Max is a 30-year-old Jewish financial analyst living and working in Manhattan; Inna is a 21-year-old university student in Perm, Russia; and Fabian is a teenager attending high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This year, all three of them—along with tens of thousands more young Jews—will share the light of Chanukah with their social circles as part of the Chanukah Youth Initiative, the ambitious pilot offering of Chabad’s Global Youth Initiative.
“We want young Jews everywhere to take what they know about Chanukah and teach their friend about it, help them light a menorah and invite them to a Chanukah party,” says Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch.
“At this year’s conference of shluchim, we launched a major focus on empowering the next generation,” he continues. “What is obvious from the recent results of the Pew Research Study,” referring to the 2013 study on Jewish life in America that sent shock waves through the Jewish world, “is that 94 percent of Jews are proud of being Jewish. We are offering them the opportunity to translate that into action and make a difference to the future of Judaism.
“It’s about empowering every Jew to be a leader.”
The initiative has launched a website, Sharethelights.org, which encourages young people to get involved and share their Chanukah spirit on social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, using the hashtag #sharethelights, in exchange for big prizes. By utilizing social media, organizers hope to attract and connect thousands more Jewish youth from around the world this holiday week.
The Chanukah Initiative is also funding at least 500 Chanukah parties internationally, directed towards Jewish teens and young adults, and aimed at combating the growing threat of assimilation that looms over that demographic.
“This is our response to the Pew study,” says Rabbi Beryl Frankel of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch’s Suite 302, which is coordinating the initiative internationally. “To create Chanukah parties and programs that will excite that most vulnerable age range.
“We are actively reaching out on the ground by working with yeshivahs—whose students do outreach work over the week of Chanukah—to spread our literature and raise awareness for our campaign.
“There will also be four Chanukah mitzvah tanks around the country spreading the light of the holiday,” notes Frankel.
The mitzvah tanks—converted RVs filled with Chanukah menorah kits, guides, dreidels and jelly donuts, and staffed by rabbinical students—will visit major college and high school campuses along their routes. While a West Coast tank snakes its way from Los Angeles to Washington state, a second tank will leave from New York and head south to Miami. A third tank is planning to scour the tri-state area surrounding New York, while the final tank will visit Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, reaching out to Jewish youth wherever they may be.
From Russia With Light
Across the globe on the icy expanses of the former Soviet Union, the Chanukah Initiative has garnered similar excitement.
“It’s clear that today, young people are looking to connect with something that is real,” says Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia. “Thanks to the vision of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—the light of Chanukah reaches people who would never have otherwise connected to it and may have not even known it existed.”
Lazar explains that whereas some years ago, a person could have seen a menorah alight in a window or a doorway and been prompted to think about Chanukah, with today’s social media tools, an individual has to just post one picture of a lit menorah to share the message with thousands.
“Someone can see a picture online and be reminded of the miracle of Chanukah and, in turn, light their own menorah,” he says. “If we did not utilize this technology, then it would be a missed opportunity.”
Rabbi Mendy Wilansky is the Moscow-based coordinator of the Chanukah Initiative in the former Soviet Union. He says that because many emissaries there are the only rabbis in their regions, it was a unique challenge for them to create programming that reached out to the specific youth demographic—a challenge the resourceful rabbis met.
“We saw a lot of excitement right away,” says Wilansky. “We are working to spread the word on the popular Russian social media site VKontakte, and we are running a program here where more prizes will be raffled off each night of Chanukah.”
He adds that in Russia, where Judaism was banned for so long, many young people do not have “the warm memories of the Chanukah of their childhood” to connect to, unlike a great number of young people who have grown up with the bountiful freedoms of the West.
“Therefore," says Wilansky, "when you have university students here in Russia and Ukraine who are making Chanukah parties of their own with their uninitiated friends and relatives, that really adds a whole other dimension to it.”
South American Revolution
The school year is wrapping up at this time of year in Argentina, yet with Chanukah approaching, large-scale programs are being scheduled to attract an enormous number of the country’s Jewish youth.
“We hope to have between 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish students and young people taking part in our Chanukah events here in Argentina,” says Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt, director of Chabad of Argentina. “In Buenos Aires, there will be a big Chanukah event run by Rabbi Shlomo Levi for 500 students. It will be a beautiful event held on a boat, everything to excite the young people to come out and celebrate.”
Grunblatt estimates that without the Global Chanukah Initiative, 70 percent of the young people coming to their events would have not celebrated Chanukah at all. “Clearly, this idea of concentrating on Chanukah events specifically for young people is really making a difference.”
A program that will see teenagers arrange Chanukah parties for their fellow teenagers is being organized by Rabbi Yonason Sirota, who runs a teen center in the populous capital. Smaller programs geared at youth are also being planned for smaller cities around Argentina.
The largest event planned is the enormous Argentinian Chanukah party being organized by Rabbi Yoel Migdal, whose affair will draw an estimated 1,000 Jewish youth ages 18 to 30 to a venue in the upscale Puerto Madero neighborhood in Buenos Aires.
“We are doing this for the first time, and we are expecting a large turnout. There will be all sorts of entertainment there and music by the band KEF,” says Migdal. “This will be our largest activity of the year,” he adds, before Grunblatt interjects, “as of yet!”
Where It All Began
Israel is no stranger to the story of Chanukah; after all, it was there that the miracle took place 2,200 years ago. Yet even there, the land upon which is indelibly marked the ancient battles fought against the Syrian-Greeks—and where the air is permeated by the remembrance of the burning flames of the Temple’s menorah—a new drive and vigor has been added to Chanukah celebrations for the younger set.
From events geared at youth in the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat to the northernmost point of Kiryat Shemonah, and from large events of 500 attendees in Kfar Saba and Haifa to small ones in settlements like Nofit and Tzur Yitzchak—60 events in all—Chabad in Israel is making a concerted effort to reach every Jewish young person in Israel this Chanukah.
“There is a very strong feeling of interest in Judaism in Israel, even among the so-called secular people, and they are looking for a real expression of their Judaism,” says the Chanukah Youth Initiative’s Israel coordinator Rabbi Asi Spiegel. “Chanukah is a big holiday to connect to young people, especially in Israel.”
Spiegel says that as in other countries that are participating, young people are being urged to share the light of Chanukah with their neighbors and friends, helping spread the joy of the holiday to places it could not have gone without them.
“We are very focused on community volunteers in towns and cities in Israel,” he says. “Students will be visiting old-age homes and hospitals, and sharing the light with people they meet there. Shluchim will also be working with their youth to encourage them to visit families who may be in need of Chanukah cheer and joy.”
Spiegel points out that the use of social media and adapting to modern technologies are prerequisites to successfully engage the Jewish youth of today. “Nowadays, we know that to capture someone’s attention, you need to talk their language—things have to be in a different place and at a different pace.
“This is the Chanukah Youth Initiative’s first year, and thank G‑d, we are estimating that we will reach thousands of young people in Israel. To do this successfully, we have to be living with the times.”
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