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Read the press release here.

Oy! Rabbis Strip Brooklyn Menorah of 'World's Largest' Title

This year, it’s the festival of slights.

Brooklyn’s famous “World’s Largest Menorah” can’t go by that name anymore, a rabbinical court ruled this month, saying the record rightfully belongs to another mega-menorah across the East River.

The Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical court decreed that the 33-and-a-half-foot Brooklyn menorah, installed for Hanukkah at Grand Army Plaza since the 1980s by Park Slope rabbi Shimon Hecht, must not be called the “World’s Largest” any longer, giving the title instead to a menorah installed every year by Rabbi Shmuel Butman near Central Park at West 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, according to a report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

 

Lighting of the world's largest menorah

A photo posted by Ron Williams (@jackthefront) on

By each using the “largest” title, the rabbis, both of the Chabad-Lubavitch community based in Crown Heights, could damage the image of the Jewish sect, the court said in its Dec. 1 decision, translated from Hebrew by the JTA.

“When another organization in the same city uses the same descriptor without permission from the plaintiff, it could cause the opposite of respect to Lubavitch,” the court said.

The Manhattan menorah has been on display for longer — since the 1970s, the report said — weighs more and holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for “largest menorah.”

However, Hect’s menorah in Brooklyn is actually taller — by about six inches, measured to the very top of the central candle, or shamash, according to the Brooklyn Paper. But his family said that they will abide by the rabbinical decree.

“We’re going to follow the court’s decision,” Hecht’s son told the newspaper. “It is what it is.”

Each menorah will be lit for each night of Hanukkah starting December 24. For a complete list of lighting times at both Grand Army Plaza and Central Park, click here.