The menorah wars

“Shah! Don’t be too Jewish” is how Charles Silberman described the dominant attitude of American Jews in his 1985 classic, “A Certain People.” As part of the march to success during the second half of the 20th-century, Jews subdued the public expression of their Jewish identity, doing everything they could to melt into the surrounding culture. When faced with discrimination in employment and education, tens of thousands dropped Cohen and Levi and adopted American-sounding names to open doors to colleges and jobs. 

This was challenged in the mid-1970s in what became known as the “Menorah Wars.” Chabad emissaries urged on by the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, felt that the time had come for a bold, self-confident Judaism. The first menorah lighting was small, in 1974 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. A year later, in San Francisco, Chabad erected a massive menorah in Union Square, drawing about 1,000 to the festive celebration. Reform Rabbi Joseph Asher, leader of San Francisco’s largest congregation, Temple Emanuel, reacted strongly. He publically challenged the menorah in Union Square, sparking a battle that would rage in the Jewish community for 1 1/2 decades. In city after city, Chabad erected Chanukah menorahs. City halls and shopping centers, parks and other public places became the venues for public celebrations. The liberal Jewish establishment reacted with antagonism, arguing that it infringed on the principle of the separation of church and state. Christmas trees and other holiday celebrations had rarely perturbed the alphabet soup of Jewish groups that came out stridently against the menorah celebrations. At first, Jewish leaders tried to persuade and cajole Chabad Shluchim to suspend their celebrations. They escalated their opposition by publicly criticizing Chabad, and even intervened with government authorities to prevent public celebrations. When the Chabad rabbis would not back down, the American Civil Liberties Union, the then-influential American Jewish Congress and other Jewish groups challenged the menorah lightings in court. 

The church-and-state argument was a camouflage for a much deeper issue. The real debate was over Jewish identity in America. For decades, the primary principle had been that Jews should reserve their expression of their religious identity for the synagogue and home. There was fear that a public assertion of identity could create anti-Semitism. On a deeper level, many Jews were insecure about their identity and, as Silberman wrote, “afraid of being too Jewish.” The Rebbe challenged this idea. Saying the United States is a country that ensures the protection of religious rights, and arguing that menorah lightings would inspire many Jews to take pride in their heritage, he advocated a bold, self-confident Judaism. Other issues were at play. As Chabad’s network was beginning to grow, some Jewish leaders wanted to stifle its independence and success. As leaders of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles told a Chabad rabbi in L.A., “We run the Jewish community, not you.”

In my recent book, “The Secret of Chabad,” I recall a conversation with professor Arthur Hertzberg, president of the American Jewish Congress in the 1970s, who led the legal challenges to the menorah lightings. A year before his death in 2006, he summed up the debate, and time had changed his perspective. “We believed that we should be a Jew at home and a citizen on the street. The Rebbe’s view was that by being a Jew on the street, we would be a stronger Jew at home. He was right and we were wrong.”  

The participation at the time of tens of thousands in lightings all over the country proved the Jewish establishment was out of touch with the grass roots. The formal end of the Menorah Wars came in 1989, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in support of public menorah lightings. 

Today, public menorah lightings are ubiquitous. Jews have found that America’s pluralistic society enables Jews to live proudly. Things have come a long way: Chabad’s Rabbi Levi Shemtov in Washington, D.C., will be busy kashering the White House kitchen for the annual Chanukah celebration. In the Kremlin and at the Eiffel Tower, as well as at thousands of other locations, Jews will gather to celebrate with pride. Even Temple Emanuel of San Francisco, which decades ago initiated the Menorah Wars, will put on its own public menorah lighting on the fourth night of Chanukah in a shopping mall in the Bay Area.  

Rabbi David Eliezrie is the author of “The Secret of Chabad: Inside the World’s Most Successful Jewish Movement.”