Trademarks of Faith: “Chabad and Chanukah in America”

INTRODUCTION: THE AVANT-GARDE AND THE OLD WORLD

Americans familiar with the Brooklyn-based Chabad Hasidic movement know the group primarily through its public Jewish ritual and outreach campaigns, from the “mitzvah tanks” in American cities, to its star-studded telethons and photo-ops with political leaders. Perhaps the group's best known public campaign is the giant Chanukah menorah lightings it sponsors and the associated media coverage. While some of these lightings are geared towards local crowds, others are staged media events, televised live on public and cable channels, and more recently, streamed on Chabad-affiliated web sites. Starting in 1989, Chabad simultaneously linked international Chanukah menorah lightings with real-time reporting in their televised Chanukah Live spectaculars. Many “outside” photographers have documented Chabad's Chanukah celebrations as tourists, and others, such as Mal Warshaw in the 1970s, Yaakov Agam in the 1980s, and Frédéric Brenner in the 1990s turned to Chabad's Chanukah events as artists. One of the photographs Brenner reproduced in large-scale format in his Diaspora: Homelands in Exile album (2003) and in a two-page fold-out in the Jews/America/A Representation album (1996), is a black-and-white panoramic shot of the interior of the Chabad World Headquarters during the 1993 Chanukah season (Figure 1). Entitled Chanukah Live!, this photograph records the spectacle of Chabad's embrace of modern technology for the annual televised Chanukah extravaganza.

Taken in the last months of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's life, the “Rebbe,” as his Hasidim reverentially call him, dominates an otherwise empty room through a refracted image on seven monitors in preparation for the Chanukah Live! broadcast in December of 1993. Loudspeakers, hanging cables, electric tape, exposed air conditioner ducts, vents, and still fans riddle the ceiling and hasty banners advertise the upcoming holiday media event on the peeling wood-paneled walls, while the shiny special-order, six-foot gold-plated menorah stands inconspicuously to the side of a make-shift stage. The orientation of the photograph suggests not a sanctuary inside Chabad's World Headquarters on 770 Eastern Parkway, but a theater in “dress-rehearsal” for “opening night,” when R. Schneerson will appear from behind the velvet curtain of the glass booth in the dead center of the composition and the monitors throughout the room will tune into the international Chabad Chanukah lightings in Washington, Jerusalem, Melbourne, Paris, and Russia. Despite the various mediums of communication that co-exist within the subject of the photograph, the photograph itself operates under the simplest visual formulae of traditional panoramic compositions with its linear perspective and single vanishing point in the center of an elongated composition. In choosing the wide-aspect ratio of the panoramic print format to capture a minute field of view, Brenner grants the near-claustrophobic space of “770” a wide berth. Brenner provocatively updates Leonardo Da Vinci's panoramic mural The Last Supper (c. 1495), the touchstone for modern religious painting. In this highly-structured interior shot, Brenner explores another Jewish messiah on the eve of another Redemption/Betrayal, but this time in the age of mass-communication technology. Brenner simulates the pictorial space of The Last Supper, in which all the converging diagonal lines created by the architectural elements within Da Vinci's painting draw the eye to the apex of the composition at Jesus’ head and the open window above his head. In Chanukah Live!, the sharp diagonals created by the stage on the left and the messianic posters on the right converge at the largest screen of R. Schneerson's head and the mysterious curtained window above his head. In both compositions, firm verticals and horizontals create a highly structured, geometric space for the eye to focus on the central figure, but unlike the effervescent window that creates a natural halo for Jesus, the curtained window above R. Schneerson's head competes for attention and further removes any direct representation of (or contact with) the Hasidic leader. And unlike the ubiquitous curtains on the edges of traditional Renaissance portraits which provide the effect of spatial recession and simulate a “window” into the three-dimensional “real world,” in Brenner's photograph the rest of the sanctuary frames these drawn curtains as the focal point of the entire composition. Brenner's clever mise-en-scène records the hours of anticipation before an evdience of children fill the orchestra seats to tune into the Chanukah Live program and participate in the simultaneous lighting performed in the sanctuary when the menorah in the far left of the photograph (and the far right of the actual orientation of the sanctuary) will star the show.

The aspect of theater is further heightened in the photograph, ironically titled Chanukah Live!, by the anachronistic image of R. Schneerson on the silver screens, the vision of health and leadership. In reality, by December of 1993, R. Schneerson could not actively participate in the show due to his debilitating stroke, except for non-verbal cameo appearances. The video-stills preserve an earlier, reinvigorated image on a different day—a sunnier day—when R. Schneerson waved at audiences from an open dais during Chabad's annual spring pageant of Lag B’Omer. The glass booth, constructed in March of 1992 for their ailing leader despite contention within the Crown Heights community over the appropriate medical and therapeutic course of action, provided R. Schneerson with direct access from his office to the sanctuary (bet hamidrash), where he could participate in the celebration if only as a mere spectator. R. Schneerson's secretaries moved the menorah several feet from its location in previous years so that R. Schneerson could see the lighting from his position in the window. The organizers of the Chanukah Live event placed television screens throughout the room to entertain the children in the audience with the world-wide celebrations of Chanukah, since R. Schneerson could not personally address the crowd himself as per his usual custom. At Brenner's request, all the screens televise a video-still from footage compiled for a retrospective of R. Schneerson's life and accomplishments, but the cameras laboriously set up throughout the room all focus on the menorah.

In the eerie theatricality of Chanukah Live!, the bearded Hasidic rebbe transcends his role as “subject” to perform his own highly modernist mode of viewing. Brenner's Chanukah Live! reveals something of the role that visual culture plays in the Americanization of Hasidism and the concomitant “Chabadization” of American public Judaism.¹ The public celebration of Chanukah provides insight into Chabad's use of the mediums of simulation and multivalent approaches to Hasidic and secular spaces. Chabad's role in Jewish visibility, material Judaism, and assimilation of American cultural references set the community apart from other Hasidic groups that have been more tentative in their adoption of modern media and popular culture. An analysis of Chabad's participation in the American winter holiday season provides insight into the quintessentially American flavor of post-Shoah Chabad ideology, and the role Chabad plays in the shaping of political ideologies, public Jewish ritual, and civic agency in the United States.

PUBLICIZING THE MIRACLE OF CHANUKAH

Chanukah's status as a minor Jewish holiday that fell out around Christmas time, proved socially and politically complex for its modern celebrants in America. In 1865, the reform Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise suggested the elimination of the Hanukkah menorah, a pervasive attitude among German Jewish reformers who considered the overt Jewish nationalism celebrated on Chanukah an anathema to the ethos of American liberal Judaism.² Reform Jews in America soon reshaped the nationalistic emphasis of Chanukah into a universal call to Jewish activism against political tyranny and oppression as they had in the nineteenth century in relation to Jewish civil emancipation in Germany.³ Chanukah's connections to Christmas and modern Israel also alienated Orthodox and Hasidic communities, who disavowed both the concomitant Israeli nationalism and the American consumerism of Chanukah. Focusing on the singular mitzvah of lighting a menorah in the home, from its wicks to its prescribed visibility, halachic responsa and periodicals rejected new rites and rituals they interpreted as derivative of “X-mas.” Orthodox and Hasidic rabbinic leaders tried to reinstate Purim as the Jewish holiday for gift-giving, while religious anti-Zionists recoiled from analogies from the Chanukah story to the modern State of Israel. In 1975, the Jewish legal authority Moshe Feinstein wrote in a response to a question about lighting the Chanukah lamp inside versus outside, that “in our day” lighting the Chanukah menorah outside in America was “impossible” and the concept of “pirsumei nisa” primarily served the household within, not the public outside the home. However, other than simply stating that lighting outdoors was “impossible,” R. Feinstein's responsa offered no further explanation.⁴

By the time Chabad chapters across the country entered the winter holiday space in the late 1970s and 1980s, it was predominantly non-Orthodox Jewish groups that engaged the celebration of Chanukah beyond its highly circumscribed domestic rituals. Under the tutelage of R. Schneerson, local Chabad chapters found a unique opportunity in the American Jewish celebration of Chanukah to materialize the Hasidic concept of “spreading the wellsprings” (yafutzu ma’ayusehu hutzah) of Hasidism. In 1958, R. Schneerson announced that “spreading the wellsprings” should be conducted in the manner of “ufaratzta,” a Hebrew term borrowed from the Biblical passage, “Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the West and to the East, to the North and to the South.” (Genesis 28:14).⁵ Two decades later, R. Schneerson harnessed the Talmudic obligation to publicize the miracle Chanukah (pirsumei nisa) to enact the concept of “spreading the wellsprings” in the manner of “ufaratzta” with an international media campaign to erect Chabad-sponsored giant Chanukah lamps all over the world.

Chabad celebration of Chanukah sprouted in an atmosphere of general innovation of Jewish holidays in both America and Israel. In the New Yishuv, and later the State of Israel, new settlers added national signifiers and creative ceremonies to the traditional observance of Jewish holidays, such as a torch relay from Modi’in to Jerusalem and monumental menorahs on public property. Israel's proudly public celebrations inspired American Jewish communities in turn to add their own creative contributions to Jewish holidays, albeit limited to Jewish communal spaces and avoiding public pageantry. While Israelis established public Chanukah lightings, such as the lighting of a giant menorah on top of the Knesset building in Jerusalem, no such practice existed in America. Traditional Jewish sources put little emphasis on the particular form of the menorah, focusing instead on the Talmudic concept of “pirsumei nisa” enacted through the display of Chanukah lamps in the windows of Jewish homes and in the synagogue. Chabad innovated both on the placement and the shape of the Chanukah menorah.⁶ In the mid-1970s, R. Schneerson approved and supported the independent public lightings several of his emissaries initiated and by the late 1970s, R. Schneerson actively encouraged his Hasidim to emblazon the winter nights of Chanukah with monumental public menorahs. By the 1980s, Chabad Chanukah menorahs made up the vast majority of public lighting ceremonies in the Diaspora. Like the Zionist project at the beginning of the twentieth century, R. Schneerson adopted the symbols associated with the military battle of the Maccabees, but for his own spiritual battle against Jewish assimilation. A small, but devoted number of Chabad emissaries parted with the Orthodox and Hasidic discomfort with public Chanukah celebrations and joined the vast cultural, public, and commercial enterprise of the Zionist-oriented American winter holiday season. In the process, Chabad actively revised the celebration of Chanukah in America into a distinct celebration, both American and Religious.

The first public Chabad Chanukah lighting took place in 1974 at the foot of the Liberty Bell at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The local media who covered the lighting did not miss the joint-symbolism of the event and described the two juxtaposed symbols in terms of the American right to the freedom of religion and the Jewish struggle for religious expression. In 1975, the Chabad Center of San Francisco lit a massive twenty-two foot Chanukah lamp in the densely populated Union Square. Funded by rock music promoter and Holocaust émigré Bill Graham, the giant public Chanukah lamp earned the appellation of “Mama Menorah,” both because of its size and because it gave birth to thousands of such Chabad-sponsored public celebrations in the city halls, court houses, shopping malls, airports, parks, along highways and pedestrian thoroughfares in myriad counties and cities throughout the United States and around the globe. From these first lightings, the development of the Chabad Chanukah lamp and the political and social context in which it emerged linked the public Chabad Chanukah celebrations with the American ethos of human rights, religious and political freedom, tolerance, and multiculturalism. In 1979, Chabad emissary in Washington, DC Rabbi Avraham Shemtov erected the thirty-foot “National Menorah” in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, creating ideal photo-opportunities for the reinvested ceremonial object as a Jewish American symbol against tyranny and oppression. Washington dignitaries attended the lighting of the thirty-foot menorah in Lafayette Park. President Jimmy Carter emerged from his 100-day seclusion in the White House over the Iran hostage crisis to attend the ceremony, deliver a speech on the forces of light and darkness, and to convey his prayers for the hostages.⁷ The following year in 1980, R. Schneerson penned an open letter to “all Participants in the Public Lighting of the Chanukah Menorah in the USA,” advocating that although Chanukah lighting begins “at home, it does not stop there.”

Chabad framed the adoption of public menorah lightings as a symbol of America's role as a land of religious freedom and pluralism, as well as the land of Jewish and universal Redemption.⁸ On Chanukah of 1986, R. Schneerson reflected that unlike the previous regimes in which Jews found themselves, “the foundation of this country [America] is faith in God.”⁹

Now, in a land that vigorously protects the right of every man to practice his religion freely, Jews are once again lighting menorahs in public to proclaim the universal message of religious freedom. These public lightings confirm the basic beliefs of America's first settlers, themselves victims of religious persecution. Indeed, freedom to practice religion became inscribed in the laws of the land: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees individuals the right to practice their religion without fear, and prevents the government from favoring any particular faith.¹⁰

On Chanukah of 1989, Chabad staged its first inter-continental Chanukah Live program (see Figure 1). “Place would no longer matter and time zones would be eclipsed,” announced one poster plugging the television coverage.¹¹ By 1990, Chanukah in “770” became its own media event, connecting hundreds of communities around the world to R. Schneerson in Crown Heights but also attracting an audience of primarily unaffiliated Jews and non-Jews. At the millennia lighting of 2000, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat lit the national Chanukah lamp in front of the White House to an accompaniment by the U.S. Marine band playing a lively rendition of Haveinu Shalom Aleichem. Drawing upon his personal memories from the original White House menorah lighting in 1979 and the impact Chabad public menorahs played in reinforcing American values, Eizenstat notes that “for more than 20 years, due to the leadership of the Chabad Lubavitch Movement, a menorah has stood here in our nation's capital as a symbol of the pluralism and religious liberty that are such a precious part of the American heritage.”¹² R. Schneerson contextualized the public menorah campaign as congruent with the American ethos of multiculturalism, writing in 1983 that the public menorah “is fully in keeping with the American national slogan ‘e pluribus unum’ and the fact that American culture has been enriched by the thriving ethnic cultures which contributed very much, each in its own way, to American life, both materially and spiritually.”¹³

Since the public lighting at the foot of the Liberty Bell, Chabad organized, sponsored, and publicized tens of thousands of lighting ceremonies around the globe. The desire to spread the light of the Chanukah menorah to every conceivable space in the world motivates the collection and preservation of visual reportage of the Chanukah menorah in a variety of different mediums and juxtaposed with the architectural and sculptural icons of the widest possible array of cities. By virtue of the fact that the Chabad menorah pairs up with the White House, Eiffel Tower, the Kremlin, and the Great Wall of China, it projects a “universal” message. Hundreds of specially fitted cars publicize the miracle of Chanukah with four-foot high metal menorahs. In some towns police-escorted “menorah processions” parade down urban streets with thirty to fifty menorah cars lighting up the neighborhood. Local Chabad emissaries take pride in their creative community-menorahs, often hand-crafting them themselves from wood and metal or sharing successful templates by other handy Hasidim. Photographs of the Chabad menorah atop an elephant in Bangkok, Thailand, publicize the miracle of Chanukah and the miracle of Chabad's globalization.

These public lightings garner much positive press and attention, but they also warrant controversy and even lawsuits. Often initiated by American Jewish lobbies and pressure groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or local Jewish Federations, lawsuits against Chabad's public displays object on the basis of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which upholds the separation of Church and State. The local effort on behalf of the public menorahs in shopping malls and in airports around the country is still openly contended, creating friction between various religious groups and between Chabad and secular Jews. In 1987, the American Jewish Congress lobbied against the public display of the Chabad menorah, arguing that it amounted to a government endorsement of religion and that it bred antisemitism. In the beginning of Chabad litigation on behalf of the public lightings, Chabad rested its case on the menorah's status as a secular cultural symbol, citing its use as a symbol of the secular State of Israel.¹⁴ In an ironic twist, the Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that menorah installations transcended a particularly Jewish message and that the menorah displays on public property were not constitutionally proscribed because “both Christmas and Chanukah are part of the same winter-holiday season, which has attained a secular status in our society.”¹⁵ Indeed, under the guidelines from the United States Supreme Court, it is difficult to hold a public display of a Christmas tree in the United States today without an adjacent menorah.

The legislative defense of the Chanukah campaign, at times apologetic or even cynical in order to protect the public menorah project, eventually impacted Chabad's own attitudes. As in the multiple court cases in Burlington, Vermont in 1986–1991, Chabad insisted that it was not the secular nature of the menorah that they rested their case upon, but the right to “freedom of religion.”¹⁶ The three decades of public Chanukah lightings offer a clear case study of how Chabad policy is forged on the ground with no clear consensus on how best to defend its institutional mission. The basis for the lawsuits sometimes got muddled from case to case and Chabad's litigation strategies shifted with the growing acceptance of their menorahs on public property in the United States. In the Pittsburgh case, attorney Nathan Lewin acknowledged that the menorah was a religious symbol, but argued that “the minority's religious symbol could constitutionally be included in a municipal display because it was overshadowed by the Christmas tree that stood adjacent to it in Pittsburgh's “Season of Lights” exhibit on the stairs of its City Hall.”¹⁷ Lewin helped prepare a packet of legal briefings and materials to help Chabad emissaries throughout the United States present established precedents to local governments and courts.¹⁸ In 1994, the Ku Klux Klan seized on a ruling for the constitutional right to the “freedom of speech” and the “freedom of religion” for a public menorah in Ohio, and invoked the public menorahs as grounds for erecting a cross on the public square in 1994. In a short article clarifying Chabad's new litigation strategies for the Chanukah menorah campaign, Lewin expresses the Klan's erection of its cross as a victory: “the Supreme Court gave organized religion a great victory by upholding the Klan's constitutional right to display what it claimed was a religious message in a public forum.”¹⁹

Orthodox Jews sometimes also displayed unease with the publicity and visibility Chabad outdoor lightings engendered, although never participating in lawsuits against Chabad and rarely publishing approbations against them on Jewish legal principles. One of the early critics of Chabad messianism, Dean of Telshe Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Dov Keller, criticized “the down side of P.R.,” citing as his prime example a full-page advertisement by an outspoken messianic Chabad group in The New York Times.²⁰ In a 2005 article devoted to the halachic analysis of menorah lightings, Rabbi Hershel Lutch and Rabbi Mike Moskowitz observe that “in recent years, increasing numbers of American Jews have begun to light their menorahs outside, thereby parting with the centuries-old custom of lighting the menorah indoors,” but never explicitly returned to the specific sociological phenomenon of the public menorah.²¹ In surveying the applicability of the Talmudic mandate to light outdoors, the authors raise the following halachic concerns: danger during times of religious persecution (bish’at hasakana), the established custom of indoor lightings (status of minhag yisroel) even in times of tranquility, and inclement Diaspora weather. Even in the cases where the halacha would allow for outdoor lightings in the Diaspora, the authors identify two rather tangential concerns: outdoor lightings may transgress the concept of “lo titgodidu,” causing dissention within a Jewish community where the local practice is to light indoors and “mechzei k’yahara,” giving the appearance of excessive piety. Because the Gemorah opines that the menorah should be lit outside except in times of danger and because the custom evolved into lighting exclusively indoors, the rejuvenation of the outdoor menorah signaled a radical revision of the attitude towards the Diaspora. Until the popularization of Chabad's outdoor public lightings, open-air celebrations and performances belonged to the Jews who won their political autonomy in Israel and “earned” such public displays of Jewish identity. But R. Schneerson urged his Hasidim to exercise their rights in America because “when a Jewish community anywhere in the U.S.A. publicly raises objections to placing a Chanukah Menorah in a public place—on whatever grounds—and however well intentioned—it is thereby jeopardizing the Jewish position in general.”²²

Chabad's anti-exilic embrace of the Diaspora reflected Chabad's attitude towards the celebration of Chanukah and the public circulation of the menorah. This attitude towards Jewish identity in America differs markedly from that of Hasidic and non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox groups that saw their new home as a place for the “surviving remnant” (she’arith hapleitah) of pre-World War II Europe to sojourn as they patiently awaited the Final Redemption as “a people apart.” In the view of these other groups, the modern-day Churban (destruction; Holocaust) underscored Jewish homelessness and the long-lived conditions of exile, established over two millennia after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In “reaching out” to the Jewish community in Teaneck, R. Schneerson offered an alternative attitude towards the lessons of Chanukah, as well as towards Jewish identity in America. In a post-script added to the republication of the 1983 letter supporting public Chanukah lightings, R. Schneerson states that the topic of antisemitism is too much of a digression from the issues of the public menorah, but that “antisemitism and prejudice require no outside causes,” a comment directly in response to the criticism that public Judaism breeds contempt.²³

The Chabad menorah project reflected the view that Chanukah in America should be celebrated with the same public pride displayed in Israel. In Chanukah celebrations, Chabad discovered and capitalized upon values shared by the broader American community, including the notion of religious pluralism and freedom of religious expression. This assertive display of public religion was not only a function of American liberal values, but a concomitant flexibility on the part of Chabad “lamplighters.”

THE SHAPE OF THE MENORAH

What initially began as a matter of “size” and “placement” of the public menorah in the late 1970s, turned into an issue of “style” in the early-1980s. While the Temple menorah and the Chanukah lamp are tied to each other by historical reference and rite, in Jewish legal thought the Chanukah lamp bears no aesthetic resemblance to the Temple menorah. Neither the Talmud nor rabbinical commentary on the laws relating to Chanukah dictate or even show a preference for the Temple menorah design for the Chanukah menorah.²⁴ Nevertheless, strong traditions took hold that aesthetically tied the Chanukah lamp to the Temple menorah. For example, the identification of the Chanukah lamp with the Temple menorah influenced the designs of the traditional Chanukah lamp back panel. The back panel likely developed as a design solution for drafty Eastern European interiors, and its mass of metal invited decoration. The semicircular, freestanding Temple menorah and architectural motifs designating the Jerusalem Temple constituted one of the most common motifs on the back panel. In 1982, several years into the public Chanukah campaign, R. Schneerson linked the public Chanukah lamp to the Temple menorah in a unique visual way. R. Schneerson referenced esoteric drawings made by the twelfth-century biblical scholar Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), which contradicted the majority view of the menorah with semicircular arms.²⁵ Skilled scribes laboriously copied Maimonides’ original drawings, but early printing presses dropped the drawings due to their rudimentary technology, and subsequently the images remained lost for centuries.²⁶ In Maimonides’ drawings, the arms of the Temple menorah do not curve as they commonly do in ancient and Byzantine coins, synagogue mosaics, and catacombs, but extend in straight lines from the base at 45 degree angles (Figure 2). In his 1982 pre-Chanukah speech, R. Schneerson claimed that based on Maimonides’ drawings of the Temple menorah, the public Chanukah lamp should also bear straight, diagonal lines.²⁷ Four days before Chanukah 1982, several Chabad patrons commissioned artist Hirsch Pekkar to forge a Chanukah lamp according to the Maimonidean principles laid out by R. Schneerson. Locals gave London-based Pekkar the keys to a local metal factory in Brooklyn, tools, and the materials to create a six-foot, gold-plated bronze lamp in the new style (visible in Brenner's photograph, see Figure 1). Working day and night with the assistance of a constant stream of rabbinical students and coffee, Pekkar completed the menorah on the sixth night of Chanukah 1982²⁸ (Figure 3). As far as can be determined, Pekkar's lamp is the first Chanukah lamp styled after Maimonides’ drawings of the Temple menorah. R. Schneerson's secretaries placed Pekkar's lamp south of the Torah ark as the menorah stood in the Bet HaMikdash, and when R. Schneerson delivered sermons from the pulpit, the Rebbe, the ark, and the lamp formed a triangular composition to which some Hasidism interpreted as symbolic of R. Schneerson's impending messianic role.

Although R. Schneerson's introduced the new Chabad design out of a desire to be true to the historical Temple menorah, “Maimonides’ Menorah” design also reflects contemporary politics and religious ideology. The early Zionist choice of the Magen David (Star of David) was driven by the symbol's popularity in Jewish communities across Europe, and its appeal as a specifically non-religious symbol used in schools, philanthropic organizations, and community seals.²⁹ Although Chabad organizations in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) embraced the Magen David because of the Russian Jewish attachment to the Magen David's status as a Jewish symbol, the American and global Chabad preference has been the straight-armed Maimonidean menorah. When interrogated about the mystical significance of the Magen David during a Soviet interrogation in 1927, the sixth Chabad rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1880–1950), responded scornfully. Soviet investigators produced letters from an anti-revolutionary professor addressed to R. Yosef Yitzchak asking him about the mystical significance of the symbol. R. Yosef Yitzchak records in his memoirs the following testimony:

As to the correspondence mentioned, Professor Baratchenko had started a study of Jewish mysticism. He somehow was of the opinion that the Magen David (Star of David) symbol expressed profound Kabbalistic concepts and that mastery of this knowledge could be a source of great power.

Four years ago, during Sukkot of the year 5685 (1924), he turned to me as an authority on Kabbalah, and requested that I reveal the esoteric meaning of the Magen David. I tried to convince him that he had succumbed to an illusion, for nothing is to be found in Chassidus about great powers inherent in the Magen David. Empty-handed, the professor still persisted in sending many letters with the one plea that I reveal the hidden significance of the Magen David.³⁰

R. Yosef Yitzchak's disdain for the misguided symbolism of the Magen David no doubt partially responds to the role it played in the graphic face of Zionism. On the other hand, the menorah appeared only as a supporting actor in the early Zionist project, finding resonance with the European Zionist movement as well as in more traditional contexts.³¹ After a brief lull in usage in the nineteenth century, the menorah reclaimed its status as the “Jewish trademark par excellence,”³² evoking the challenges and aspirations faced by the modern returnees to Zion as well as the Hasmonean commitment to religious Judaism in the wake of Greek culture.³³ The menorah offered a familiar design already vested with religious and cultural meaning that spoke of Jewish sovereignty, as well as of Jewish choseness, and easily transitioned into a political symbol for the Zionist movement while remaining in circulation among mitnagdim and Hasidim.³⁴ Modern Israeli artists removed the back panel from the design, which characterized Chanukah lamps for centuries. In its place artists gave the Chanukah lamp a central structure, primarily based on the “state menorah” and the examples depicted in archaeological finds.³⁵ Made-for-export “Eretz Yisraeli” Chanukah menorahs were one of the most sought-after products of the Israeli metal industry in the United States, earning the distinction of the appellation “Hanukiya” with its modern Hebrew cadences in the early 1920s.³⁶ After the 1948 War of Independence and especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli politicians and religious leaders alike associated the Maccabeen victory with the contemporary military success of the Israeli army.

Zionist use of the menorah for nation-building triggered a revitalization of the symbol in other Diaspora Jewish institutions, often as an alternative to the Magen David as a universally-accepted Jewish symbol. Indeed, because Zionists appropriated the Star of David for Israel's flag and it appeared on nearly every visual representation of Zionism and the State of Israel, as late as 1969 R. Feinstein ruled that if it didn't sow discord in the community, the word “Zion” should be removed from materials decorated with the ancient symbol of the Magen David.³⁷ No legalists expressed such hesitation with respect to the more universal menorah motif and R. Yosef Yitzchak even drew a central-structure free-hand menorah in 1920 during the mourning period for his father Shalom Dovber Schneersohn (1860–1920) in one of the small notebooks on which he wrote his memoirs and Hasidic discourses (Figure 4). Devastated by his personal loss, but on the eve of his own assumption of the mantle of “Rebbe,” R. Yosef Yitzchak drew a menorah as a sort of family tree, dedicating each arm of the seven-branched menorah to one of the five previous Chabad leaders and the Maggid, supported by the central axis dedicated to the Besht. Entitled Menorat Hachasidut (The Menorah of Hasidism), the family-menorah records not genealogical descent, but dynastic ascent from the Besht to Shalom Dovber. Unlike the conventional family tree, which charts family relationships in linear fashion, leaving possibilities for addendums and growth from the bottom-up, R. Yosef Yitzchak's family-menorah can record only seven branches and “grows” from the center, charting relationships horizontally. With its central references to the dates of the Besht's revelation and the passing of Shalom Dovber, as well as the completion of the menorah with no place for himself or any future Rebbe, it can be viewed as an act of deep humility, suggesting that the era of the great leaders ends with his father, and he could not “hold a candle” next to the illustrious leaders of the past. Unlike R. Yosef Yitzchak's disdained Magen David, the use of the menorah as a metaphor for Chabad leadership visually establishes Chabad as the one true branch of Hasidism and expresses “profound Kabbalistic concepts.” During the leadership of R. Schneerson, the seventh rebbe, the Temple menorah was just the right shape to hold the seven branches of the “complete” Chabad dynasty, perfectly symmetric and prophetic.

The menorah's sustained use by religious parties spurred Israel towards a visual bi-partisanship in the country's iconography. In anticipation of Israel's entry into the United Nations, the Emblem and Flag Committee held a nation-wide competition for a national emblem in 1948–49 to restore the menorah's centrality to the Jewish national state. The winning entry for the National Emblem, submitted by graphic artists Gabriel and Maxim Shamir, depicted a blue coat-of-arms with a stylized menorah flanked by two olive branches and underscored by the Hebrew word “Israel” in white. After several entries and revisions requested by the Emblem and Flag Committee, the menorah designed to represent the new State of Israel stylistically modeled the menorah on the bas-relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome (Figure 5). Constructed in Rome in 81 CE to mark the military triumphs of Titus, the Arch of Titus represented a triumphal march out of Jerusalem with the looted menorah on its way to Rome. While graphic designers proposed many ancient sources for Israel's emblem's menorah from first-century tombs and sarcophagi and from archaeological sites of ancient synagogues and many artists submitted modern conceptual menorahs as well, the committee preferred to reclaim the ancient symbol that marked the nearly two millennia Diaspora as the national emblem of rebirth.³⁸ Not wanting to adopt a Roman design wholesale, the olive branches on either side of the menorah linked the emblem to the prophetic menorah in Zechariah's vision of “Two olive branches, one on the right and one on the left”³⁹ (Zech. 4: 2–3, 12). Soon after the introduction of the national emblem in 1949, the menorah became the preferred image in Israeli political culture, adorning the Knesset building and appearing as the dominant national symbol in modern Israeli art. In Israeli national culture, the symbol of the menorah, if not the Jerusalem menorah itself, returned to Israel after nearly two thousand years in exile. In one Israeli cartoon reprinted in Sefer Hamoadim, identifiable Israeli politicians, including David Ben Gurion, hold the new Israeli coat of arms on their shoulders akin to the Arch of Titus relief, on their triumphal march back to Jerusalem.⁴⁰

Following the adoption of the semicircular menorah by Israel, American congregations commissioned the inclusion of the symbol in their own synagogues. While the free-standing menorah took hold in the United States, including in non-Zionist settings, ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic groups resisted specific references to the “state menorah,” at attitude which reached its apex during the unpopular Lebanon War in 1982. R. Schneerson's personal menorah and the one most Hasidim use at home reflects the low, back-paneled tradition, whereas the free-standing public menorah consciously rejected the style of the Israeli menorah. The use of the menorah as a symbol of the state evoked a militantly secular ideology and, consequently, religious mire. In his talk given on Maimonides's drawings of the Temple menorah, R. Schneerson elaborated:

All the educational institutions (masdot hachinuch) are drawing the menorah erroneously in semi-circular fashion, but if the purpose of their drawings is to recall the menorah of the Bais haMikdash, they should revise their drawings to include diagonal arms. The drawings with which we are accustomed are all a copy of the drawing of the menorah that non-Jews carried into Rome and of the Arch of Triumph that Titus, may his name be blotted out, erected. Titus the Evil who destroyed the Bais haMikdash ordered all of the Holy Vessels to be taken to Rome and in this evil man's honor they built an Arch of Triumph that carries his name. On this Arch they drew the carrying of the vessels that they captured, including the menorah, and in that drawing of the menorah the six branches are in a semi-circular arc. This drawing of the menorah on the Arch is totally incorrect. This was done because they wanted to show that the Romans ruled over the Jews. Several places on the arch are carved that the Jews are captured. There were times that they forced Jews to walk through this gate so that they should see this writing and feel degraded. Accordingly the drawing of the menorah on the Arch of Titus should bring a cry of pain, firstly because it is not carved in the manner of … Maimonides, and secondly because it was made to hurt and degrade the Jews.

Even though the drawing of the menorah is supposed to serve as a symbol and awaken the Jews to their role to be a light onto the nations and to prove to the world that the Shechina rests with the nation of Israel, they [Zionists and academics] make the current image of the menorah in a way that reminds the world of exactly the opposite: That Rome won over the Jews, G-d forbid.⁴¹

The new Chabad menorah, conceived by R. Schneerson during the 1982 Lebanon War, linked the menorah to a Temple vessel and a medieval Torah scholar rather than a Roman arch that celebrates the capture of Jewish spoils and proclaims “Judea is vanquished.”⁴² R. Schneerson's approbation of the State menorah does not simply reflect a boycott of the ancient Roman aesthetic, but of modern Israel's adaptation of what he perceived as secularist “Roman” values. While no further letters or writings by R. Schneerson have thus far materialized about the nature of his stylistic preference of the Chanukah menorah, his unpublished correspondences with the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) clarifies his position vis-à-vis art and the State of Israel.

Jacques Lipchitz, the Rebbe, and the Battle of Cultures

In very passionate and sincere tones demonstrative of a close friendship, R. Schneerson beseeched Jacques Lipchitz from donating his life's work (300 original plasters) to a museum in the “Holy City,” which would eventually become the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. As many scholars demonstrate art in the Zionist agenda posed a contentious field from the beginning of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) because the inclusion of “culture” in the Zionist agenda reflected cultural, rather than religious, aspirations for the Jewish State. These correspondences between R. Schneerson and Lipchitz demonstrate that the question of “culture” in the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael) and the State of Israel (Medinat Yisrael) remained unresolved.⁴³ In the years between the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the opening of the Israel Museum in 1965, Israel boasted over 100 museums, certainly the highest density of museums per capita in the Middle East, and possibly in the world.⁴⁴ This preponderance of museums reflected not only Israel's love and appreciation of art and exhibition, but of a national spirit striving to define itself through a cultural identity. Shortly before his seventieth birthday in August of 1961, Lipchitz penned the following head note in his Last Will and Testimony: “My mind is clear and quiet, and I choose this day to make my last Will. After all. I am almost 70 years old … apart from my family, my deep concern is for the Jewish people, saved from Hitler, in Israel.” Donating his work to Israel was “a longstanding dream,” wrote Lipchitz. “My dream as a Jew, and as an artist.”⁴⁵

Within a few weeks of Lipchitz's published declaration in August of 1961, R. Schneerson wrote the artist to raise the following objection to his will:

You know the attitude of the Torah toward any kind of sculptured or graven images, and with what tragedy our people viewed the Roman attempt to turn the Holy City into an Aelia Capitolina.⁴⁶ Of course, no one will suspect you of disregard for the sanctity of our Holy City, G-d forbid. But in such matters, good intentions do not alter the impact and consequences of an action on the public mind. Even if one could be sure that the majority of public opinion would not be shocked, and this is by no means certain, one cannot ignore the unfavorable influence, in a matter that concerns a fundamental principle of our faith, even on a section of public opinion, and that should be adequate reason to avoid such an action. Certainly, all sections of Orthodox Jewry, not only in the Holy Land, but also in the Diaspora, would be quite chagrined, to say the least, although some quarters may suppress their reaction because of external pressure or other reasons. The whole question is much more serious than it may appear, and the few lines above, which have been couched immoderate and restrained terms, do not fully reflect the full depth of this question.⁴⁷

Indeed, R. Schneerson's objection does “not fully reflect the full depth of this question,” which becomes clearer and more urgent with every subsequent correspondence with Lipchitz. Although Lipchitz's letters were not among his papers, from the tone of R. Schneerson's subsequent letter on December 14, 1961, Lipchitz contributed to R. Schneerson's institutions financially, but could not be swayed with R. Schneerson's argument against sculpture in Israel. From his autobiography published in 1972, Lipchitz apparently assumed that R. Schneerson's objection to the donation of his sculptures to the Israel Museum was the categorizing of sculpture as “avodah zarah” (idolatry) and not the nascent project of the Israel Museum.⁴⁸ R. Schneerson carefully explains, “the reason I brought up the point of Aelia Capitolina is because the Roman Empire knew well that the most deadly blow it could deal to the Jewish people was to convert Jerusalem into a Roman city of idols, hoping that what they could not achieve even by the destruction of the Beth Hamikdosh and the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of Jews, they could accomplish by this measure aimed at the very heart of Jewish belief and religion.” In response to Lipchitz's characterization of a work of art as representing a sublime idea, R. Schneerson analogizes Lipchitz's sculptures in a future museum of art in Israel to the hypothetical suggestion of bringing a ballet into the synagogue on Yom Kippur, just before the Neilah prayer. “For the same reasons (and others) even symolique sculptures have no place in Jerusalem, the only city called “irchah,” thy city.” To counter R. Schneerson's ballet on Yom Kippur example, Lipschitz cites the Hasidic tale of an uneducated country boy who gets carried away by the fervor of Yom Kippur prayer and ecstatically screams out gibberish, carrying the communal prayer right to the Heavenly Throne. R. Schneerson exclaims, “The moral of this story is surely not to make that exclamation a permanent institution of communal service on the Holy Day of Yom Kippur, just because a certain individual could not express his feelings in any other way.”⁴⁹

Writing shortly after the holiday of Chanukah, R. Schneerson ties his current argument with Lipchitz to the holiday, as per his usual custom in correspondences. “As we have recently celebrated Chanukah, I cannot by-pass the message of Chanukah, which has such a direct bearing on our subject matter. For Chanukah recalls not only a battle for political freedom and independence, but mainly a battle of cultures.” And although R. Schneerson continues to restrain his meaning in this second correspondence to Lipchitz, for the most part couching the “battle of cultures” in the ancient context, his meaning clearly extends to the contemporary establishment of a Temple to the Arts in Jerusalem.

The Greeks wanted to introduce their culture and way of life into the Holy Land, claiming that there was much beauty in their art and sports which resisted this with their very lives, and now we can see that of the ancient Greek sculptures there are only remnants in museums and the like, while the Jews are still very much a living nation and their values have retained their eternal aspect. Yet in those days there were a number of prominent individuals, even among the Jews, who argued in favor of the Greek ideas against those of ours. But the Chanukah lights that we kindle to this day, which illuminate the Jewish home, serve as a perennial reminder of the vital issues, and the message is still very timely.⁵⁰

Lipchitz remained obstinate on the point of the role of art in the national culture of Israel and sent Schneerson a copy of his recently published biography Encounters: The Life of Jacques Lipchitz (1961).⁵¹ Commenting directly only on photographs of Lipchitz's parents, Schneerson responds on February 27, 1962 that “having seen the book and the photographs, my views have been further reinforced, and I am more strongly convinced than ever that your participation in the museum in the Holy City of Jerusalem is not for you.” It becomes clearer that Schneerson objects not to Lipchitz's art per se, to which one might imagine Lipchitz would take grave offense, but to his participation in a State institution to the Arts. This institution, which Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek envisioned as “a modernist temple to culture,”⁵² R. Schneerson qualifies this way: “You surely know that the whole project was started by one whose profession is associated with burlesque and night-show business, New York style.” R. Schneerson refers to Billy Rose (1899–1966), Broadway showman and operator of the Ziegfeld Theater, who served as chairman of the Jerusalem Museum's art committee in the 1960s. Rose approached the board of directors of the museum with his sculpture collection in 1960, and after deliberation, the board decided that “it would not be a violation of Leviticus 26:1 to have graven images around as long as no one bowed down unto them.”⁵³ Rose donated his modern art collection and financial resources for the five-acre Billy Rose Art Garden, today part of the Israel Museum complex surrounded by other symbols of modern statehood: the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University at Givat Ram.⁵⁴ R. Schneerson explains:

There are, unfortunately, elements in the Holy Land for whom such a person has a fascinating attraction. This is the element who not so very long ago began a battle to introduce into Jerusalem a swimming pool for mixed bathing. It is no coincidence that they should pick the Holy City for this venture, for there are many other large cities in the Eretz Yisroel where there are no mixed swimming pools. They chose Jerusalem with the calculated intention of making their attack as offensive and as provoking as possible. The project of the museum in Jerusalem is similarly used by these elements to strike a telling blow at all that is sacred to traditional Judaism. To our shame and disgrace this has unfortunately become a pattern of a calculated policy on the part of these elements to degrade the holiness of the Holy Land and to completely secularize Jewish life there.

R. Schneerson then poses the following question to the artist: “I ask you, therefore, is this the kind of company with which Chayim Yaakov Lipchitz, the grandson of Reb Chayim Yaakov Krinsky, should be associated?” Whether or not Lipchitz responded to this question in his letter to R. Schneerson, he responded in the affirmative to the Israel Museum, which opened in May of 1965 with an inaugural show, Jacques Lipchitz and Marc Chagall.

The aesthetics of Chabad and Chanukah continue to communicate complex and competitive codes of meaning in the “battle of cultures.” With a nuanced understanding of Chabad's use of the Chanukah menorah, what emerges is a Hasidic group with an anti-exilic attitude, but rather than the Zionist so-called “negation of the Diaspora,” we find a fervent, if also selective, embrace of the West and Western culture. Chabad, in adopting a menorah design that not only represented a break with traditional menorah design, but more specifically, with the Zionist-inspired design, created an alternative Chanukah narrative that rejected the Zionist notion of a secular celebration of military might and resurgent Jewish nationalism. However, the alternative Chabad narrative also rejected an inward-looking religious celebration, insisting on an alternative universal model for Chanukah that embraced non-Zionist Western culture.

MARKETING CHANUKAH

One of the most critical quotes on the public menorah campaign appears in David Berger's The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, in which he quotes an anonymous rabbi who described the atypical menorah as evolving “because every new religion needs a symbol.”⁵⁵ Berger interpreted this comment to the Rabbi's sentiment that with its ideological innovations to Judaism, Chabad stepped out of the boundaries of Judaism. But while mainstream Orthodoxy tries to extricate itself from Chabad's messianism, Chabad's institutional identification with the new menorah invigorated and strengthened the geographically-scattered movement. The unique Chanukah menorah consolidated the independent Chabad chapters under a trademark graphic face as well as provided a unifying group identity around which to rally. Chabad outposts throughout the world, known colloquially as “Chabad Houses,” integrated the new design of the Chanukah lamp into their institutional signage (Figure 6). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Chabad adopted the symbols they promoted on behalf of Chanukah for its own public face. In the mid-1980s, R. Schneerson's interpretation of the menorah and other symbols associated with Chanukah began to take precedence in Chabad institutional life. By tying the Chanukah lamp to the Temple menorah and advocating a minority design for the public Chanukah menorah, R. Schneerson and his Hasidim created what would become the most identifiable and popular Chabad ritual object, symbol, and logo. In accepting Chanukah as a substantial Jewish holiday to be publicly celebrated, R. Schneerson also adopted the holiday of Chanukah as a personal occasion to reflect on the movement's institutional mission. The celebrations on the Chabad calendar are imbued with historic meaning and often overlapping anniversaries are assigned specific interpretations (see Figure 4). The anniversary of the death (yartzeit) of the founder of Hasidism with the anniversary of the movement's founder's first liberation from prison in 1798 (“yud tes kislev”) mystically correspond in Chabad literature. In the Chabad Sefer HaMinhagim, the third day of Chanukah occasions reflections on Shneur Zalman's release from his second term of imprisonment in 1800: “This was a victory for the teachings and spiritual lifestyle of Chassidus, far more so than the liberation [on yud-tes Kislev] two years earlier. For the libel of 1798 had been aimed primarily against the Alter Rebbe, in 1800 the main libel was directed against the teachings of Chassidus and against the Chassidic way of life.”⁵⁶ The fact that these anniversaries precede the celebration of Chanukah by only a week occasion analogous discourses on the history of Chabad and the lessons learned from the Hasmonean rebellion. December issues of Chabad publications naturally “split” their pages between Chabad celebrations of Chanukah and the timely historical accounts of Chabad.⁵⁷ Although the Chanukah Live program began as an outgrowth of a children's pageant, Chabad took the opportunity of its first “inter-continental” Chanukah Live celebration to honor R. Schneerson's 40 years of leadership. The lighting in “770” was “linked” via satellite coverage to similar public lightings around the world, visually establishing the global reach of R. Schneerson. Posters in Israel advertised Chanukah Live in 1989 as a celebration of the Lubavitcher rebbe's leadership: “To celebrate the 40th year of the leadership of the Lubavitcher Rebbe shlita the lighting of the fifth Chanukah candle will be transmitted LIVE from the rebbe's Beit Midrash in New York direct to the Kotel [Western Wall] here in Jerusalem.” Artists and patrons visiting R. Schneerson's court presented him with unique Chanukah lamps, such as the examples exhibited by the Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library under the caption, “gifts received by the Rebbe relating to the Mitzvah campaigns that he initiated:” a wood menorah from Milan (1988) dedicated to R. Schneerson, a metal menorah from Acco dedicated to R. Schneerson, and a menorah on the background of the façade of “770.”⁵⁸

“If you want to learn about the soul of a nation,” wrote Bezalel School director Boris Schatz in reference to the Zionist project in Palestine, “observe it on its festival days.”⁵⁹ The new monumental, public, patriotic, historic, and messianic Chabad lamp places Chanukah alongside Christmas, firmly into the American December civic rites. International lightings further “universalize” Chabad's unique menorah. The visual popularization of “Maimonides’ Menorah,” and the development of a distinctly Chabad Chanukah aesthetic, allowed the movement to create a unique yet recognizable brand to universalize its highly particularistic message. Chabad's creative contribution to Jewish festivals was a gradual process, underpinned by a sense of mission to redeem the modern world and nurtured by R. Schneerson's framing of the significance of each festival, and which values and symbols should be publicly promoted in their rites. A limit-case into the symbolism and practices of Chabad Chanukah celebrations in the United States and abroad, demonstrates the ways in which Chabad produced a unique visual program in the post-Shoah period. Chabad rejected the dominant symbols and landmarks of the State of Israel and engaged the symbols and landmarks of the Diaspora in unique ways. The public menorah lightings and the televised Chanukah Live events, as well as the distinctive Chabad Menorah were part of a second- and third-generation acculturation process. Pekkar's gold-plated menorah, which is visible yet unremarkable in Brenner's photograph, represents a multilayered visual campaign on the part of the movement itself to define its role with respect to Zionism, the Shoah, and American Jewish life. Far from cloistering itself in a time-capsule Crown Heights community, Chabad managed to compete with the Zionist menorah and to significantly define the Chanukah experience in America.