PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Sunday at sundown marks the first night of Hanukkah. There are a variety of public celebrations taking place throughout the area.
Rabbi Hirshi Sputz of the Fairmount Chabad said for eight days, Jewish people around the world light Hanukkah candles, which he described as a miracle.
"Just stand around those candles and connect to thousands of years of ancestors, of our survival," he said.
Sputz said in this part of the world, it's fitting that Hannukah is celebrated in the winter, during the least amount of daylight hours.
"Because Hanukkah is about illuminating the darkness," he said, "and the message in our own life is to find dark situations that we may encounter and illuminate them with kindness and with positivity."
Rabbi Shaya Deitsch with Lubovitch of Montgomery County said Hanukkah is a holiday celebrating religious freedom, which he said was relevant amid the antisemitism that so many people face today.
"If we are not afraid to make noise and to get out there in the public and say we're proud to be Jewish and what you say doesn't bother us, we're not phased by that," he said, "that is the best way to fight antisemitism."
And in addition to lighting candles and eating fried food like jelly donuts, many celebrate publicly with a menorah car parade, which evolved from a relatively recent tradition of placing a menorah on one's car.
"It was 1973 that the Lubavitch Rebbe announced the Hannukah awareness campaign, to encourage and spread the light of Hanukkah by offering other Jews the opportunity to light a menorah and to come together to celebrate," explained Sputz. "People went out in the early 1970s distributing menorahs and creating opportunities for people to come together and celebrate in public spaces."
This year, that car parade takes place on Thursday in Center City — but Deitsch said on Wednesday, they'll be hosting their first Montgomery County car parade in Upper Dublin.
"We're trying to make noise," he said, "get peoples attention, let people know that it's Hanukkah in this world."
