Celebration includes bullet casing crafts and BMX stunts

PASADENA, CA — Members of the Jewish community gathered Sunday for a Hanukkah celebration that included BMX bike riders, a 15-foot menorah and children’s crafts fashioned from spent bullet casings.

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The festivities began at 2:30 p.m. at the Chabad of Pasadena on East Walnut Street. About 175 congregation members enjoyed traditional potato pancakes called latkas, and children constructed their own menorahs from the casings.

Chabad of Pasadena Rabbi Chaim Hanoka said the craft was designed to highlight the main message of Hanukkah, which is, “taking darkness and converting it into light,” he said.

“We are taking weapons of destruction and converting them into articles of light,” Hanoka said, as children glued the casings to painted blocks of wood to create their own menorahs.

The .38-caliber bullet casings were donated to the synagogue by a member who works in law enforcement, Hanoka said.

Members of the Team Soil BMX team performed a high-flying stunt show with a ramp in the synagogue’s parking lot to the delight of children and adults alike.

“I think they’re unbelievable,” said 11-year-old Laibel Pinson of Pasadena. He added that the latkas, however, were his favorite part of the Hanukkah celebration.

“I was quite impressed with those kids on the bikes,” added Irving Feffer, 76, of Beverly Hills.

In a particularly crowd-pleasing portion of the show, a member of the BMX team used a ramp to jump over Rabbi Hanoka.

While Rabbi Yisroel Pinson said there is no link between bicycle stunts and the Hanukkah holiday, he said the synagogue is always looking for innovative ways to make the holiday interesting to children.

The celebration culminated with the lighting of the giant menorah shortly before 5 p.m.

Six of the lanterns atop the symbolic “candle holder” were lighted Sunday evening, signifying the beginning of the sixth day in the eight-day holiday, explained Pinson.

Pinson supplied traditional Hanukkah music on his keyboard.

Congregation members sang Jewish hymns in both Hebrew and English as Hanoka reminded them that they were joining millions of other Jews around the world participating in the Hanukkah ritual.

The holiday has its origins in two miracles that occurred about 2,000 years ago, said Pinson.

Hanukkah commemorates a miraculous military victory of a small group of Israeli warriors over their Greek conquerors, Pinson said. The holiday also reflects a subsequent miracle, in which one day’s worth of lantern oil burned for eight days in the ancient Jewish temple.