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(JTA) — The e-mail landed like a batch of soggy latkes final week: Hanukkah candle-lighting wouldn’t be permitted on the annual convention of the Affiliation for Jewish Research.
“We acknowledge the sacrifice a lot of you’ll make to attend the convention in the course of the vacation of Chanukah. We apologize that the convention lodge won’t enable us to gentle candles in a separate room, as we now have completed prior to now,” the skilled group for Jewish research students mentioned in a message to its members, of whom roughly 1,200 are anticipated at this week’s convening in Boston.
Thus started a MacGyver-like scramble by a few of the nation’s main Jewish research students to hack a Hanukkah resolution that may adjust to each halacha, Jewish regulation, and the Sheraton Boston’s interpretation of Massachusetts fireplace code.
At first, the scholarly group directed conference-goers to particulars a couple of Hanukkah celebration at a close-by synagogue the place menorahs might be lit, no less than on the primary night time of the vacation Sunday. However that was little comfort for these whose private apply of Judaism is rooted in conventional Jewish regulation — which says the Hanukkah menorah should be lit within the place one eats and sleeps.
Some convention attendees mentioned they might depend on Jewish regulation’s provision for vacationers, which says somebody on the street may be thought of as having fulfilled the commandment to ignite a Hanukkah gentle if his household at house does so. However not everybody on the convention has a household, and even some who do had been unhappy with that choice.
Electrical menorahs provided one other chance. In spite of everything, such units are continuously present in accommodations and different public areas, and Chabad, the Orthodox denomination, generally makes use of them in its well-known public Hanukkah celebrations, this 12 months scheduled for greater than 15,000 areas around the globe. However using oil wicks or, in the previous few centuries, wax candles that supply an analogous expertise is taken into account preferable, in keeping with many interpreters of Jewish regulation; Chabad says electrical menorahs are perfect for symbolic use, to not fulfill the mandates of Jewish regulation.
On Fb and over e mail, anger was expressed. Impractical solutions for the convention to relocate had been made. And concern mounted that some conference-goers would smuggle in contraband menorahs and light-weight them of their lodge rooms.
“You possibly can’t cease folks from breaking the foundations, and it’s actually a lot much less secure to have that than one thing being watched,” Joshua Shanes, a historian on the School of Charleston who was a part of the behind-the-scenes scramble, informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
Lastly, on Friday morning, with some students already Boston-bound, Laura Arnold Leibman, a professor at Reed School and a member of the AJS board, introduced an answer.
“We had been in a position to negotiate with the lodge what I’m referring to because the ‘Kaplan-Shanes compr[om]ise’ this morning that ought to enable for a halachic resolution to the candle lighting scenario (see particulars beneath), and I used to be in a position to get a phenomenal hanukkiah this morning from the Israel Bookstore in Brookline that can meet the hearth code,” she wrote on Fb, to plaudits from affiliation members.
Underneath the plan, a single Hanukkah lamp may be lit, underneath supervision, on the lodge. However every candle should be contained inside a glass enclosure with no less than 2 inches of area above the flame — so Leibman purchased glass votives used to carry yahrzeit memorial candles, in addition to an enormous menorah to which they might be affixed.
“This was the one Hanukkiah I might discover in Brookline massive sufficient to deal with them [and] will clear them up earlier than Sunday and glue them down for security to the inserts,” Leibman wrote alongside footage of the brass menorah on her lodge windowsill.
That solved the issue of the flames themselves. However what of the duty to gentle, which underneath conventional Jewish regulation every family should fulfill individually?
Enter the “Kaplan” of the compromise: Lawrence Kaplan, a professor of Judaic and rabbinic philosophy at McGill College who is maybe finest identified for compiling and enhancing the teachings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of the philosophy of Maimonides, the Twelfth-century Jewish thinker.
Kaplan wrote on Fb that he had consulted Rabbi Daniel Fridman, the rabbi of the Teaneck Jewish Middle and the highest rabbi on the Torah Academy of Bergen County, for a approach to have a single conference-goer fulfill the mitzvah of lighting a Hanukkah lamp on behalf of others. He discovered {that a} contribution of a penny (or extra) might allow somebody to purchase into the mitzvah — so a bowl for cash will sit apart the jerry-rigged menorah.
“I actually l admire the hassle and expense to which you went,” Kaplan wrote on Liebman’s Fb submit. “It was simple for me to counsel the thought nevertheless it was you who remodeled it right into a actuality.”
Now, the dialogue has shifted as to if contributions in extra of a penny may be changed into donations to the Affiliation for Jewish Research — and what may be completed to forestall such a snafu sooner or later. Subsequent 12 months’s convention in San Francisco begins after the vacation ends, and the 2024 convention will probably be online-only. However in 2025, the primary day of the convention once more corresponds with the primary night time of Hanukkah.
Shanes and Liebman each indicated that they anticipated the proper to gentle candles to be written into the contract with any future convention host, marking a return to the outdated customized of getting conference-goers gentle candles on their very own schedule.
“No less than for this 12 months,” Shanes mentioned, “we’re all coming collectively. It’s a silver lining I suppose.”
This story has been corrected to indicate that Chabad doesn’t settle for using electrical menorahs for the aim of fulfilling Jewish regulation associated to Hanukkah.
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