Lighting the Lights of Resilience on Pearl Street with a New Menorah

According to its creator, Tradition with a Twist is like no menorah you’ve ever seen.

Seven feet tall and lit with enclosed LED lights, it blends the old and the new, “evoking spiritual resilience and aesthetic elegance.” Nine square pillars arise from a central base to form the traditional candle holders, with a twist.

 Yitzchok Moully, aka The Pop Art Rabbi, is a conceptual artist whose work “explores the intersection of spirituality and the material world.” Raised in Melbourne, he lives in Cambridgport, MA, today, having passed through Hasidic Brooklyn for a few years on the way.

It will be revealed to the Boulder Jewish community for the first time at the Boulder Center for Judaism’s Menorah Lighting on Pearl Street on Monday, December 15th at 5:30pm. Tradition With a Twist will add a joyous celebratory element to that annual event which, this year, also commemorates the resilience of our community, and the larger Jewish people, in the face of the terrorist attacks at this location just six months ago.

In discussing the inspiration for this reimagining of the menorah, Moully began with a question, “What if a menorah wasn’t only a symbol of light — but a work of public art that invites us to see Judaism through a new lens?”

His reflections on the traditional ritual, performed for generations at home, the menorah placed in the window where passersby could see it, inspired his desire to expand that light — that quintessential symbol of Judaism’s resilience — to larger spaces, streets, plazas, parks, and cities where it will be “Visible. Proud. Unapologetically Jewish.”

Moully said, “As an artist and a Hassid, my work lives at the intersection of faith and form — where the spiritual becomes sculptural, and where Jewish identity isn’t just remembered, but lived and seen and shared.

“Tradition with a Twist is more than a menorah. It’s an evolution of Jewish public art — a new chapter in the story of light triumphing over darkness. Because light doesn’t just remind us of who we are — it reminds the world that we’re still here, shining brighter than ever.”

Join Moully, and Boulder Center for Judaism, Boulder Jcc and the Boulder Jewish community as we gather as ambassadors of light and love and light the Menorah at Chanukah on Pearl

WHEN: Monday, December 15th at 5:30pm.
WHERE: In front of the Courthouse Lawn on the 1300 block of Pearl Street, Boulder.

For more information or to rsvp: Boulderjudaism.com/pearl or @ BoulderJCC