Staff Reports | Community Updates
To celebrate the 2024 Hanukkah season, Chabad of Paradise Valley is hosting a ‘Car Menorah Parade’ starting with a menorah lighting outside Paradise Valley Town Hall, 6401 E. Lincoln Drive.
The menorah lighting and parade will start 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 26 at the Paradise Valley Town Hall, Chabad of Paradise Valley officials tell the Digital Free Press.
The parade route will travel via the main thoroughfares of Paradise Valley, including Lincoln Drive, Tatum, Invergordon and Mockingbird Lane, in a unique Hanukkah celebration promoting holiday awareness.
Jews are celebrating their identity this Hanukkah with more confidence and resolve in wake of abhorrent violence in Israel, and with American Jews witnessing a stark increase in antisemitism, Chabad of Paradise Valley officials report.
“Everyone is especially excited about Hanukkah this year,” said Shlomy Levertov, Rabbi of Chabad of Paradise Valley. “[They] are preparing to celebrate with family and friends, to fill their homes with the light of People Hanukkah, and there’s a palpable joy. The public Hanukkah celebration is about sharing this light and joy with the broader community and the entire Paradise Valley.”
Although the menorah-topped parade was started during the time of COVID, it serves as fun way to celebrate the holidays for all ages. Participants are encouraged to dress up with Hannukah themes or use one of the window flags that will be provided.
Of Note: A limited supply of Menorahs for car tops are available. Pre-packaged menorah kits and holiday treats-to-go will be distributed to all cars that join.
For safety reasons, register your vehicle for a spot in the parade HERE.
Chabad of Paradise Valley participates in global Hanukkah awareness campaign
Hanukkah emphasizes that each and every individual has the unique power to illuminate the entire world. It was to encourage this profound idea that the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, launched the Hanukkah awareness campaign in 1973, of which Paradise Valley’s public Hanukkah activities are part.
The menorah faces the street, the Rebbe notes, and so bypassers immediately feel “the effect of the light, which illuminates the outside and the environment.”
In the half-century since, the Rebbe’s campaign has brought Hanukkah into the mainstream and altered awareness and practice of the festival, returning what some mistakenly dismissed as a minor holiday to its roots as a public proclamation of the triumph of freedom over oppression and a mainstay of Jewish cultural and religious life.
Chabad-Lubavitch’s annual Hanukkah campaign has distributed millions of menorahs to Jews around the world, and erected thousands of public menorahs to share its universal message of light over darkness with humanity at large.
This year’s Hanukkah campaign will be one of unprecedented light and joy, seeing Chabad reach 8 million Jews in more than 100 countries. For the first time in two years, energetic crowds will once again be gathering on streets and thoroughfares, in great metropolises and small towns alike, to participate in the more than 15,000 large public menorahs Chabad will place worldwide.
Even as crowds gather again, the Hanukkah parades and drive-in events, that ensured safe events last year, will go on, and this year more than 6,500 Hanukkah menorah-topped cars will hit the road in Chabad menorah parades to share the Hanukkah message of hope and joy around the globe.
An estimated 10 million unique visitors will use the practical how-to guides and discover the many layers of meaning at Chabad.org’s popular Hanukkah.org website. Chabad will help bring the light and celebration of Hanukkah into homes everywhere by distributing approximately 64 million Hanukkah candles, more than 700,000 menorah kits, and 2.5 million holiday guides in 17 languages.
