Chabad Center to celebrate Hanukkah with Fashion Island menorah lighting
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With Hanukkah’s eight-day Festival of Lights having kicked off Wednesday, members of Newport Beach’s Chabad Center for Jewish Life are busy with a slate of activities, including an annual menorah lighting at Fashion Island Sunday.
Now in its 24th year, the annual ceremony will include a live performance by local band the Orange County Klezmers, along with Hanukkah crafts, dreidels, doughnuts and free face painting and balloon animals for children.
Rabbi Reuven Mintz, who heads the nonprofit center with wife Chani, said Hanukkah is a time for Jewish people to gather together and celebrate humanity’s common bonds.
“We come together to focus on the need for unity and to spread joy,” he said. “We may look around the world and see so much darkness, and the way to dispel that is not with sticks and brooms and other means, but by spreading the light.”
Last year’s ceremony was highlighted by prayers for the safe return of hostages taken during an Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. Local residents who had a family member listed among the victims pleaded for his release in remarks at the event.
Mintz said Thursday that even as the Israel-Hamas war continues, locals of the Jewish faith will continue to pray for peace, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the nation.
“We can’t let [divisions] get in the way of what really unites us,” he said. “As human beings, we agree on a majority of things, and what we disagree on melts away in the face of what we have in common.”
After launching this year’s Hanukkah celebration Wednesday at the center’s headquarters in the Back Bay, the Chabad Center is also hosting a Comedy Night on Saturday at 8 p.m., with jokes from funnyman Mark Schiff, at 2240 University Drive. Tickets at the door cost $54.
Those who attend the free Fashion Island festivities Sunday are encouraged to bring new, unwrapped toys for an annual community toy drive that aims to deliver nearly 1,200 gifts to children with special needs in Orange County throughout the month of December.
The annual Menorah lighting takes place Sunday, from 3 to 4:15 p.m., at the atrium garden court, near the Barnes & Noble bookstore, at Fashion Island, 401 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach. For more information, visit the Chabad Center for Jewish Life at jewishnewport.com or call (949) 721-9800.
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