4:1
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
StaffWriter
l
A
caravan of cars, trucks and vans
it up the streets Dec. 24, each
with a menorah tied atop.
Traveling from the Oak Park Jewish
Community Center to West Bloomfield
and back, the parade marked a dual-cele-
bration. It honored Chanukah, and the
50 vehicles each represented one year
since the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel
Schneerson took leadership of the Chabad
movement.
"The love he embodied within us is
still here leading and guiding us and is
very much alive," says Chezy Deren, a
student at the Lubavitch Yeshiva in Oak
Park, whose Chabad Student Outreach
group sponsored the event. "This is in
dedication of that."
The Chanukah event was part of the
ongoing Chabad Student Outreach pro-
gram that also includes 15- to 18-year-old
students in weekly Friday visits to com-
munity businesses, instruction on how to
wear tefillin, distributing 600 weekly
newsletters and placing mezuzot on door-
posts. The students also set up an area for
distribution of menorot and discussion of
the holiday in the West Bloomfield JCC
.
each evening throughout Chanukah.
This is the 10th annual Detroit-area
Chanukah motorcade, which made stops
for students to jump out of their cars to
dance the hora in the streets. "But this is
the most incredible yet," Deren says of the
police-escorted parade.
Some of the electric-lit menorahs
mounted on the car tops were made by
the students themselves; others were
ordered from manufacturers who sell
them for such parades.
As novel as the idea may seem to many,
Deren says, "Strapping menorahs on top
of cars is a typical Chabad thing in New
York and Israel and Europe." 111
Top: Parade of cars comes around the bend.
Above: Nesanel Schochet of Toronto waves as he dances in the
street with classmates, including Mendy Levin of Brooklyn, to
his left.
Left: Mendel Shepherd, 7, of Oak Park looks out the back
window of his menorah-mounted car.
JIAT
1/5
2001
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