In hope of saving a life Light for Jews: A Lubavitch rabbi, dedicated to educating Jews about their heritage, demands attention for the holy season with a lighted menorah atop his car.

Schmuel Kaplan will be driving around town this Hanukkah season with an electric menorah strapped to the top of his car.

What might seem like holiday exuberance to some is a matter of saving lives to the Lubavitch rabbi from Northwest Baltimore.

Once the holiday begins at sunset tonight, the rabbi will screw in one bulb to commemorate an ancient "miracle of lights" that followed a Jewish victory over Syrian rulers.

When Hanukkah ends one week and one day from now, eight electric candles powered through the cigarette lighter will burn from the 3-foot menorah on the roof of the rabbi's Honda Accord.

The mobile menorah would appear to be the Jewish version of a Christmas wreath tied to the grill of a Jeep Cherokee.

But to Lubavitchers -- an 18th-century offshoot of the Hasidic movement with a zeal for exposing every Jew on the planet to the laws of Moses -- the candelabrum symbolizes the difference between Jewish life and death.

"At most, only 35 percent of Jewish children receive any Jewish education," explains Rabbi Kaplan in an essay he hands out at this time of year. "Can anyone calculate the sense of pride and identity for a Jewish child who is surrounded, indeed inundated, by [Christmas] when he or she sees a menorah in a public setting?"

The director of Maryland's Lubavitch movement -- which numbers only about 200,000 worldwide, out of an estimated 15 million Jews -- Rabbi Kaplan acknowledges that menorahs alone will not "turn back the tide of assimilation, but they certainly are a significant step in reaching children who have nothing else."

It is this philosophy that helped him persuade Martin's West to erect a 9-foot menorah on the side of the caterer's Woodlawn building facing the Baltimore Beltway.

"For Lubavitch, as it should be for any Jew, this is the ultimate priority," he says. "No less than saving a life physically that is why we are so into public menorahs."

The miracle of Hanukkah -- symbolized by menorahs like the one that rises 33 feet over the Ellipse in Washington -- occurred in what is now central Israel about 165 years B.C.

The Syrian emperor Antiochus IV was bent on destroying Judaism by killing anyone who practiced it and forcing Jews to live by the Greek culture dominating the region. Antiochus had the Temple in Jerusalem sacked, ordering idolatrous sacrifices and the slaughter of pigs on its altar.

Said one Baltimore rabbi: "Greek philosophy postulated a man-centered world, where even gods were in the image of man. The Jewish perspective is the opposite, a God-centered world with man in the image of God."

To set their world right, a band of defiant Jews calling themselves Maccabees rose up against Antiochus. Upon entering the Temple after their victory routing the Syrian army, the rebel soldiers wept at the spiritual rape that had occurred there.

And they found that all of the kosher, or holy, olive oil stored there had been fouled -- all of it, the story goes, except for a single cruse -- an earthen vessel -- with enough oil to keep a flame burning for one day.

Only kosher oil could be used to rededicate the Temple, and it would take at least a week to press new oil. Determined to make their altar immediately pleasing to God, the Jews went ahead with a ritual cleansing even though the little bit of oil on hand would not last the entire process.

The miracle is that it lasted eight days.

In honor of the miracle, a festival eight days long was instituted, with candles lighted each night of the holiday and a combination of thanksgiving Psalms known as the "hallel" recited on each of the eight evenings.

"All biblical holidays commemorate actions of God initiating and Jews receiving," says Rabbi Kaplan. "In the case of Hanukkah, it is the Jewish people who took the initiative, and that has a special value to God."

Strict observance of Hanukkah dictates that the light be a flame fueled by olive oil, that an additional candle be lighted on each successive night and that the menorah -- which cannot be used for any practical purpose such as reading -- be placed inside the front doorway.

The festival became so popular in medieval times that the sages wrote: "Even he who draws his sustenance from charity should borrow or sell his cloak to purchase oil and lamps and kindle."

During the Nazi Holocaust, European Jews who didn't know where their next meal was coming from would light pieces of bread to remember. In Israel, people light menorahs on the sidewalks outside their apartment complexes. Gifts are given, and the traditional meals are potato pancakes known as latkes and fried jelly rolls called sufganiyah.

Legion are the Hanukkah cries of the Jewish cook laboring for a latke that won't crumble in the skillet.

Marty Resnick remembers the Hanukkahs of his Reisterstown Road and Ashburton childhood as "always happy times, fun and games and exchanging gifts. Something to look forward to."