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Community celebrates Chanukah at Galleria of Mt. Lebanon

By Harry Funk 3 min read
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Rabbi Mendel Rosenblum lights the shamash, the candle in the middle of the menorah.

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Dave Darwin presents his “one-man sideshow.”

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Moshe Pekkar peforms traditional Klezmer music.

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Rabbi Mendel Rosenblum gets ready to light the menorah.

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A youngster works on his dreidel launcher.

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Lydia Gordon, 3 1/2, gets ready to work on her craft project.

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Jodi Marcovitz helps daughter Mollie, 6, work on her project.

The festive occasion that packed the top floor of the Galleria of Mt. Lebanon on Dec. 7 was the lighting of the menorah for Chanukah.

Rabbi Mendel Rosenblum of Chabad of the South Hills did the honors, climbing to light three of the nine candles: the shamash in the center, from which the others are lit, and two more for the first two days of Chanukah, which wraps up its eight-day run on Dec. 14.

The community celebration at the Galleria, presented by the Chabad – the Jewish center for living and learning in Mt. Lebanon – and South Hills Jewish Pittsburgh, featured a craft for children, who made their own “dreidel launchers.” Guests partook of a hot latka bar and enjoyed traditional Klezmer music by Moshe Pekkar of Squirrel Hill, who also happens to be a master silversmith.

Dave Darwin provided the evening’s main entertainment with his self-proclaimed “one-man sideshow,” dazzling the crowd with his juggling, fire eating, plate spinning, unicycling and joke telling. The Philadelphia native, incidentally, was a semifinalist on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.”

As Rabbi Rosenblum prepared to light the menorah, though, he reminded those in attendance about the meaning of Chanukah, which celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem by the Maccabean Jews in the second century B.C.

He read from a letter written in 1980 by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who in the 1970s spearheaded the lighting of public menorahs for Chanukah in the United States. In part:

“Such is the nature of light that when one kindles a light for one’s own benefit, it benefits also all who are in the vicinity. Indeed, the Chanukah lights are expressly meant to illuminate the outside, symbolically alluding to the duty to bring light also to those who, for one reason or another, still walk in darkness.

“What is true of the individual is true of a nation, especially this great United States, united under God, and generously blessed by God with material as well as spiritual riches. It is surely the duty and privilege of this nation to promote all forces of light, both at home and abroad, and in the steadily growing measure.

“Let us pray that the message of the Chanukah lights will illuminate the everyday life of everyone personally and of the society at large for a brighter life in every respect, both materially and spiritually.”

Rabbi Rosenblum added his own take on the message.

“So as we light the Chanukah candles here tonight in the South Hills, even though it’s just one little part of Pittsburgh, the light that shines here goes on from everyone here to our homes and to all our circles of influence,” he said. “And hopefully from there, it spreads to the entire Pittsburgh, the entire United States, and then to the entire world.”

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