Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, seems like a celebration made for a pandemic since like Passover, it is observed at home rather than in a house of worship.
The usual community celebrations in Maine shuls have been scuttled due to the recent surge in coronavirus cases for gatherings online as rabbis and families turn to computer applications like Zoom to come together as a community.
Rabbi Bill Siemers of Congregation Beth Israel and Rabbi Darah Lerner of Congregation Beth El, both located in Bangor, are holding nightly candle-lighting ceremonies from their homes with congregants online.
Jews around the state have been invited to an online event at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, sponsored by the Center for Small Town Jewish Life, based at Colby College in Waterville, and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.
Siemers’ family constructed a menorah made of ice blocks in the yard across the street from their home in the Little City section of Bangor as a way to celebrate the holiday outdoors with neighbors.
In recent years, synagogues opened their doors to non-Jews during Hanukkah for one of the eight nights it is celebrated.
Since 1995, Angus King’s first year as governor, the holiday has been marked at an event for the public at the Blaine House. King’s wife, Mary Herman, is Jewish, and invited Jewish families from around the state to attend.
The eight-day holiday that began Thursday at sunset honors the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the second century B.C. following victory over the Syrians.
Celebrated with the nightly lighting of the menorah, it usually falls in December but sometimes in late November.
Its underlying message that the Jewish people endure was linked to the coronavirus crisis by Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union branch of the faith.
“There’s been a tremendous power of the spirit to continue to practice and continue to worship and celebrate, and find new ways to celebrate [during the pandemic],” he told the Associated Press.
Hanukkah is a minor holiday in Israel, though it is still a festive occasion marked by communal candle-lighting gatherings, school vacation and the consumption of deep-fried, and often elaborately decorated, doughnuts known as sufganiyot.
The holiday is more popular among Jews in the United States because it falls near Christmas and includes gift giving. Latkes, fried potato pancakes, also are associated with the holiday.
Rabbi Hara Person, the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, urged celebrants everywhere to remain “very cognizant about what our home gatherings look like” in the pandemic context.
Hanukkah is “about spreading light and spreading joy,” Person said, and “we need to maintain that idea of spreading light by not spreading infection.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.