Chabad of Pasadena Stages Its First-Ever Hanukkah Parade

Filling nearly two dozen cars with friends, supporters and members of the Chabad of Pasadena staged their first-ever Hanukkah parade Wednesday night.

Assembling in the parking lot before the event, participants decorated their cars and trucks and vans with Hanukkah messages and menorahs before a twenty-foot high menorah was lit to begin the parade. All of the participants were masked and socially distant as the brief parade circled through Pasadena.

The eight-day Jewish Hanukkah holiday, also known as the “Festival of Lights” commemorates the rededication during the second century B.C., of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where according to legend,  Jews had risen up against their Greek-Syrian oppressors in the Maccabean Revolt.

“They were left with no oil for their lamps,” explained Rabbi Laibel Hanoka, youth director at Chabad of Pasadena. “They eventually found one jug of oil which would last them one day, …but that jug lasted them eight days, and to celebrate that miracle, we have eight days of Hanukkah, in which we light a similar menorah and we spread the light to the world. In this parade, we are trying to spread that light which shows that light overcomes darkness.”

The approximately two-mile parade moved from the Chabad to Colorado Boulevard, where it moved west through Old Pasadena, circled north up to Walnut Street and back to the Chabad.