Trademarks of Faith: "Chabad and Chanukah in America"

Abstract

Americans familiar with the Brooklyn-based Chabad Hasidic movement know the group primarily through its public Jewish ritual and outreach campaigns, from the ‘‘mitzvah tanks’’ in American cities, to its star-studded telethons and photo-ops with political leaders. Perhaps the group’s best known public campaign is the giant Chanukah menorah lightings it sponsors and the associated media coverage. While some of these lightings are geared towards local crowds, others are staged media events, televised live on public and cable channels, and more recently, streamed on Chabad-affiliated web sites. Starting in 1989, Chabad simultaneously linked international Chanukah menorah lightings with real-time reporting in their televised Chanukah Live spectaculars. Many ‘‘outside’’ photographers have documented Chabad’s Chanukah celebrations as tourists, and others, such as Mal Warshaw in the 1970s, Yaakov Agam in the 1980s, and Frederic Brenner in the 1990s turned to Chabad’s Chanukah events as artists. One of the photographs Brenner reproduced in large-scale format in his Diaspora: Homelands in Exile album (2003) and in a two-page foldout in the Jews/America/A Representation album (1996), is a black-andwhite panoramic shot of the interior of the Chabad World Headquarters during the 1993 Chanukah season (Figure 1). Entitled Chanukah Live!, this photograph records the spectacle of Chabad’s embrace of modern technology for the annual televised Chanukah extravaganza. Taken in the last months of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s life, the ‘‘Rebbe,’’ as his Hasidim reverentially call him, dominates an otherwise empty room through a refracted image on seven monitors in preparation for the Chanukah Live! broadcast in December of 1993. Loudspeakers, hanging cables, electric tape, exposed air conditioner ducts, vents, and still fans riddle the ceiling and hasty banners advertise the upcoming holiday media event on the