NYCHA’s Chanukah Celebration
On December 7, the first day of the eight-day festival, Batei Tsibur, the Housing Authority’s organization of Jewish employees, held its Chanukah party.
As Batei Tsibur president Alan Pelikow noted, this most widely celebrated Jewish holiday commemorates the unlikely military victory in 138 B.C.E. of a vastly outnumbered band of Jews, the Macabees, over their Greek Syrian rulers who forbade religious practices to force Judaism to meld into the larger Greek culture.
However, “the miracle we celebrate,” he said, is not the military but “the spiritual victory,” when one day’s supply of oil to light the menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem miraculously lasted for eight days—thus, the eight candles on the Chanukah menorah.
Guest speaker Don Goodman, an Internet talk radio producer and host discussed “Jewish Thoughts on Universal Issues.” In his remarks, Mr. Goodman stated that we all stem from the same human family and all have the obligation to make the world a better place.
Mr. Goodman also discussed the seven basic Noahide laws that are embodied in Jewish tradition. These laws involve the recognition of a creator and require people to value life (not to murder), to value interpersonal relations (not to commit adultery, not to steal, and to establish courts), and prohibit cruelty to animals.
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