Every Home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Gets a Chanukah Menorah
by Nancy K. S. Hochman – chabad.org
The welcoming and bucolic city of Jackson Hole, Wyo., is home to about 600 Jewish residents. This Chanukah, in light of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and the darkness that has filled the world since, a Wyoming rabbi decided to give every resident of the city, Jewish and non-Jewish, the gift of a menorah.
Rabbi Zalman Mendelsohn, who has directed Chabad-Lubavitch of Wyoming with his wife, Raizy, since 2007, launched his city’s menorah campaign this year by ordering 13,000 tin menorah sets, shipped from New York, complete with candles and dreidels, for each of the 12,530 Jewish and non-Jewish addresses in Jackson Hole, and to Wyoming state officials as well.
“In the aftermath of the tragic October 7 attack on Israel, the appropriate response would be to spread more light to the entire community,” Mendelsohn told Chabad.org. “The Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneeerson, of righteous memory] taught us that any time darkness descends on the world, we need to ensure that we spread more light, so the light can overcome the darkness.”
Jackson Hole resident Kay Stratman thanked the rabbi for the menorah, writing that “We are not Jewish … but compassion, caring, sharing and helping others is how we live our lives. . . We have placed the menorah on our windowsill and will light it in the evening, where others will see it as they pass in the dark and perhaps it will ‘light their way’ too.”
Echoes of `93
Chabad’s Jackson Hole menorah project echoes a 1993 incident that took place a few hundred miles north, in Billings, Mont. That year, a group of white supremacists flooded Billingswith death threats, anti-Jewish hate flyers, and vandalized the local Jewish cemetery. But when one of the haters threw a brick through the bedroom window of a 5-year-old Jewish boy who had a menorah displayed in his window, the town responded with a resonant “Enough. “
The local paper, The Billings Gazette, printed a full-page menorah, which thousands of residents pasted in their windows in an impressive showing of solidarity with the tiny Billings Jewish community.
Mendelsohn said he was inspired by the story of the Billings community’s solidarity with their Jewish neighbors, and wanted to inspire something similar in post-Oct. 7 Jackson Hole. He hopes that his menorah lighting campaign has helped do just that. “Many people have been lighting their menorahs and we’ve already received many warm messages, emails, phone calls from people indicating that they’re grateful for the menorah,” he said.
He added that in the aftermath of the terror attack in Israel dozens of people dropped by Chabad with flowers, cards, warm wishes and kind thoughts for the Jewish community.
Like communities worldwide, the Wyoming cities of Jackson, Cheyenne and Casper have seen marches with signs in support of terrorists at war with Israel. As a result, Mendelsohn felt the importance of “taking a stand, and requesting that our community stand proud, and outspoken in their support for Israel and the Jewish people.”
Jewish Awakening
Since October, many in the Jackson Hole Jewish community, both those already active, and those who had not yet attended programs or services, have sought support from Chabad, and joined in Jewish community activities, events, classes, programs, and Shabbat services, said Mendelsohn. “It has been a wonderful thing to watch the Jewish people rally around and come together after the attack in Israel,” he said, adding that the Jewish community experienced the attack in Israel as an attack on Jews throughout the diaspora.
The Mendelsohns are not the only Chabad emissaries in the beautiful state. Rabbi Yaakov Raskin and his wife, Malkie, recently moved to Wyoming to serve as heads of the new Chabad of Laramie. The Raskins will be officiating at the Chanukah celebration at the State Capital Building in Cheyenne.
“This Chanukah we’re seeing much larger crowds than typically,” said Mendelsohn. “That’s the Wyoming response.”
