It was a festival of lights, latkes and dancing rabbis, with a few sharp words on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good measure.
Hundreds of Jews flocked to San Francisco’s newly renovated Union Square Sunday for a third day of Chanukah celebrations, munching on potato pancakes as Mayor Willie Brown took part in the 28th annual lighting of the huge, wooden Bill Graham Menorah.
“I’m delighted to welcome you to our restored and re-energized Union Square,” Brown told the crowd. “Happy Chanukah!”
As onlookers held small candles below, Brown, clothing magnate George Zimmer of The Men’s Warehouse and Rabbi Yosef Langer of Chabad of S.F., which sponsors the annual celebration, climbed large metal scaffolding to light the 22-foot-high menorah.
The ceremony capped a day of upbeat celebrations and low-key political protest. A half-dozen activists from the San Francisco-based Tikkun Community and the Oakland-based A Jewish Voice for Peace gathered on the southwest corner of Union Square during the day, calling for a “Peace Chanukah” and urging Jews, through song, to “Light one candle for Israeli and Palestinian civilians/Light one candle for the pain occupation has caused millions.”
Liat Weingart, co-director of A Jewish Voice for Peace, took issue with Chabad’s support for Jewish settlers in Palestinian territories.
“If you really think that there is hope for peace, you have to withdraw,” she said. “The last two years of history in the Middle East has shown that you can’t have peace without justice.”
“I totally disagree,” said Langer, arguing that ceding parts of Israel to the Palestinians is like “throwing kerosene onto an existing fire.” Langer said Israel will win worldwide acceptance of its sovereignty and true peace in the region only if it sticks to its claims on the entire “Holy Land.”
Chabad has sponsored a public Chanukah celebration every year since 1975, when legendary rock promoter Bill Graham donated the huge chanukiah and San Francisco became the first city in the world outside Israel to light a chanukiah of its kind.
After Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991, Chabad named the structure after the promoter. In 1993, then-San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan declared the first Sunday of Chanukah “Bill Graham Menorah Day.”
Langer said Graham, a Jew who escaped Europe during World War II as a child, grew up in the Bronx and wound up in San Francisco, kicked off a worldwide movement of large-scale public lightings with the 1975 donation.
“It literally took off and lit up the world,” he said. “Bill’s light still shines and the light of his soul still shines.”
This year, “Bill Graham Menorah Day” began at 2 p.m. with traditional music from pianist Itzhak Volansky. A half-hour later, poet Matthue Roth took the stage and launched into a series of humorous English and Yiddish poems about his grandmother and Jewish identity. Hip-hop artist Dan Wolf of San Francisco followed Roth, telling the story of relatives in Hamburg, Germany, who had to take their musical craft underground with the rise of Nazism.
“I fed you culture, you fed me gas,” Wolf rapped in one pointed lyric.
Children moved up to the stage, eating cotton candy and drinking sodas, as the four-women Puppet Players put on a show. Rousing music from the Happy Minyan Band rounded out the entertainment, with Langer dancing wildly on stage to the applause of the crowd.
Zack Suess, 18, of San Francisco, watched the show approvingly.
“It’s fun and it brings a lot of people in,” he said. “It raises awareness that there are cool Jews.”
Jim Fake of Sacramento, who stumbled upon the festival, was convinced.
“Any kind of Jewish holiday, they seem to have great fun,” he said.
Yefin Pinkhasov of Oakland said he comes to the annual celebration every year “to see my heritage.” But he said world events, including the recent attacks on Israeli tourists in Kenya, made the festivities even more important this year.
“You have to be more united than ever before,” he said.
The Union Square celebrations will conclude tonight with a 5 p.m. lighting by Langer and San Francisco businessman Gary Cohen.