Guinness World Records Recognizes Menorah As Largest

The now official “Worlds Largest Menorah” was recognized this year by the Guinness World Records as the official Worlds Largest Menorah standing at 32 feet tall and 26 feet wide. The Menorah which is lit every night of Chanukah at Grand Army Plaza on 59th and 5th in Manhattan since the late 1970’s, had the people from the book of records come to the Menorah and measure it and present the certificate to the son of the Menorah’s designer Yaakov Agam and to the Lubavitch Youth Organization.

This Menorah sat in model size on the Rebbes desk before being approved of by the Rebbe and only then was it built to its present dimensions.

More pictures in the Extended Article.

Avraham Fried unites crowd with Yiddishkeit

Some dancing, most clapping, the crowd enjoyed a two-hour cross-section of hits from Fried’s 23 albums, plus a number of surprises tailored to the Kansas City audience.

Fried’s legendary, 25-year career has taken him from Crown Heights to Australia, and from the Kremlin to Carnegie Hall. The Kansas appearance of a man whose concerts have drawn over 100,000 at a time in Jerusalem may have been facilitated by his local ties – Rabbis Ben Zion and Chonie Friedman are his brother and nephew, respectively. But then, there is hardly a place in the Jewish world where this peripatetic songbird has not flown.

Fried’s popularity was built on the quality of his voice – a high, clear, ringing tenor. But his longevity as a top performer reflects his ability to entertain multi-age audiences with dancing and stories, with prayer and shtick, and with a warm awareness of his audience as fellow Jews.

St. Augustine lights public menorah in Plaza

About 200 people came to the Plaza de la Constitucion on Thursday night to observe the fifth night of Hanukkah by watching the lighting of menorah candles.

Rabbi Nochum Kurinski, a leader of the Chabad @ the Beaches in Ponte Vedra Beach, said, “This is the newest menorah for the oldest city in America.”

The large aluminum menorah was made by Raymond Zrihen of Jacksonville.

“I commissioned it, but he wouldn’t take any money,” Kurinski said.

Kalman Rothman, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who is Rabbi Kurinski’s father-in-law, said a menorah candle is being lit every night in different Florida cities.

Ceremony shows unity against menorah vandals

A new menorah was raised and dedicated Wednesday by local religious leaders, four days after a menorah was vandalized and destroyed at the same site.

Rabbi Yacov Borenstein, who erected the original menorah in New Windsor, said it was important to replace the damaged religious symbol to make a statement.

“We want to show it doesn’t break our spirits,” said Borenstein, of Chabad Lubavitch of the Mid-Hudson Valley.

He was joined by fellow religious leaders and community activists who said they wanted to show solidarity with the local Jewish community.

New Chabad center is finally completed

The Waxman Chabad Center in Beachwood finally opened last Wednesday, Dec. 21, completing construction project four years in the making.

Workers demolished the old Chabad House fronting Green Road on Thursday, revealing the gabled façade of the new $3.4 million structure that is the final piece of the Green Road Jewish campus.

The front entry of the concrete block building is meant to resemble 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch. Inside, the 18,000- square-foot center has a sanctuary for worship as well as programming and office space.

Juveniles charged with hate crimes

Three juveniles were arrested last week by Swampscott police, ending a two-month search for the perpetrators behind two anti-Semitic incidents at the Lubavitch synagogue of the North Shore. The youths were arraigned at the Lynn Juvenile Court on Dec. 19 and 20 for allegedly committing a series of hate crimes against the synagogue.

The first incident occurred a few days before Rosh Hashanah, when vandals entered the building through an unlocked door and scrawled nti-Semitic graffiti on the walls of the synagogue. Two weeks later, a van belonging to synagogue was torched in its parking lot.he 14-year-olds were charged with hate crimes and will be tried for the destruction of property in excess of $5,000. The youths were not part of ny official anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi group, according to the Office for the District Attorney for the Essex County District.

More fighting to do

Even as Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the NYPD take a well-deserved bow for driving crime in New York City to record lows this year, upward spikes of shootings and violent crime in some inner-city neighborhoods show there’s more work to be done.

In Brooklyn’s 71st Precinct, which covers Crown Heights, murders jumped to 21, up from nine last year, the largest increase in the city. Murders also went up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and in Fordham/University Heights, the Bronx.

A Hanukkah hope: Defeat the darkness Aboard the USS Ford

The USS Ford, a guided-missile frigate, may be a high-tech “total warfare system,” but for the past few days, it has been host to a symbol more than 2,000 years old: a menorah.

The 9-foot electric menorah stands on the deck of the ship at Naval Station Everett, being lit each night during the Hanukkah holiday, from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1.

Large, public menorah lightings are nothing new to Chabad Lubavitch of the Pacific Northwest. The Jewish outreach organization sponsors humanitarian, educational and social activities and is part of Chabad centers worldwide.

Compromise reached over Ft. Collins menorah

A down-to-the-wire compromise has prevented a legal battle between the city of Fort Collins and an Orthodox Jewish congregation over the public display of a Hanukkah menorah.

The Chabad Jewish Center of Northern Colorado wanted to display the menorah on city property in Old Town Square, but city administrators denied the request, despite a precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 that likely would allow the display.

The compromise highlights the work of a newcomer rabbi and a mayor wishing to promote Fort Collins as a city that embraces diversity. But it also means that the menorah will not be allowed to remain on city property throughout the eight-day Hanukkah celebration, which began Sunday.

Chabad center lights up Hanukkah

This year’s community Hanukkah event connected, honored and celebrated 2,000 years of history.

The traditional menorah lighting at the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe followed a memorial service for the soldiers from New Jersey that were killed in combat in Iraq.

Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, who runs the Chabad center, said the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces are fighting for the triumph of freedom over oppression, just as the Maccabean soldiers did in their victorious battle, which the holiday commemorates.

First Rockland Hanukkah parade

CLICK HERE for a Newscast of this event!

More than 55 cars bedecked with large, handmade menorahs departed from Langeris Drive last night for the first-ever Hanukkah parade in Rockland County.

The procession was beginning a trip through Monsey, Viola and New Hempstead before heading south on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, and continuing on Route 303 in Orangeburg and Tappan. It ended at Closter Borough Hall in Closter, N.J., with a public menorah lighting.

“We’re going out to celebrate the idea of good prevailing over evil — of Hanukkah,” Levi Fuss, outreach coordinator at Yeshiva Menachem Mendel Lubavitch in Monsey, said. “We want to be able to invite everybody together in this happy celebration.”

Chanukah. . . Hannuka. . . Hahfuhgedit!

To C or not to C? That is the question.

Hanukkah or Chanuka? Two Ns? Two Ks? An H at the end or not?

There are more than 20 different spellings of the name of the Jewish winter Festival of Lights and, apparently, no one ever sat down and decided on a single way to spell it.

There’s Channuka, Channukah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanuko, Hannuka, Hannukah, Hanuka, Hanika, Hanukah, Hanukka, Hanukkah, Kanukkah, Khannuka, Khannukah, Khanuka, Khanukah, Khanukkah and Khanike. Sometimes even Xanuka.

Rome: Jews light menorah opposite Iran Embassy

Members of Rome’s Jewish community lit Chanukah candles in front of the Iranian Embassy on Wednesday in what they said was a peaceful response to comments by the Iranian president that the Holocaust was a “myth.”

Two of the people who lit the candles were World War II concentration camp survivors, and a third was an Iranian Jew.

“We want to bring the light and not fire to the world,” said Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni. “The story of Chanukah reminds us of a military victory but the symbol is a spiritual one, it’s a peaceful witness to the fact that we exist.”

The heat is low, but Chabad menora effort can still ignite a controversy

Like the ancient light at the heart of the Hanukka story, the discord over the public display of menoras in the region burns on and on.

Throughout the state, representatives of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement have been erecting the Hanukka menoras in public spaces, part of the hasidic outreach movement’s plans to light more than 11,000 large public candelabrum in places ranging from Bangkok to Miami Beach.

But while the courts have made it easier to erect the menora and other religious holiday symbols on public property, Chabad still faces opposition from many, including area rabbis who say the displays violate the Constitution and tarnish the religious significance of the menora.