The table used to stop Monsey attacker is turned into a menorah stand

Emblazoned on its sides are the Hebrew words marked on dreidels typically in Israel — “A big miracle happened here.”

By SHIRA HANAU/JTA

DECEMBER 11, 2020 23:52

A WOMAN holds a hanukkiah during a solidarity rally in Brooklyn on December 29 following the attack in Monsey on Jews who were celebrating the seventh night of Hanukkah at the home of a rabbi. (photo credit: AMR ALFIKY/ REUTERS) — A WOMAN holds a hanukkiah during a solidarity rally in Brooklyn on December 29 following the attack in Monsey on Jews who were celebrating the seventh night of Hanukkah at the home of a rabbi.

(photo credit: AMR ALFIKY/ REUTERS)

When a masked man entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, on the seventh night of Hanukkah last year, Joseph Gluck thought quickly. He picked up a coffee table and threw it at the attacker, who subsequently followed Gluck outside the house before trying to enter a synagogue next door. The door was locked and the intruder fled.

The coffee table that Joseph Gluck threw at the attacker during the #MonseyStabbing, at Rabbi Rothenberg's Chanuka celebration last year, was transformed into a #Menorah stand replicating a #Dreidel, with the hebrew inscription "A Big Miracle Happened Here".נס גדול היה פה pic.twitter.com/GV0Ukq3PSB
— Rabbi Yisroel Kahan (@ykahan) December 11, 2020

That coffee table turned defensive weapon has been turned into a dreidel-shaped menorah stand to memorialize Monsey’s own Hanukkah miracle. Emblazoned on its sides are the Hebrew words marked on dreidels typically in Israel — “A big miracle happened here.” (Most outside of Israel are engraved with “a big miracle happened there,” referring to the miracle of the Hanukkah story in which the oil in the Temple lasted for eight days.) In the case of the stand, the miracle is even closer to home.

Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, a leader in Monsey and a member of the Rockland County Human Rights Commission, posted a photo of the coffee table and the menorah stand to Twitter on Friday. That table, by the way, broke after Gluck’s heave at the intruder.

One guest at the Hanukkah celebration was severely injured in the attack and subsequently died of his injuries.