It was 1993. Barry and Tammy were sitting in their Montana home one night when they suddenly heard a crash upstairs. It sounded like broken glass. Barry ran up the stairs, and when he came to the landing, he felt a cold breeze coming from his children’s bedroom. He ran into the children’s room, and he saw that someone had thrown a brick through the bedroom window.
Thank God, the brick did not hit the children.
Barry knew why the windows were targeted. The children had come home from Hebrew school that Sunday with beautiful pictures that they had each drawn of Hanukkah menorahs. Tradition is to put menorahs in windows during the eight-day Jewish holiday.
It was clearly a hate crime by an anti-semite.
The police were called out, and the officers casually dismissed it. “That’s not a hate crime.” One said, “It’s just vandalism, and you need to put bars on your windows.”
Tammy and Barry were furious. Barry knew that a neighbor of his was hosting the senator from Montana, Conrad Burns, at his home that week, and that Senator Bob Dole would be there too. He called the Senator’s office and left messages that they should come to his house while they were in town to see what happened when a white supremacist threw a brick through their children’s bedroom window.
Not only did the two senators come, but the press did as well, and the next day, there was a prominent article in the Billings paper about the incident. Suddenly, all the people in town knew that hate had come to Wyoming.
The family started receiving cards, calls, and enthusiastic support for the family, and all the Jewish residents in Billings Montana. A local Catholic school had all the children draw a picture of a menorah, and they were told to go home and hang it in their windows. Local businesses printed pictures of menorahs to give to employees and customers, and hung menorahs in their windows.
The Billings Gazette ran a full-page ad featuring a beautiful, full-color menorah with perforations so people could cut it out and hang it in support of their neighbors and in solidarity against anti-Semitism and white supremacy.
Over 10,000 homes in Billings, Montana, that year had a menorah hanging in their windows, serving a community of 150 Jews.
That’s the meaning of Hannukkah. To use light to transform the darkness of this world. To fill all homes with the light of goodness, kindness, righteousness, and holiness.