As a writer, one of the perks of being on numerous WhatsApp and email groups is the opportunity to poll fellow members, as I did recently when I requested menorah stories and photos of “creatively made, makeshift, and otherwise unique and special Chanukah menorahs.” It turned into a trip down Menorah memory lane for many. Others shared amazing stories of keeping the flickering flame of Chanukah alive during oppressive times. Some noted interesting menorahs they have seen – constructed of everything from surf boards to skis to Legos to candy, pipes, bottle caps, shot-glasses, baby food jars, sculpted ice, Smores, and donuts.
In keeping with WWW’s Chanukah theme, it was a true miracle that I was able to gather so much interesting material in so short a time!
Light in Dark Times
Chava Shulman contributed this story, told to her by a friend, Shmuel ben Eliezer. An American from New York, Shmuel has lived in Israel for many years. He did basic training in the army and was called up regularly to miluim (reserve duty). On Chanuka 1989, his unit was based on a hill overlooking Kiryat Arba, near Hevron. “I remember doing guard duty on the base with a birds-eye view of the windows of Kiryat Arba shining with the radiance of hundreds of menorahs, with the stars twinkling in the cold inky darkness above,” says Shmuel. “I was so inspired by this sight that I decided to join in the mitzva of pirsuma nissa (publicizing the miracle).” Shmuel found nine large metal cans in the kitchen that were used to store vegetables. Rolling them outside, he set them up in a line on the ridge of the mountain. “Then I filled the cans with kerosene, put in rags to be used as wicks, and lit them.”
When the residents of Kiryat Arba saw the lights twinkling on the mountain, they came to explore the source. Upon seeing it was a menorah, they called their families, who joined with latkes and sufganiyot. The residents of Kiryat Arba and the soldiers sang and danced joyously around the flames. This scene was repeated every night of Chanuka with eight lights shining from the mountaintop.
“In this way, we celebrated the victory of the Chashmonaim in the same ancient hills of Yehuda,” concludes Shmuel, “continuing an unbroken chain of nissim and nifla’ot (miracles) for Am Yisrael, bayamim haheim, bazman hazeh, from those days until now.”
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Esty Waldman contributed this menorah story after being inspired by a shiur of Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson:
Esty describes the scene: It is erev Shabbos Chanukah in Germany 1932. On the windowsill stands a small menorah, its eight little flames casting a warm glow. With the sky is growing darker; it is time to light the Shabbos candles. But before doing so, Rebbetzin Rachel Posner grabbed a camera and snapped a photo of an arresting and incongruous sight. Across the street, black and foreboding, a Nazi flag, with its large swastika, swayed in the breeze. It was a symbol that instilled fear in the hearts of all Jews. Against this backdrop, the flames of the menorah were a symbol of hope and optimism. The picture survived. On its back, Rebbetzin Posner had inscribed the words: “Jude will die, thus says the flag. Jude will live forever, thus say the lights.”
It is 87 years later: Germany, December 2018. “All around the world, Jews are lighting their Chanukah candles,” writes Esty. “I watch my father recite the brachos and light the candles, all eight, and they leap and dance in victory and triumph. In the place where Hitler, y”s, held fiery rallies, history is in the making. Here, at the Brandenburg gate, a large menorah is being publicly lit. I think of Rebbetzin Rachel Posner and wonder at the thoughts that were running through her head when she snapped that photo. Did she know then that she and her family would fall victim and that six million Jewish lives would be cold-bloodedly snuffed out? Perhaps not, yet, the Jewish nation lives. As the Klausenberger Rebbe remarked in the concentration camp. ‘If I will survive, I can’t possibly know, but Am Yisrael chai vekayam.’ Indeed, Jude will live forever.”
Family Heirloom Menorahs
“An Important German German-Gilt Hanukah lamp (probably Augsburg, circa 1750)” Thus reads the listing of the menorah for sale in a recent Sotheby’s auction. It was sold for $542,000 to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where it is now on display.
The menorah belonged to Selig Meier Goldschmidt, z”l, a prominent Frankfurt antiquarian and collector, as well as a patron and supporter of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. As described on the Sotheby’s website, the menorah passed from Selig Meier’s collection to his son, Meier Selig (d. 1922) and then to his daughter Alice, who married Heinrich Eisemann in 1919. In the late 1930s, Heinrich and Alice Eisemann immigrated to London with their son Meier Selig Eisemann. The younger Meier Selig served as a rabbi in Minnesota, then in Israel. This piece was consigned by one of his children, having belonged to the Goldschmidt/Eisemann family for over 150 years.
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Rabbi Dovid Katz told this story about a more humble yet very meaningful menorah in his family:
“Around 1990, my mother was surprised to receive a package in the mail from her old friend Terka Illik. My mother was 78 at the time; I suppose Terka was, too. My mother got letters all the time; by this time, she and her former friends had corresponded for more than 40 years. But she never got a package. After all, Americans sent packages to Eastern Europe, not the other way around. Opening the package, she was astonished to see her mother’s Chanukah menorah! How in the world did her Christian friends get hold of the small chanukiah of yesteryear?
“It turned out that the menorah had been discovered after the war in Slovakia, and had ended up with my mother’s sister Emma. This Emma, one of those aunts and uncles I never met, had gone through Auschwitz and was emotionally-scarred for the rest of her life. For some, the Holocaust lasted long after the war. Although she could have emigrated to America or Israel, she chose to remain alone in Slovakia, in Bratislava, and died in 1968. It is a sad tale.
“How did someone suffering from all this trauma survive day-to-day in a Communist country for 20 years? The answer is that my mother’s Christian friends constituted themselves a do-gooder committee and helped her with the necessities of life. In other words, their kindness to my mom lasted long after my mom immigrated to America. Some people in the world are good.
“Well, someone discovered this menorah and gave it to Emma, who (hopefully) used it during her lifetime. Afterwards, it disappeared, probably in some bureaucratic hole. It wasn’t an expensive menorah, just a Jewish one; its value lay in its history – it had belonged to a tzadeikes! We lost track of it and, as the gemara says, were meya’esh.
“Another 22 years goes by, and somehow my mom’s old German-Catholic girlfriend found it and knew where it belonged. Hence the surprise package, which arrived not long before Chanukah. I will leave the emotions generated on that occasion to the imagination of the reader.
“Six years later my mom made aliyah, so the menorah went with her. She passed away in 2008, and I forgot about it, until Mrs. Margie Pensak called me about it for her article. I immediately emailed my sister in Yerushalayim, who asked me if I wanted it. “Sure,” I replied. As it happened, the Abramowitzes (Alan and Janet) were in Yerushalayim for a week, and they are bringing it back with them tomorrow night, about two weeks before Chanukah. The small menorah needs some repair, I am told. I hope it will be in my window in two weeks.
“My grandmother died in 1944, but her light still burns, as you can see if you pass my house this coming Chanukah!”
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Razel Feiger shared this family heirloom menorah story: “My grandfather came to the U.S. around 1910, from Kossov. He and his two brothers settled in Chicago where they had family. My grandfather’s business was roofing and sheet metal. It must have been profitable at the time because it pulled them through the Depression with never a question of chilul Shabbos, b”H. Although not yeshiva-educated, my grandfather had a true love for mitzvas in addition to being creative and handy. He used the sheet metal part of his business to make Shabbos blechs and distributed them to anyone in need.
It seems that to the simple folk, lighting oil menorahs wasn’t common in those days in the Midwest. When my grandfather realized that the menorahs being sold (I remember he had a brass one with two lions, a classic design) at the time were made only for the commercial Chanukah candles, he fashioned a sheet metal menorah for himself for Shabbos Chanukah, which could be used with standard Shabbos candles instead of the skinny Chanukah candles.. Being a practical thinker, he also made it easy to clean. My father (his only shomer mitzvas descendant) inherited this menorah, and we now consider it a family heirloom. B”H, my grandfather lived until past 99 years old, a man with a sparkle in his eyes.”
Build Your Own Menorah
At Torah Institute of Baltimore, students build their own menorahs as part of the Third Grade Build-Your-Own Menorah Project. The menorahs must be halachically kosher and built without help. Some are more artistic, others simpler, but they all depict something relating to Chanukah or the Jewish people. One year, a boy made a “potato menorah,” a replica of one that his great-grandfather made in Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
The students also make a menorah mural made from “blue tape” under the supervision of Rabbi Doniel Hexter. Rabbi Menachem Dreyfuss, a third-grade rebbi at TI notes, “This project provides the boys with an exciting opportunity to actualize the halachos they learned relating to the menorah in a creative way. They really love it!”
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Yitz Twersky of Kew Gardens Hills proudly conveyed the story behind his one-of-a-kind Twersky family Chanukah menorah made of K’nex. The last one was built in 2017, by his then-16-year-old son, Yaakov Yosef. “He starts building it in his spare time right after Sukkos,” says Yitz. “It’s seven feet tall and is motorized. It has four simultaneous balls with five automatic paths; each next ball switches to a new path with an auto ball return. It is a real engineering feat!! The children in the neighborhood all come to watch it. We actually light it with tea lights for pirsumei nissa. He got tens of thousands of hits on YouTube.”
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Sara (Jones) Brown’s homemade menorah creations can be explained by both heredity and environment. “When I was in seminary, I wanted to make my own menorah, so I made an oil menorah by sticking the glass oil bulbs into polymer clay, inside tiny metal bells (since a menorah is supposed to be metal). Then, when my husband and I were newlyweds living in Israel, we wanted a menorah that would burn longer. Some repairmen had removed a silver-colored metal coil from our freezer, and I discovered that it was wonderfully pliable metal, so I coiled it into a helix, inserted bulbs in it, and “Ex Freezerus” was born. It served as an excellent menorah. I cannot explain why I have this compulsion to make my own menorah instead of using a store-bought one like everyone else. My mother is an architect so I grew up absorbing the idea that when adults need a household object, they engineer their own out of the hardware from various unrelated industries. Our family sukkah is made partly of shock absorbers.”
Raffi Bilek traveled down Menorah memory lane to share this story: “For about 20 years, I used a wooden menorah that I made in kindergarten. It was composed of two long blocks of wood and two short ones. The long block was on the bottom, and standing on it were two pillars. On top of that was another block sandwiching those two, and on top of that were glued bottle caps from some kind of bottle that doesn’t exist anymore.
“The menorah sticks in my mind so clearly because the kindergarten teacher said, ‘No, you can’t build it like that!’ Apparently, she thought it wasn’t sound enough structurally. Everyone else was building pyramids, and other low-risk architectural designs, and she did not think that mine would withstand the test of time. Well! I was lighting that menorah every year until college! The problem was that the bottle caps had so deteriorated that, inevitably, once the candle burned all the way down, the wooden menorah would catch fire. In my senior year of college, I had to blow out the flaming menorah (again) and the bottle cap went flying all aflame. There came a point when it was just too far gone. And anyway, being married and starting a family, it was time to get a silver one.”
