Chanukah-TV in Hospital
Forty Jewish patients in Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital watched the Chanukah Menorah being lit from their beds…thanks to close circuit television.
Rev David Hilton makes the brocha watched by Rabbi Kastel and Ron Hoenig
Rabbi Mendel Kastel interviews State MP Ron Hoenig
In the hospital chapel, chaplain Rabbi Mendel Kastel accompanied by the Great Synagogue’s cantor Rev David Hilton and local State MP Ron Hoenig conducted the lighting of the Chanukeah in the presence of visiting children, a few patients who could make it to the ceremony and TV cameras.
Rabbi Kastel told J-Wire: “We interviewed both David Hilton and Ron Hoenig about what it was like for them growing up with Chanukah. The program was transmitted on one of the hospital’s channels so it was available for everyone in the building to see.”
Children from the Yeshiva joined the party singing the traditional Chanukah songs.
The first-time broadcast created a first-time experience of Chanukah for many of the hospital’s non-Jewish patients and the “Chanukah studio” in the chapel brought a smile to the faces of the POW’s non-Jewish chaplains who joined in the Chanukah celebrations.
The patients’ view of Chanukah
The children sing the songs
All photographs: Dassi Kastel
