Ritual & Meaning of Hanukkah Understanding the Symbolisms, Rituals and Real Significance of Chanukah / Hanukkah

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1 Ritual & Meaning of Hanukkah Understanding the Symbolisms, Rituals and Real Significance of Chanukah / Hanukkah & The Jews Were Pilgrims Too. A little known fascinating true story of how the Jew s landed in America, and become forever entwined with the story of Thanksgiving and America. Understanding the Symbolisms, Ritual and Real Significance of Chanukah / Hanukkah By: Rabbi Nachman Levine, Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah (Originally written for and published in the North Shore Insights News & Views Newspaper- Holiday Synergy3 Group Inc Publication Official Newspaper for the Glendale - North Shore Chamber.) The mitzvah or commandment of Chanukah is to light candles for eight days. We start with one on the first day and continue adding

2 an additional new candle each night until we build up to eight candles, which are all lit on the eighth night. Why do we light them in this manner? Perhaps we can answer that there can be no future unless the past is carried forward. When the first day of Chanukah passes and the second day arrives, we kindle a new light for the second day, but we rekindle the first day s candle again, and so for all the eight days. We believe that today s light cannot be kept aglow unless it burns with the light of yesterday, and tomorrow s light is not assured unless today s accompanies it. No younger generation can succeed unless it stands side by side with the previous generation to learn and take guidance from it. Chanukah teaches that the youth of this generation is aglow with the faith and tradition of the generations past. And so, we continue to remember with fondness and warm memories, the values of the past generations that we now carry into the future The Jews Were Pilgrims Too By: Dale A. Schmidt Editor/ Publisher NSI News & GCC - Glendale- North Shore President/CEO synergy3group@wi.rr.com

3 (Inspired by a Wall Street Journal article - God Delivered the Pilgrims - and My People - By: Rabbi Soloveichik, of Congregation Shearith Isreal in Manhattan and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.) The little known story of the Jewish refugees (Pilgrims) who established the first Jewish community in North America and became forever intertwined with the story of Thanksgiving and of America. September, 1654, 23 Jews landed in America after setting sail from Recife Brazil to escape religious persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition. Intending to return to Europe, their fate was forever transformed when in mid-voyage, pirates took them capture and they thought all was lost until God caused a savior and they were rescued by a French battleship captain, who took them to New Holland, better known as New Amsterdam in North America. From the start, with the dawning of Judaism in this brave New World, Shearith Israel the name means the remnant of Isreal - remained loyal to their faith and customs. By 1768 they hired their first American-born minister, Gershom Mendes Seixas. It is here, Rabbi Soloveichik says: their story becomes forever entwined with the story of Thanksgiving and America. Seixas was known as the Patriot Rabbi who ardently supported the American cause against the British; he was in the inaugural procession of the swearing in of the first President, George Washington, and later that year, when Washington

4 proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving, the minister of the first Jewish congregation delivered the first Thanksgiving address in a synagogue following the adoption of the Constitution. In His sermon, delivered Nov. 26, 1789, Rabbi Seixas expressed his profound gratitude for a government that was founded upon the strictest principles of equal liberty and justice. In a Thanksgiving Day service several years later, Soloveichik tells us that Seixas declared: As Jews, we are even more than others called upon to return thanks to God for placing us in such a country-where we are free to act according to the dictates of conscience, and where no exception is taken from following the principles of our religion. Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews on Hanukkah. In 2013, a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity existed for all American Jews that were able to celebrate both Hanukkah & Thanksgiving on the same day To all are Jewish GCC Chamber members, their employees and readers of the NSI-GCC Hot News Online We Wish You A Blessed - Happy Hanukkah Dale A. Schmidt - President / CEO Glendale Chamber of Commerce & Editor - North Shore Insights DaleGCC@wi.rr.com View on Web

5 The Ritual & Meaning of Hanukkah & The Jews Were Pilgrims Too