The Hanukkah menorah entered American public life in the 1970s, when Chabad rabbis began lighting giant menorahs in public squares, starting at Independence Mall in Philadelphia in 1974. President Jimmy Carter lit the menorah near the White House in 1979, and in 1989 the Supreme Court upheld a public menorah in Pittsburgh.
Today a public menorah lighting is as much a part of December in America as the city tree and the holiday market. It did not start that way. For most of American Jewish history, the menorah stayed in the home. Here is how it moved outside, who moved it, and the fights it took to keep it there.
Why Is the Hanukkah Menorah Meant to Be Seen?
Because publicizing the miracle is the point. Most Jewish rituals face inward, toward the family or the congregation. The menorah faces the street. As Chabad.org explains, the ideal place for the menorah, where it stood in Talmudic times, is at the front door of the home, facing the street.
Life in exile changed that. Chabad.org notes that the harsh realities of the Diaspora, "both sociopolitical and meteorological," forced the menorah indoors, and in some communities the custom became the windowsill instead. For centuries, a menorah in the window was about as public as Jewish life could safely get.
The Hebrew phrase for the idea is pirsumei nisa, publicizing the miracle. It is the reason our guide on how to light a Hanukkah menorah tells you to place it where it can be seen from outside. It is also the idea that eventually carried the menorah out of the window and into the town square. In the words of one of the rabbis who did it, Hanukkah "is a holiday when we are supposed to publicize the miracle."
How Did Hanukkah Grow in America Before the Public Menorah?
Slowly, and mostly at home. Through the nineteenth century, rabbis, Sunday schools, and later Eastern European immigrant families built Hanukkah into a beloved American Jewish holiday, a story we tell in full in the story of Hanukkah. But the celebrations happened in homes, synagogues, and community halls, not on public land.
There were early signs of what was coming. In 1951, during an official visit to the United States, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presented a Hanukkah menorah to President Harry Truman, according to the National Jewish Outreach Program. It was a gift, not a public lighting. The public menorah was still more than two decades away.
Where Was the First Public Menorah in America?
Philadelphia, in 1974. The story starts with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who in 1973 launched a worldwide Hanukkah awareness campaign, according to Chabad.org. He urged every Jewish home to light a menorah, every child to have one of their own, and everyone to encourage friends and neighbors to do the same.
His emissaries took that literally. In 1973, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 47th Street in Manhattan, a group of yeshiva students led by Rabbi Shmuel Lipskier lit a wooden menorah mounted on top of a station wagon. Chabad.org calls it the first car-top menorah in the world.
The next winter came the first public menorah. On a frigid Hanukkah night in 1974, Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, the Chabad emissary in Philadelphia, brought a small wooden menorah to Independence Mall. Chabad.org describes it as crude, made of wood, and about four feet tall, and it notes that almost no one was there to watch it lit. By 1976, Shemtov had a 25-foot steel menorah built and placed at Independence Hall.
Think about the setting. The birthplace of American liberty, the Liberty Bell nearby, and a Jewish light burning in public for anyone walking past. It was a statement about Hanukkah, and it was a statement about America.
How Did Public Menorahs Spread Across the Country?
City by city, rabbi by rabbi. In 1975, Chabad Rabbi Chaim Itche Drizin of San Francisco teamed up with the rock promoter Bill Graham, a child survivor of the Holocaust, to put a giant menorah in Union Square. According to Chabad.org's account, more than 1,000 people came to the first lighting. Drizin's idea was simple: "Why not a menorah in Union Square?"
New York followed. Chabad put up New York City's first public menorah in 1977, outside the Plaza Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. Since 1986, that same corner has been home to what Chabad.org calls the largest menorah in the world, designed by the artist Yaacov Agam. Also in 1986, the Lubavitch Youth Organization put up a giant menorah at the base of the Statue of Liberty for the first time.
The idea traveled well beyond the big coastal cities. Chabad.org's history records the menorahs that followed:
- 1980: A large menorah in front of the Bergen County Court House in Hackensack, New Jersey, arranged by Rabbi Yisroel Brod of Chabad Lubavitch of Bergen County.
- 1981: A 15-foot menorah, built for $500, on the plaza next to the St. Louis County Government Center, put up by Rabbi Yosef and Shiffy Landa.
- 1982: The first menorah lighting at the New Jersey state capitol in Trenton, a tradition that continues.
- 1983: Fifteen menorahs in front of town halls across Bergen County.
How Did the National Menorah Begin?
With a permit fight and a president who walked across the street. In 1979, Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter's chief domestic policy adviser, helped arrange for a menorah near the White House. A permit for federal land was not automatic. Eizenstat later recalled to JTA what he told Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus about the National Christmas Tree permit: "I don't see how you can grant one, and not the other."
On December 17, 1979, the fourth night of Hanukkah, President Carter walked out of the White House to Lafayette Park and lit the shamash, according to Chabad.org, which calls him the first American president in history to publicly light a Hanukkah menorah. Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, the same rabbi who had lit the little wooden menorah in Philadelphia five years earlier and the chair of American Friends of Lubavitch, greeted him and escorted him to the podium. JTA reports that fewer than 50 people were there.
The Capital Jewish Museum keeps a small artifact from that night.
The Capital Jewish Museum keeps a small artifact from that night. Ordinary matches could not reach the wicks inside the menorah's tall Plexiglas wind box, so a Jewish-owned shop nearby supplied specialty long matches. Carter signed the matchbox, and the family that owned it donated it to the museum in 2021. As Eizenstat told the Washington Post in 2020, "That impact of the candle lit by Carter has, in effect, lasted a lot longer than eight days. It continues now."
The menorah stayed in Lafayette Park until 1987, when it moved to its current home on the Ellipse, south of the White House. Chabad.org reports that every administration has taken part in the National Menorah celebration since 1979. By 2004, JTA counted more than 1,500 spectators at the lighting of the 30-foot menorah.
When Did Presidents Start Celebrating Hanukkah Inside the White House?
Gradually, through the 1980s and 1990s, and officially in 2001. The National Jewish Outreach Program traces the steps:
- 1983: President Ronald Reagan visited a local JCC in the Washington suburbs on Hanukkah.
- 1984: A delegation from American Friends of Lubavitch presented a silver menorah to Reagan in the Oval Office, a tradition that continued.
- 1991: President George H. W. Bush attended a Hanukkah party for White House staff in the Old Executive Office Building.
- 1993: President Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to host a menorah lighting in the Oval Office.
- 2001: President George W. Bush hosted the first official White House Hanukkah party.
That 2001 party, as Tevi Troy wrote for JTA, was the first ever held in the White House residence. A few years later, at a Bush-era celebration honoring Israel's 60th birthday, the grandsons of Harry Truman and David Ben-Gurion lit candles together. Presidents of both parties have hosted the White House Hanukkah party since.
Why Did the Supreme Court Rule on a Menorah?
Because public menorahs raised a real constitutional question: can a religious symbol stand on government property without the government endorsing a religion? The case that answered it for menorahs was County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, argued on February 22, 1989 and decided on July 3, 1989.
The case involved two holiday displays in downtown Pittsburgh. One was a nativity scene inside the Allegheny County Courthouse. The other, as My Jewish Learning describes it, was an 18-foot Hanukkah menorah from the Lubavitch community, standing outside the City-County Building next to a 45-foot Christmas tree and a sign reading "Salute to Liberty."
The Court split the two. According to the case summary at Oyez, a 5 to 4 majority held that the courthouse nativity scene violated the Establishment Clause. But six justices concluded that the menorah display was constitutional, given its "particular physical setting." The case was decided together with Chabad v. ACLU, with Chabad itself a party defending its menorah.
A second ruling followed. In 1993, in a case known as Flamer v. White Plains, the federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, later a Supreme Court justice, ruled that "the City may not deny Rabbi Flamer a permit to erect a fixed free-standing menorah in a City park during the Chanukah holiday because of the menorah's religious message," as Chabad.org quotes her. Chabad.org describes that case as the one that established the right of individuals and groups to put up such displays.
Did Every American Jewish Group Support Public Menorahs?
No, and the debate was serious. Many American Jewish organizations have long championed a firm separation of religion and government, and some worried that public religious displays would weaken it. My Jewish Learning notes that the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League were among those opposing the Pittsburgh menorah, while the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) and Agudath Israel supported it.
The disagreement played out locally too. When Rabbi Brod tried to place a menorah in Teaneck, New Jersey, ahead of Hanukkah 1981, he faced opposition from the town's Jewish Community Council, according to Chabad.org. In 2006, JTA reported that the Union for Reform Judaism opposed "government-sponsored, government-funded religious displays on public property," while some rabbis had reconsidered their position on community lightings.
Both sides were arguing about the same thing: how Jews can be fully Jewish and fully American at once. That argument is itself a very American Jewish tradition.
What Happened in Billings, Montana?
A town answered hate with menorahs. On December 2, 1993, a brick was thrown through the bedroom window of a 5-year-old Jewish boy, Isaac Schnitzer, who was displaying a Hanukkah menorah. As JTA recounted, the Billings Gazette responded by printing a full-page menorah, and thousands of residents pasted it in their own windows in solidarity.
The story became the 1995 documentary Not In Our Town, which, JTA notes, galvanized tolerance campaigns based on the Billings model in hundreds of U.S. cities. It is the window menorah and the public menorah meeting in one moment: a family's private light, defended by an entire town putting the same light on display.
How Many Public Menorahs Are There Today?
Thousands. Chabad.org reports that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement now puts up some 15,000 giant Hanukkah menorahs in public squares around the world, from Washington, D.C., to Vienna to Melbourne. What began as a four-foot wooden menorah with almost no one watching is now one of the most recognizable sights of the American December.
You will find them in town squares, outside state capitols, and at shopping centers. Some get creative: in 2006, JTA reported a seven-foot ice menorah in Houston, and Chabad.org records a menorah lit at halftime of a Miami Dolphins game in 1987. The National Menorah on the Ellipse is still lit every year.
How Can You Take Part This Hanukkah?
Hanukkah 2026 begins at sundown on Friday, December 4, and ends at nightfall on Saturday, December 12, according to Hebcal. A few ways to join the tradition:
- Find a public lighting. Check with your local Chabad center, synagogue, or JCC. Many communities host one.
- Put your menorah where it can be seen. A front window counts. That is pirsumei nisa, the same idea behind every giant menorah.
- Bring someone new. Public lightings are built for neighbors who have never seen a menorah lit. Invite one.
- Learn the dates and customs. Our Hanukkah holiday guide has the full candle schedule and traditions.
More than fifty years ago, a rabbi carried a homemade menorah onto Independence Mall and lit it for almost nobody. Today presidents light it, courts have protected it, and a whole country has seen it. Every one of those lights started with a family that put its menorah where the street could see it. This December, put yours there too.