Less than a day after two gunmen killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more at a Hanukkah celebration on a beach in Sydney, Australia, over 100 people gathered on the New Haven Green Sunday evening for an annual menorah lighting ceremony that sent a little bit of light into the darkness.  Snow blanketed the Green on the first night of the Jewish holiday as celebrants donned light-up plastic menorah necklaces, lasers projected Stars of David and “Happy Chanukah” on nearby buildings, and speakers blasted EDM remixes of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.” The annual public menorah lighting was led by members of New Haven’s Chabad Lubavitch community, and has been taking place on the Green for more than four decades. Hanukkah festivities on the Green. Mark and Valerie, a couple who recently moved to New Haven from North Carolina, said they came by after seeing the events in Australia. “We came to show support,” Valerie said, not “just say it abstractly.” Rabbis Gershon Borenstein and Eli Raskin, of the Rabbinical Institute of New Haven and the Jewish Israeli Center of New Haven, respectively, spoke to the assembled crowd, as did Mayor Justin Elicker. Together, they condemned “terrorists,” “haters,” and “intolerance,” and echoed the idea that “only light dispels darkness.” As Borenstein and Elicker went up to the top of the 30-foot-tall menorah in a boom lift, Borenstein led the crowd in prayer, and there was much dancing. Borenstein and Elicker, ascending. For Efraim Kantor, a rabbinical student at the Rabbinical Institute of New England, “each one of us is a menorah.” Kantor’s family is scattered around the world as part of the Chabad organization — his parents live in Thailand, and his sister, he told the Independent, in Australia. “I’m not gonna let go,” Kantor said, “we need to stand up and shine.” Raskin had an even more direct message: the world is dark, and each of us can be a match. Do “good deeds,” Raskin said, even something as simple as “giving your father a hug” or “calling your mother.” Through kindness, he said, we get closer to God. Rabbi Eli Raskin (second from right): Do “good deeds.” The post In Sydney’s Shadow, Green Menorah Lighting Shines appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less