Hot chocolate, donuts, fire dancing, latkes, a gelt drop and of course the lighting of a candle marked the public Hanukkah menorah lighting ceremony in downtown Skokie Dec. 26, but a local rabbi said there was also a historic element behind the celebrations.
Rabbi Yochanan Posner of the Lubavitch Chabad congregation in Skokie, which sponsored the menorah lighting, recalled that Skokie had one of the first public menorah lights, outside of Chicago. Posner, his father Rabbi Yosef Posner and Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen, who was a village trustee at the time, said it took place about 40 years ago in the mid-1980s.
“This is before the courts upheld the practice and it became something common,” Posner said.
“At the time, then-Mayor Albert J. Smith, together with then-Village Trustee George Van Dusen, courageously participated in the ceremony.”
Van Dusen and both rabbis, father and son, have been at every Skokie public menorah lighting since, Posner said.
One Hanukkah tradition that Jewish children enjoy is the giving of gelt, or gold, which is sometimes actual money but often chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil to look like gold coins. Skokie’s event featured the Great Gelt Drop, which Posner said included showering the coins with much fanfare.
The menorah display was scheduled to continue through Jan. 2, with another candle lit each night so that all eight lights are ablaze on the eighth night of the holiday.
