It was your typical Wednesday night scene – a bearded, torch-bearing rabbi and the bearded, smokey-voiced gent from those Men's Warehouse commercials hovering high above a packed crowd of Union Square holiday shoppers, ice skaters and commuters. Yup, nothing to see here.
Now in its 36th year, the annual lighting of the Bill Graham Menorah -- a massive 25-foot mahogany Menorah named after the prolific San Francisco concert promoter – went down without a hitch last night. The event coincided with the first day of Chanukah, with subsequent lightings set to go down over the next seven days. Fun fact: while these types of outdoor celebrations are now commonplace throughout the world, this was the menorah that helped start it all – when initially lit in 1975, it was reportedly the first public menorah lighting outside Israel.
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