“Lights” Tanks Going Strong

In recent years, Chanukah has become a cultural touchstone for Jews across America and around the world. This year, however, Chanukah has gone beyond the streets and illuminated cyberspace with #SharetheLights, an online sharing campaign aimed at increasing Jewish pride. Highlighting the “viral” nature of the Chanukah lights, people from all around the world have been sharing their Chanukah photos on Twitter, Instagram, and the #SharetheLights Facebook page.

Beyond merely a digital campaign, however, #SharetheLights has also featured an on-the-grounds push from local Chabad emissaries and pairs of roving rabbis in “mitzvah tanks” showing up at major college and high school campuses around the United States to give out Chanukah menorahs and encourage students to “share the lights” by kindling the menorah with those who may not otherwise do so.

Rabbi Yechiel Kosofsky is one of the roving rabbis manning the tank that’s been traveling along the Eastern Seaboard. (Three sister tanks are traversing the New York tri-state area, the Southwest and West Coast, respectively.) “There’s been a palpable air of excitement amongst everyone we’ve met,” he said during a stop on his way to their final destination in Florida.

Rabbi Mendel Levin, another rabbi manning the tank, agreed. “Many students came back after Thanksgiving and realized that they hadn’t purchased a menorah or candles,” he said, noting that thousands of the menorah kits the rabbis brought with them have already been distributed to grateful students. “Kindling the Chanukah menorah can be an intensely personal moment, something some people may be reserved about, but the students are all so happy to express their Jewish identity in such a public way.”

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, who launched the Global Jewish Youth Initiative that funded and promoted #SharetheLights, comments that “the overwhelmingly positive response we’ve seen to #SharetheLights tells us that Jewish youth are proud of their Jewishness. We need only to fan the flames of the Jewish spark within each teen and young adult through enjoyable Jewish experiences and that will stem the tides of assimilation.”