guide to the jewplexed

On 9/11, turn on the lights


"Don't let the Lights Go Out," a Chanukah standard by Peter Yarrow, should also now be sung loudly in September as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Among the many lights destroyed that day in the World Trade Center was a pair of free-standing Chanukah menorahs that yearly were lit in each tower's lobby to celebrate the Festival of Lights.

According to Barry Mase, a New York based world trade center menorah petitionmarketing and public relations executive, a plan to rekindle their flames by fabricating new ones is in jeopardy.

Though he says that the New York Port Authority (which oversees the World Trade Center) and the New York Shomrim Society (an organization of Jewish police officers) are both on board with the project, according to Barry, "We have heard through the grapevine that when the new World Trade Center opens up in two years, the owners may not want to utilize any Menorah or any 'religious' article during holiday seasons."

According to Mase, the twin menorahs "were very much a part of the NY Jewish community's yearly ritual."

To let the powers-that-be know how people feel about the possibility of  the Twin Tower menorahs being forever extinguished, he has put a petition online at Help us Rededicate the Jewish Menorah that was destroyed on 9/11 for people to sign.

"In order to circumvent that kind of 'leave it out' thinking, I felt it was important to create a petition based campaign and hopefully get many people of the Jewish and non- Jewish community to sign on," wrote Mase in an email.  

world trade center menorah petition
Bonnie Srolovitch in 1981
"The holiday of Chanukah is about dedication, and re-dedication," reads the text on the petition site.  "It's about deep dedication to timeless values and the capacity to rededicate oneself to those values even when the forces that seek to destroy them seem to be triumphant."

Bonnie and Michael Berkowicz, the design team whose original menorah design seems to capture the verticality of the World Trade Center towers, most current project is a Holocaust Memorial under construction in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Bonnie grew up in New Jersey where her parents were active in synagogue life, and Michael was born in 1944 in Siberia, where his parents, originally from Poland, had fled during World War II.

As a couple one of their first collaborative efforts was to create two Chanukah menorahs for the World Trade Center. Lighted annually, they were used for the last time on Chanukah of 2000, the Chanukah before the towers' tragic destruction.

They are proposing "Essentially the same design," said Berkowicz. "It's about seven to eight feet high, stainless steel, brass and granite. It's a concept that we strongly believe in," added Berkowicz, noting that the design team has been in talks with several potential sponsors.

"Don't Let the Lights Go Out," according Jack Zaientz , who edits a Jewish music blog, was first performed in 1982 in Carnegie Hall.

The song included lyrics that now ring true both for the drive for new menorahs, and the remembrance of 9/11:

"Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
But light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemaker's time is at hand."

By signing the petition, you too can light a candle.


Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."