Bangor-area residents braved freezing temperatures Thursday night to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah by lighting a nine-foot menorah in downtown Bangor exactly two months after Hamas launched an attack on Israel.
A few dozen people gathered in Peirce Park for the annual event that kicks off the eight-day Festival of Lights. The festivities included music, food and the dropping of Hanukkah gelt — chocolate coins wrapped in foil — from a Bangor Fire Department ladder truck.
The celebration also featured prayers for Israel. An officer from the Bangor Police Department was present, hinting at the recent rise in antisemitic incidents across the United States which have increased nearly 400 percent since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League reported.
The Israel-Hamas war and rise in antisemitism is “frightening and loud,” said Rabbi Chaim Wilansky of Congregation Beth Abraham, but Jewish people have seen similar hardships and hate in the past and have survived and grown stronger from it.
While Maine has seen far fewer antisemitic gestures, the state hasn’t been immune. Last month, pro-Hamas flyers were posted outside of Bangor’s Congregation Beth El on French Street.
In October, the Maine chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation held a rally in downtown Portland to “demand a free Palestine, an end to US funding of Israeli apartheid, and freedom for all Palestinian political prisoners!” according to an Instagram post from the group.
While previous threats may have led members of the state’s Jewish community to hide their faith, Wilanski said the community feels the need to celebrate Hanukkah “with more resolve and confidence” this year.
“When confronted with hatred, the public menorah is more important than ever,” Wilansky said. “We can have no better response to negativity we encounter than to proudly gather together, in even greater numbers than before, and celebrate the light of the menorah in public.”
That confidence in confronting hatred has manifested in people lighting and displaying their menorahs in visible locations of their homes, such as windows and doors. Such gestures match a menorah’s very meaning, Wilansky said, as they represent “freedom from tyranny and oppression, and freedom for all people to express their own faith as they see fit.”
“When it’s lit in a public space, the menorah represents the principles of equality and religious freedom upon which our country was founded, and it is a wonderful symbol of the religious diversity that is the hallmark of Maine and of this great country,” Wilansky said.
Shellie Batuski of Orono said she was happy the Chabad of Bangor chose to hold the menorah lighting celebration in spite of the wave of antisemitism across the country and world.
Though she has always been proud of her faith and celebrates Hanukkah every year, Batuski said publicly marking the holiday is especially important this year because Hanukkah celebrates the victory of the Jews against oppression.
“I think that’s what’s going on today in Israel,” Batuski said. “Israel is surrounded not only by Hamas, but by other terrorist organizations who want to destroy it. They’re fighting for their existence, and that’s what Hanukkah celebrates.”