American Bicentennial celebration. Mayor Frank Rizzo, Sen. Richard Stone (D.Fla.), actor Herschel Bernardi and other celebrities participated in the ceremony.

In another Chanuka event, the Jewish National Fund presented its Maccabean Award to Mrs. Abraham D. Beame, wife of New York’s Mayor, for “her devotion to her people and the land of Israel.” Mrs. Beame and the Mayor also received a citation from the JNF marking the establishment of the “Mayor and Mrs. Abraham D. Beame Forest” in the American Bicentennial Park near Jerusalem. The presentations were made at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Sunday night.

President-elect Jimmy Carter sent a congratulatory telegram to “The First Lady of New York, Mrs. Abraham D. Beame, on this well deserved honor, the bicentennial tribute bestowed by the Jewish National Fund.” More than 700 friends and supporters of the JNF attended the festive event.