page_title: Public menorah
section_title: Controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Public menorah / Controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: Lubavitch Hanukiah in front of Karlsruhe palace Deutsch: Leuchter für die öffentliche Chanukka-Feier vor dem Schloss Karlsruhe
context_page_description: A public menorah is a large menorah displayed publicly during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. It is done to celebrate the holiday and publicize the miracle of Hanukkah, and is typically accompanied by a public event during one of the nights of Hanukkah attended by invited dignitaries who are honored with lighting the menorah.
  Public menorah lighting were initiated by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson in 1974. The most prominent public menorah celebration takes place in Washington DC, and is known as the National Menorah. In 2013 Chabad planned 15,000 public menorah lighting events across the globe.
context_section_description: The success of the public menorah campaign has not been without controversy. In 1988, the American Jewish Congress produced a 28-page report entitled "The Year of the Menorah", criticizing Chabad's public menorah campaign and the litigation that went with it.  It complained of the increase in the number of menorahs placed on public lands, arguing that it was causing tension both within the community and with non-Jews. In 1989, the ACLU challenged the legality of a display of a Chabad-owned public menorah in County of Allegheny. In a court case County of Allegheny v. ACLU the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the menorah. 
  In 1989, the city of Burlington, Vermont denied the local Chabad chapter, headed by Rabbi Yitzchok Raskin permission to erect a menorah in the city's main park during Hanukkah. Raskin appealed the decision on two occasions after an initial hearing 1987 found the display to be unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The ACLU assisted the City of Burlington in a final appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1991, and the menorah ban was upheld. There have been similar cases involving Chabad public menorahs with the courts ruling against Chabad, including Chicago (1990) Iowa (1986), Cincinnati (1991), and Georgia (1991). In addition, in 1991, in White Plains, New York, the Common Council unanimously rejected the display of a Chabad menorah in a public space in the town with the support of many Jews, affirming a local tradition of keeping parks free of religious and political displays.
  On the other hand, in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Rabbi Sholom B. Kalmanson of Chabad of Southern Ohio to light an 18-foot menorah in Cincinnati's Fountain Square. Justice John Paul Stevens upheld a lower court ruling that the city could not ban the menorah and other religious displays from the square.
  Due to the menorah being a Jewish symbol, menorahs in public have been subject to anti-Semitic violence. For instance, in 2009 in Moldova, a group of fundamentalist Orthodox Christians took down a public menorah and replaced it with a cross. The same year, in Vienna, Austria, a Chabad rabbi was attacked by a Muslim man while leading the candle lighting ceremony.
  Controversy has also arisen at the Western Wall in Israel. For Hanukkah every year a giant menorah is erected in the men's section of the Western Wall and each night of the eight nights of the festival, male rabbis and male politicians are honored, while women are kept at a distance, where they are barely able to see the ceremony. Women of the Wall sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requesting a large menorah also be erected in the women's section, but Netanyahu simply forwarded the letter to Western Wall rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, who accused WoW of ulterior motives of trying to change the customs at the Wall. Responding to Rabinowitz' accusation, Anat Hoffman noted: "In his letter, Rabbi Rabinowitz speaks of bringing together and uniting the nation, and yet his actions exclude and discriminate against women as if women are not part of the same nation. Since he was chosen for this public position, Rabinowitz has never invited Women of the Wall or any other women to participate in the ceremonies or to be honored with the lighting of a candle at the Kotel on Hanukkah, despite the fact that women are obligated equally to men in this religious act." In December 2014 the personal menorahs the women brought to the Kotel were confiscated, but they were returned when police were called.
caption: A large Chabad-style menorah in front of the Karlsruhe Palace in Karlsruhe, Germany before a public Chabad-Lubavitch menorah lighting ceremony (2006).
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