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Dec. 18 (UPI) — The first Lego stores in Israel opened earlier this year and one is now home to the world’s largest Lego menorah.
Menorahs are lighted each day of Hanukkah, which started Sunday and continues for eight days through Dec. 26.
A menorah built with 136,000 single bricks is on display at the Lego store in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center shopping mall. It was built by hundreds of children and families as part of the Hanukkah Lego festival, said Yoav Gaon, CEO of LEGO Israel.
The store was the first official Lego store opened in Israel, welcoming its first customers in July.
“Hundreds of kids, parents and grandparents created in the last three days the largest menorah from 130 thousands LEGO bricks – attempting to break the Guinness record,” he said. “The incredible event resulted in a menorah 4.5 meter in height and 4.4 meter in width and brought to life the values of miracles through fun, imagination and play.”
The previous record holder was 4 meters talls and 4 meters wide, or about 13 feet tall and 13 feet wide.
The menorah is hollow inside and only made of single Lego bricks. No adhesives were used to hold it together.
Guinness has not certified the menorah as the new world record holder. The process to do so takes about a week.
The largest menorah in the world — not made of Legos — was erected in Manhattan on Thursday. It is 36-feet tall and was created by Israeli sculptor Yaacov Agam.
Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, is a time of joy for the Jewish people, but this year it comes after a year of exceptional tumult. About 50,000 Jews have been displaced by the war in Ukraine.
Due to an electricity shortage in the country, special generators were sent to Ukraine’s Jewish communities in the lighting of the large menorahs.
“They won’t break us,” Avraham Wolf, chief rabbi of Odessa, said in a report by 7Israel National News. “Despite the war, despite the darkness and the cold, even though the memorial has been covered in the sand since the start of the war, today we put up a menorah which symbolizes the victory of the light over the darkness.”
In the United States there are an estimated 7.6 million jews.
There have been more than 1,500 incidents of antisemitism reported in the United States in 2022, with the largest concentration along the East Coast, According to the Anti-Defamation League,
