In the large vats in front of me is the sight and smell of Chanukah. Here, millions of the candles we all grew up with — the coloured ones in the little blue box — have been made, hand packed, and shipped to communities around the world.
We are used to hearing about the colours of Christmas — red, green, gold, silver. But only in this factory, did I realise that for many of us Chanukah has its very specific colours.
Each vat contains a different colour of wax, and I am struck by how distinctive they are. The of yellow screams Chanucah so loudly that I am hungry for latkes — that precise shade is not common elsewhere. The same goes for the red, which is much pastier than a Christmas red.
The vats at the Menora candle company in Sderot, by the Israel-Gaza border, should be whirring and the wax should be hot, ready for shaping. But it is stone-cold and hardened, as it has been since the day that this factory floor was powered down two years ago — a silent area surrounded by the humdrum of the busy yahrzeit candle, Shabbat candle, and havdalah candle departments.
“The Chinese did a very smart thing,” says Sara Zadaka, vice president for sales. “And it became clear to everyone here that making Chanucah candles doesn’t pay.”
Companies from China went to trade fairs, talked to distributors, saw that Chanucah candles are cheap and easy to make, and come in large seasonal orders. They started making them cut-price. In Israel, you can buy candles as cheaply as 19 pence per box. Around the world, solidarity with Israel was not enough to keep Menora in Chanucah candles.
“In the diaspora, it’s always been important for Jewish people to buy their candles from Israel,” says Zadaka. “But people saw candles at two prices and bought the cheapest.”
Some other Israeli candle manufacturers have shut up shop, as the Chinese have squeezed prices, but this is a factory infused with the defiant spirit of the man, Israel Chainere, who put it here. “It’s very easy to throw up your hands in dismay but we don’t,” says Zadaka.
As well as fighting to keep seeing Shabbat lights and other candles despite Chinese competition, it is refusing to be chased out of the Chanucah market. It has bounced back with something bigger, better, and more profitable.
The company was started in 1939, by immigrants who hand-dipped wicks in to wax to make candles. In 1991 Chainere, who survived the Holocaust by hiding out for three years in a forest, bought Menora and decided to move operations from central Israel to Sderot.
“He decided to set up a factory in a place where there wasn’t much work and provide employment,” explains Zadaka. Chainere never shied away from a challenge, and when the current team saw Chanucah candles were in trouble, they went back to basics, and focused on old school oil instead.
Menora now has a thriving business producing and selling ready-to-light kits with individual cups of olive oil and wicks for each day. Mr Chainere sold Menora, but is still updated on every development.
The company has seized on the revival of lighting oil — the subject of the actual Chanukah story — instead of wax, and made it easy for people to use oil. It has eliminated the mess of filling cups at home and the frustration that goes with wicks that refuse to light as the family waits to sing Maoz Tzur.
Around the corner from the abandoned wax machine, a young woman pours olive oil into a spout, adds an extra ingredient, and then fills a tray of cups. These kits give families the best of both worlds — it is olive oil, with the tradition and scent that goes with this, but the extra ingredient solidifies it, so there can be no spillages as the chanuciah is being set up. The cups just drop in to the candle-holder of any chanuciah.
This product retails for just over £10, and is selling well across Israel and the diaspora. Soon, there will be a bigger machine installed to increase capacity.
On another production line, a man puts the little cups in to a revolving platform. The machine inserts olive oil, a wick, and then places a cap on it. The cups jump out of the machine, and another employee packs them in to trays.
“Times change, and while we don’t do candles, oil has become really really popular,” explains Zadaka above the noise of the machines. “It started with religious people wanting to ‘beautify the mitzvah’ of lighting the chanuciah, and it grew from there.”
She was referring to the Talmudic idea of hiddur mitzvah, which means enhancing the beauty of a religious act, and motivates people to buy pretty chanuciahs and nice-smelling oils.
Mrs Zadaka takes great satisfaction in her company’s outside-the-box thinking to stay in the Chanukah business. She has been with Menora for 40 years and has passed retirement age, but stays, travelling there daily from near Tel Aviv, because she believes in it.
“There’s a Jewish heart here, and it’s important that this factory continues and that we still have Israeli-made candles for Jewish occasions,” she says. “We are literally bringing ‘light to the Jews.’”
She sees it as a matter of patriotism. Rockets from Gaza strengthens her resolve. Fire closed down the factory for 10 days in 2012, and in 2014 a nearby factory was destroyed and four of its workers were injured by a rocket attack.“When there are rockets we have only 15 seconds to get to the shelter,” she says. I’ve never managed it. I have heard booms as I’m on the stairs. We stay because we think it’s right.”
She is also determined to honour the wishes of Mr Chainere who moved the factory here, to support the local economy. Today, Menora taken this ideal to a new level, and it employs many adults with special needs. They stand in groups in the factory, chatting as they thread wicks in to Shabbat candles. Others do packing work in local day centres.
“There is a social importance to what we do,” said Mrs Zadaka. ‘We’re more than just a factory that is out to make money. This is all part of the way that we bring light to Israel and the Jewish world.”
