It was a frigid Saturday night during Ḥanukka of 1974 when Rabbi Abraham Shemtov had the unusual idea of lighting a big Ḥanukkiya right in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which houses the Liberty Bell, the icon of American freedom.

The Ḥanukkiya was crude and made of wood; he had fashioned it with the help of some visiting yeshiva students. Almost no one was there that night to witness the actual lighting, but that simple four-foot Ḥanukkiya was the seed from which thousands of public Ḥanukkiyot have sprouted up in public and private places throughout the United States and around the world.

Over the next few years, Ḥanukkiyot began springing up in cities and towns all across America. The next major development was in 1979, when Shemtov collaborated with Stuart Eizenstat – President Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser and executive director of the White House domestic policy staff – to arrange for a Ḥanukkiya to be placed on the White House lawn. Despite the fact that Carter was otherwise preoccupied during the opening weeks of the Iranian hostage crisis, he pointedly walked from the White House to the Ḥanukkiya, where he lit the shamash – the helper candle from which the others are kindled – and shared greetings with the assembled crowd.

Throughout the following decades, the number of Ḥanukkiyot and the scope of their reach has continued to blossom. It is estimated that as many as 15,000 Chabad-Lubavitch Ḥanukkiyot are publicly lit worldwide.

One of the largest lightings is the one near the Eiffel Tower in central Paris, which has attracted as many as 20,000 French Jews. And in 1991, in the presence of approximately 6,000 Jews, longtime Chabad underground activist Avraham Genin kindled a giant Ḥanukkiya inside the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.

In 2013, the tallest Ḥanukkiya in Europe (more than thirty feet tall!) was constructed and lit on the first night of Ḥanukka at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, once a symbol of Nazi Party racism and hatred. Thousands of people attended the public ceremony, including local dignitaries. “Bringing light to places of darkness is the message of Ḥanukka,” said Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin’s director, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal. “There is no greater contrast than lighting a menora here – in the place that was once the epitome of darkness – and now flooding it with the essence of light.”

POINT TO PONDER

1. Does the lighting of giant Ḥanukkiyotthroughout the world make you uncomfortable or proud?