Harvard Rabbi Says University Administrators Told Him to Hide Campus Menorah Each Night of Hanukkah

A rabbi at Harvard University was told by administrators to hide the campus menorah each night of Hanukkah for fear of vandalization or other criminal activity, the rabbi said in a video posted to social media.

“We in the Jewish community are longing for a day … that Harvard not only has our back, and not only allows us to finally put up a menorah, but doesn’t force us to hide it at night,” said Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, founder and president of Harvard Chabad, while celebrating Hanukkah on Wednesday evening. The Jewish holiday concludes on Friday.

Zarchi said he was asked to take the menorah inside at night because Harvard administrators are concerned about the optics of an antisemitic incident occurring amid a surge in such activity on college campuses in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack.

“We in the Jewish community are instructed, ‘We’ll let you have the menorah, you made your point, okay. Pack it up. Don’t leave it out overnight because there will be criminal activity we fear and it won’t look good,'” Zarchi said.

“You know when change is going to happen on this campus? When we don’t have to pack up the menorah,” he continued. “When the current dean of students is not able to tell me last Shabbat over dinner that a student confides in him, that he looks in the mirror before he leaves his dorm room to ensure that there’s nothing on his physical appearance that gives away the fact that he’s a Jew. That’s the reality of the Jewish community at Harvard today.”

The rabbi’s remarks come after Harvard president Claudine Gay’s explosive testimony at a House hearing on campus antisemitism. Gay, who appeared alongside University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, joined her fellow college presidents in refusing to say explicitly that calls for genocide against Jews violated their respective university codes of conduct.

All three university leaders met sharp criticism for their comments, and amid the backlash, Magill stepped down from her duties. Gay and Kornbluth, on the other hand, have received enough support from their respective boards to keep their jobs. Gay also publicly apologized for her congressional testimony.

“Let’s hope that indeed we’ll be able to look at the light of the Hanukkah candles and see only its light because the power of its light will eliminate all the darkness and turn this and transform our community to a place that will be indeed a beacon of light,” Zarchi concludes in his speech. “Not only to the lives and to the hearts and minds of all our students, but indeed through our students and through our community to the world.”