Kuferstein wasn’t sure how many menorahs he had produced over the years, though he was certain it was in the hundreds of thousands by the time he retired in 1989. “They told me they were going to give it out for free, and I thought “The Bible says there is going to be a day when the guns will be made into plowshares, and I thought this was my chance,” he said. Kuferstein said that while he was not a member of Chabad, he is very religious and found biblical significance in the fact his factory produced materials for both war and religious purposes. “The first one I made was too sharp, so made it softer.” Kuferstein, a émigréįrom Budapest who is 82 and lives in Flatbush. “They asked me if I understood what to do, and I said, ‘Yes, I would take a piece of this, and a piece of that, and make something very good for them’,” Mr. Kuferstein was tasked with coming up with something inexpensive,Ĭ A tin menorah given out in Russia.
The rebbe’s representatives found Tibor Kuferstein, who owned a metal factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn, that produced supplies for military contracts. It may not be quite as ubiquitous as the Christmas tree stands on the city’s sidewalks, but the sight of tin menorahs is certainly familiar to anyone who has lived here long enough – or, for that matter,Īnywhere else where outreach workers of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement can be found.Ĭhabad focuses on persuading Jews to perform more mitzvahs – the menorah lighting campaign that stretches back to 1973, when the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement,ĭecided to pass out some 60,000 menorahs that were made in a matter of days. In this year more than most, it needs to be defended against the old-new bigotries that would extinguish its light.Menachem Serraf/ Daniel Nathan, a child with special needs, and a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, Leibele Rodal of the Friendship Circle of Montreal, Canada, an organization that assists children with special needs, after kindling the Hanukkah tin menorah with his parents, Rhonda and Ronen. But as the Hanukkah story also reminds us, that freedom can vanish almost overnight. Even now, we are lucky to live in a place where what constituted an act of defiance for Akiva and Rachel Posner can exist here as a quotidian exercise of religious freedom. But many Jews still live in the diaspora, including more than six million here in America. “That exile ended with the establishment of the state.” “Until 70 years ago, we were in exile,” he said. The menorah symbolizes the strength and continuity of our nation, the idea that it is strong and will conquer all its enemies.” “Whether it’s the Greeks on Hanukkah or the Nazis in Germany, they want the same thing - to destroy the nation of Israel,” he added. “It demonstrates the continuity of Jewish history.” “The same light that my great-grandparents lit in the exile in Germany is the light that so many light today in Israel,” he told me. The significance of lighting it in his home in Beit Shemesh, Israel, so many decades after his ancestors lit it as an act of resistance, did not escape him. I spoke by phone with the Posners’ great-grandson, Akiva Baruch Mansbach, who was named for Rabbi Posner and lights the menorah every year. But each year, right before Hanukkah, the family takes the menorah back and puts it to good use.
The rabbis also discussed foot traffic in marketplaces: They wanted to make sure that people lit their candles when pedestrians were flooding the streets.įor 51 weeks of the year, the menorah belongs to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
My menorah today how to#
The Talmud contains detailed guidelines of how to publicize the miracle, with extensive commentary on where the menorah would be most visible to people walking by. Miraculously, the small supply burned for eight. As tradition has it, when the Holy Temple was being rededicated and its golden menorah lit, there was only enough oil to last for one day. One of the essential components of Hanukkah is “persumei nisa,” or publicizing the miracle - the miracle being the triumph of a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, who led a revolt and conquered their Seleucid persecutors in the second century before the Common Era. Directly across the street was a Nazi flag. Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel, lit the menorah and placed it on their window sill. In its multigenerational life, its light has also touched the darkness. Tonight, and for the next seven nights, millions of Jews around the world will light a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah.
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