Eight days of sacred light

Michele Marr

Rabbi Yossi Mentz is grinning. The third-grade teacher at the Hebrew

Academy, a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School, is

sitting on his desk with one foot on the floor, the other dangling

above the linoleum.

A Jewish Mr. Rogers with less schmaltz, more verve and more humor,

Mentz is about to take his class on a 50-minute tour of what he calls

the Hanukkah Factory, where each student will hear the story of

Hanukkah, learn how olive oil is made and make a Hanukkah menorah to

take home .

On the floor in front of him, 23 girls and boys sit in a tight

semi-circle at his feet. Nearly all of them are wearing blue and

white T-shirts of the Hebrew Academy choir, in which they will sing

at six Orange and Los Angeles county malls during Hanukkah, which

begins Friday.

An hour before lunch, Mentz is recounting the story that gave

birth to Hanukkah. It’s not an old holiday, as Jewish holidays go,

commemorating an event that dates back only to 164 BC.

Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Jews lived

with the Greeks in relative peace and tolerated Greek rule. But in

169 BC, Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Hellenized Syria and a

notorious tyrant, entered Jerusalem and destroyed part of the city.

He pillaged the holy temple in Jerusalem, taking gold candlesticks

and vessels and all of its sacred treasures. Worse, he desecrated the

temple’s altar and forbade the Jews to practice their religion.

With his young students, Mentz doesn’t dwell on dates and details.

He sticks close to the heart of the matter: When the Jews were denied

the freedom to observe their faith under the penalty of death, they

rebelled.

The enemy Greek-Syrian soldiers were “meaner than mean if you know

what I mean,” Mentz tells his class. The wide-eyed expressions on the

children’s faces said they do.

The Jewish resistance was greatly outnumbered and poorly armed by

comparison. All the same, the Maccabees, a band of brothers from a

priestly family line, led them to victory, which they believed could

have been secured only from above.

Thankful, they set about rededicating the temple, but the priest

could find only one jar of undefiled olive oil -- enough to burn one

day -- to light the temple’s perpetually burning menorah.

So, Mentz tells his class, the “Cohen,” or priest, sent some men

to get more oil -- not a quick or simple task since it required them

to travel far from Jerusalem and back.

“Did they have cars?” Mentz asks his students.

“No!” they reply.

“Did they have trucks?” Mentz asks.

“No!” the students repeat.

No, Mentz says, they only had camels and the journey would take

them two days out and two days back in addition to the time it would

take to manufacture the fresh oil, far longer than one day’s worth of

oil would last.

To demonstrate, Mentz prepares to make fresh olive oil. An olive

press stands beside him on his desk and a vat of olives sit by his

feet. He lifts a stained and empty mesh bag for the students to see.

“This is a very special bag and it’s a very holey bag,” says

Mentz. “Do you know why it’s holey?”

“Yes!” the children shout, laughing and giggling. “Because it’s

full of holes.”

“That’s right,” Mentz says, “and that’s the only reason it’s

holey.”

It takes four pounds of olives, the rabbi explains, 15 double

handfuls, to make two ounces of fresh oil, which is why olive oil is

so expensive when it’s bought in the store.

Mentz plunges his hands into the olives and invites the children

to count out handfuls with him. When the bag is full he drops it into

the press, adds some wood to take up space and begins to crank...and

crank...and crank.

The children are up on their knees, some frowning with skepticism,

others agape with delight, when a bit of juice trickles into a cup

beneath the press’ spout. When all of the olives are pressed, there

is less than a cup.

“Does this look like the olive oil you buy in the store?” Mentz

asks, passing the cup around.

“No,” the students agree. It looks like coffee with a lot of

cream. It’s a pale mixture of pulp, crushed olive pits and oil, which

will take two days to rise to the top.

But Mentz doesn’t have two days, so he uses a centrifuge to

separate the mix. In a few minutes he holds up a test tube, where

pale green olive oil floats above layers of dense pulp and pits. As

he finishes telling the Hanukkah story, the rabbi passes the oil

around.

After lighting the temple menorah with one day’s worth of oil, the

priest returned each morning and found the menorah still burning. One

day’s worth of oil lasted eight days -- which is why Hanukkah is

celebrated for eight days -- until new oil could be brought to the

temple and consecrated.

“Hanukkah means ‘We rested from our enemies [on the 25th of

Kislev],’” Mentz tells his class.

“Hanu” means “they rested,” and “kah” represents the number 25.

The temple was rededicated on the 25th day of the Jewish month of

Kislev. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar, Hanukkah arrives on a

different day of the Western Gregorian calendar each year.

Before Mentz’ class completes its tour of his Hanukkah Factory,

each student will make a menorah, designed by Mentz and an assistant,

Dan Likins, specially for Hanukkah.

The menorah requires no glue or tools to assemble and each of its

nine candleholders are made from a dreidel, a four-sided top used to

play a popular Hanukkah game. On each face of the dreidel is a Hebrew

letter -- “nun,” “gimmel,” “hey” and “shin” -- which create an

acronym for another Hanukkah message, “Ness gadol haya sham,” which

means “A great miracle happened there [in Jerusalem].”

In Jerusalem, one letter is changed: The “shin” becomes “pey,” and

the saying “Ness gadol haya poe”: A great miracle happened here --

which is the essence of Hanukkah.