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With 101 menorot close at hand.
SHELL' LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
Top:
Menorah workshop
building organizer,
Mendy Weg, 15, of Tulsa,
Okla., assembles a
menorah.
Above:
Avraham Kagan, 16, of
Oak Park and parade
coordinator, Moshe
Teldon of Long Island,
NY, screw in light bulbs
on a giant menorah.
"C
alf of them don't even have a driver's license yet,
but the boys of the Oak Park-based Chabad
Student Outreach took holiday of Chanukah to
the streets.
"For the last 10 years, young Detroit yeshivah students
have joined Chabad emissaries throughout the world in a
project of driving around with giant menorahs on cars and
trucks to spread the light of Chanukah," says Avraham
Kagan, 16, of the outreach group. Through the years, 10 or
15 vehicles became 20, then 50, then 75.
"This year we aimed for 101," says Kagan of Oak Park.
The number was chosen to honor the 101st anniversary of
the birth date of the revered late Lubavitcher Rebbe _
Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
'Also, it says in the Talmud that if we do something, like
study, 100 times, it's good — but if we want to really go
beyond the limit, we should do it 101 times," Kagan says.
Assisted by their older counterparts from Yeshivas
Menachem Mendel Lubavitch high school in Oak Park,
ninth- and 10th-grade boys from Cheder Oholei Yosef
Yitzchok, also in Oak Park, organized a Nov. 21 menorah-
building workshop. Working at Mishkan Israel, Nusach H'ari
Lubavitcher Center in Oak Park, they constructed 40
menorot, ranging from 1-foot tall to what Kagan refers to as
"a giant 10-footer."
The menorot were then affixed atop vehicles and driven in
a Dec. 1 parade from the Jewish Community Center in Oak
Park to the Shul-Chabad Lubavitch in West Bloomfield.
Some of the menorot in the parade were privately owned,
while others were rented for the eight days of Chanukah.
As extensive as the boys' motoring plans were, they also
took to the pavement.
"We went to businesses and malls and stood outside in the
freezing cold to make sure all Jews have menorahs," Kagan
says of a free, menorah-distribution project. "We also had a
table at the West Bloomfield JCC where we gave out
Chanukah information, dreidels, gels, menorahs and can-
dles."
For the first time this year, the boys also helped plan
Chanukah parties for students at University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor and Michigan State University in East Lansing.
"We want every single, last Jew to have a menorah," he
says. "And we want them to know how to use it and why. It
was the Rebbe's goal to bring the light and warmth of
Chanukah to everyone."
❑
12/13
2002
27
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