A Chanukah without menorahs? It was a disaster waiting to happen.
As the national shipping crisis dragged on, with 55 ships dotting the Southern Californian waters waiting to dock at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, everyone from wholesalers to grocery shoppers had been growing increasingly frantic.
Chabad-Lubavitch’s New York-based supply team were doing their best to take proactive measures to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of menorahs they had ordered for Chabad emissaries around the country would arrive in time for Chanukah. But it was far from certain that would happen.
The order was made by Rabbi Avraham Green of The Shluchim Office, who coordinates Chabad’s supply arm, back in April from the factories in China—well ahead of a normal year’s ordering schedule. But with facilities shutting after local Covid outbreaks and lockdowns being imposed on some Chinese cities, the shipments were delayed.
That meant that delivery times weren’t being fulfilled, and with a container ship that had yet to be unloaded, emissaries were growing more anxious by the day. Prior to and during Chanukah, Chabad emissaries hand out kits containing menorahs and candles by the hundreds of thousands to the homebound, college students, tourists, hospital patients and anybody in need, free of charge.
Finally, the ship arrived at port on Nov. 19. It cleared customs and its 700,000 menorahs were ready for onward shipping on Nov. 24. That left just four days before Chanukah began with Thanksgiving weekend parked in-between. The time frame made shipping the menorahs to some locations almost impossible.
“Our order of 5,000 menorahs would have arrived on Monday or Tuesday (the second and third nights of Chanukah),” Rabbi Yosef Moscowitz, executive director of Lubavitch-Chabad of Illinois, told Chabad.org. “That would be too late.”
The menorahs needed to be in Chicago by Thursday at the latest for distribution before Shabbat and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. So Moscowitz acted fast. He had a volunteer, Yarden Landauer, drive Chabad’s truck—normally used for a food bank—directly to New York. The moment the shipment was released on Wednesday, Nov. 24, workers loaded it up, and Landauer turned around and headed straight back to Chicago.
Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois began distributing the menorahs on Thursday evening, also erecting 10 giant menorahs around Illinois that they picked up in New York. “Three giant menorahs were put in an Uber on Friday morning for a 140-mile ride to Champaign, Ill.,” said Moscowitz. “We had to do everything we can to ensure that no Jew would be left without a menorah. There was a lot of red tape to cut through.”
Landauer, the newly-minted interstate courier, added that there was no time to think about the logistical complexities of his mission: “All I knew was that the menorahs needed to be brought to Chicago, and I would find a way to get it done.”
Inspiration From Judah Maccabee
In Commack—a hamlet on Long Island, N.Y.—a similar situation was playing out. Rabbi Mendel and Brocha Teldon, co-directors of Chabad of Mid-Suffolk, had an order of 1,500 menorah kits from Mitzvah Society, a division of Merkos Suite 302, Chabad’s ideas and service incubator. On Nov. 16, they were informed that there was nothing in stock.
“We needed time to pack the kits and distribute them,” said Rabbi Teldon. “We could not wait.”
Teldon operates a local chapter of Mitzvah Society, a program that empowers lay leaders from within local Chabad centers to act as “mitzvah ambassadors,” reaching out to family, neighbors and acquaintances to engage them in timely mitzvahs.
Mitzvah Society scrambled to locate a Florida-based manufacturer who could overnight the menorahs to Teldon. Volunteers from the local community as well as the Beth Rivkah girls’ high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., helped pack the boxes beginning just six days before Chanukah. They would be distributed by local community members to designated Mitzvah Society routes throughout the city.
“We completed 40 routes before Shabbat, and today, the last routes will go out,” said Teldon, who noted that he found inspiration from the original Chanukah miracle: “Judah Macabbee didn’t have to keep looking for the pure oil. He could’ve said, ‘We can’t do it this year,’ but he didn’t give up. The Chanukah story tells us we need to do the best we can, and nothing else will do.”
Shipping backlogs aren’t only limited to the United States. As far away as New Zealand, Rabbi Mendel Hecht, co-director of Chabad of Auckland with his wife, Esther, was scrambling days before Chanukah for his shipment of car-top menorahs from Australia. With limited travel between the countries, air freight was taking its time. If the car menorahs didn’t arrive, then New Zealand wouldn’t have a public Chanukah celebration, as even outdoor menorah-lighting celebrations weren’t permitted under Covid restrictions.
With the help of a shipping company executive who prioritized his shipment, on Nov. 26, the rabbi drove a truck to the airport, picking up the precious cargo himself in order to have Auckland celebrate Chanukah with great pride—and tremendous relief.
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