Robotics students in Jerusalem break world record for largest Menorah lighting

Students from three Jerusalem FLL (First Lego League) robotics teams have broken the Guinness World record for the largest Chanukah menorah lighting.

The record to beat was 1000, and the students worked for four hours setting up 1200 Chanukah menorot.

At the traditional candle lighting time, the students were joined by their families as well as others from the public who wished to take part.

Conducted under the strict rules of Guinness, witnesses watched as all 1200 menorot were lit.

According to Guinness, the menorot must remain lit for for five minutes. Despite some blowing out, 1136 menorot remained lit for the entire five minutes, easily shattering the existing record.

The programme was sponsored by UnitEd, a division of Israel’s Ministry of the Diaspora. Hundreds of students from around the world joined in live by Zoom from their day school classrooms.

Assaf Gamzou, director of education of UnitEd said: “I think one of the beautiful things true about light in the Jewish tradition and Hanukkah for thousands of years and definitely today, is that though there is darkness in the world and we as the Jewish people know that darkness and have been unfortunately touched by that darkness; we insist on not just lighting a candle, but lighting more candles and bringing more light into the world.”

The initiative was the brainchild of the “Hackers” robotics team, led by Jerusalem teacher, Eric Golombek who said: “In the summer, the kids decided that it would be awesome to break a world record. They came up with the idea of breaking a world record connected to Chanukah, and they settled on creating the largest menorah display. We only heard back from Guinness a couple of weeks ago, so things had to spring into action very quickly.”

Their efforts were helped by the educational non-profit, PICO/kids, which has a long history in Jerusalem of both supporting student initiatives and FLL teams.

Two other teams, “X-Blocs” and “Ranger” joined in bringing this event to life.

Connecting to the current war in Israel, students decided to affix the name of a soldier currently in combat to the back of each Chanukiya. They compared the soldiers of the IDF to the Maccabees in the Chanukah story and wished to honour as many as possible.

The programme was also dedicated in memory of Sgt.-Maj. (res.) Yossi Hershkovitz, school principal of the Ort Pelech Boys School who was among five reservists killed in Gaza on Nov. 12.