Shopping Malls Get in Chanukah Spirit

Westfield, the world’s largest shopping mall empire founded by Holocaust survivor Frank Lowy, will this year welcome in Chanukah on three continents.

Shopping malls in America, the United Kingdom and Australia, where the company is headquartered, will unveil Chanukah menorahs, a spokesperson for the company said this week.

The project will see individual shopping malls work closely with local Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis to bring the Festival of Lights to a wider audience. Rabbi Levi Wolff, of Sydney’s Central Synagogue, where the Lowy family is a member, will coordinate the project with fellow Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis.

“There is no doubt that what Westfield has done around the world by encouraging their shopping centers they are going to bringing awareness to tens of thousands of Jews and raise interest in the non-Jewish community through which our rabbis will explain the seven Noachide Laws,” Rabbi Wolff said. “This is nothing about Judaism…it’s all about humanism.”

The Westfield spokesperson said the final number of malls involved could not yet be confirmed.

“Rabbi Wolff is helping to establish these relationships and expand the celebrations across a number of Westfield centers,” the spokesperson said.

Westfield boasts more than 120 shopping centers in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil.

Lowy was born in Czechoslovakia and survived the Holocaust before immigrating to Palestine. His father died at Auschwitz.