'Light Up the Night' at Bradley Park and Chanukah on Worth to commemorate Jewish holiday
By Chris Paine
Palm Beach Daily News
Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010
Palm Beach will mark the arrival of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, with two events during the next few days. The Light up the Night Chanukah Festival in Palm Beach will occur at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Bradley Park. Chanukah on Worth will take place at 6 p.m. Dec. 6 at Via Mizner on Worth Avenue.
Seven synagogues will participate in the Bradley Park event that will feature fire dancers and a performance by Israeli singer Israel Parness. The Worth Avenue event will feature the Palm Beach Jewish Children’s Choir and an opportunity to send Hanukkah greeting cards to Israeli soldiers. Both events, which are open to the public, will feature a Menorah lighting.
Hanukkah is an eight-day festival that commemorates the victory of the Jews, led by Judah Maccabeus, over the Syrian Greeks in the 2nd century B.C. and the restoration of the second temple. In the temple, all the vessels containing consecrated olive oil had been polluted except for one, which had enough oil left for one day’s burning. The contents of the vessel miraculously burned for eight days, allowing the priests to ready a new supply of holy oil to cleanse the temple.
“We celebrate two miracles,” said Rabbi Moshe Scheiner of Palm Beach Synagogue, a co-founder of the Bradley Park event. “The first is of the victory itself. The second is of the oil. We re-enact the miracle of the light.”
For Rabbi Leonid Feldman of Temple Beth El and co-founder of the event, the commemoration of Hanukkah is full of meaning. “It’s a powerful, profound story. It was their fight to be different. I am honored and proud to be a part of this.”
For Rabbi Zalman Levitin and the Palm Beach Jewish Center, this marks the fifth year they are participating in the Bradley Park lighting as well as the event the center founded on Worth Avenue. The Worth Avenue event has grown from 40 people the first year to 200 people last year.
“Each night of Hanukkah we add one more flame on the Menorah, spiritually we add one more light into the world by adding in more and more acts of goodness and kindness,” Levitin said.
For more information about the Bradley Park event, call the Palm Beach Synagogue at 838-9002 or visit www.palmbeach synagogue.com. To learn more about the Worth Avenue event, call the Palm Beach Jewish Center at 659-3884, or e-mail [email protected].