Lighting Hanukkah Candles Under the Swastika’s Shadow
Tonight, and for the next seven nights, millions of Jews around the world will light a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah. Akiva Mansbach will be one of them. But his isn’t just any menorah. In its multigenerational life, its light has also touched the darkness.
In Kiel, Germany, in 1932, Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel, lit the menorah and placed it on their window sill. Directly across the street was a Nazi flag.
One of the essential components of Hanukkah is “persumei nisa,” or publicizing the miracle — the miracle being the triumph of a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, who led a revolt and conquered their Seleucid persecutors in the second century before the Common Era.… Seguir leyendo »