Light up the Night Deli Fest, 2024
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!This event was a celebration in downtown Seattle, lighting the menorah in Westlake Park. It was a small gathering open to the public, teaching the values of the holiday and sharing food with the community.
Topics Covered: Hannukah, Perserverence, Holiday Traditions
Conference Overall Ratings: Venue (2/5) - Food (5/5) - Speaker Content (4/5) - Networking Opportunity (1/5) - Likeliness to Return (2/5)
Initial Conference Overview - Why Attend? Well, first I thought this “deli fest” was for New Deli/an Indian event, or something. Then, I realized it was for Hannukah, so that sounded interesting too. They served sandwiches, so I think that’s more the “deli” they’re going for. Sharing traditional food and celebrating. Sounds interesting! 😁
Photo Collage & Commentary -
Notes from Event :
Arriving to the Celebration
The event started at 5 and we were able to make it there by 5:15. (At the “Spoken Word, Smokin’ Word event” the Emcee made the joke, “With the timeliness of caucasian, be back here in 8 minutes!” I was like… omg… okay… hahaha I “feel seen”, and not in a good way, but, not the worst thing to be known for, hahaha.
This location was hard to find at first. They said it was at Westlake Park (a popular area downtown where I saw the Christmas Tree lightning over our Thanksgiving Holiday, so I thought this would be similar)… but not at all! It was a tiny group in compaison, and in a harder to find part of the park, sorta in a back “corner” but still in the middle of everything and by a busy street.
The tone was really fun and the music was upbeat. It still had a little sense of awkwardness to it though…
To be fully honest, when I had arrived they were setting back up the huge menorah and Happy Hannukah sigh. It looked like they’d toppled over in the wind. So, that was all being readjusted.
It kinda set the tone for this event, cause it was really sweet but sorta… idk a nice word. But we’ll say, collaged.
It was like a radio going in and out of service, kinda, cause there were lots of downtimes during this event that almost you’d wish there were a blackout “on stage” then the lights back on when they’re ready. This space/venue setup (and event schedule) didn’t really provide a good “downtime” environment. So when no one was talking or nothing was going on, you just watched the leadership kinda look at each other and try to figure out what to do next, take lots of videos of the crowd… while music plays and you’re looking at the menorah.
I think a true real-time rehearsal/tech rehearsal/dress rehearsal a day or three in advanced would have helped them see that a little more content could be added to this to make it feel more full.
There was a decent sized crowd standing around. Maybe 30 or 40 people. People walking by didn’t seem to stop and join too much. Probably cause the menorah (and not being jewish?)… I’d have felt the same if I hadn’t seen the event online and seeked it out so intentionally).
The Rabbi introduced himself and said this was going to be a historic night, pushing the light out from here and lighting up the entire city, okay?
He said after this next part would be food and drinks, but for now, let’s wait. (Then we enjoyed a few songs to get into the spirit, while looking at the menorah and the rabbi took lots of videos of the crowd from the stage.)
song lyrics; “every light fire light up the night!”
I did make a note in my notes… there was no entertainment except watching the menorah (and then my daughter kept pointing out the pigeons almost getting hit by traffic).
Perhaps they could have had a little more entertainment planned. Im like… maybe some kids dance performance or something 😂 hahah? IDK - just would really increase the experience value.
Speech by Rabbi
I love hearing people speak! haha.
I mean, they may end up super boring - then you’re like “run away!” but i’d rather hear them speak than not
This rabbi was a great speaker (though he had no microphone, so 20% of what he said was lost in the wind). I wanted to hear more from him, his speech was too short. Here’s a bit of what he said over this next section in purple:
“Every night light one more candle for a special blessing. We started yesterday.”
Everyone can take home a menorah and practice the tradition (they had free menorahs! That seems fun to do with my daughter. Why not!)
What are we celebrating? A lot. The basic story of Hanukah is that the land of Israel was ruled by horrible rulers. The jewish population couldn’t even practice their religion and were extremely oppressed. Yet a small band of priests worked together and created a rag tag army. They beat the biggest military known at that time. They pushed all the rulers out of the city and out of the temple. They had the spirit and the drive to win.
When they went to the temple almost everything inside was destroyed. This included all of the oil except one bottle, enough for one day. It takes 8 days to make new oil, what will they do? Miraculously the oil lasted them all eight day, even though it was just enough for one day, and that’s the miracle of hanukah. The miracle god gave us.
This is the backbone of Hanukah.
How do you define a victor? Define victory? Best miliatary practice? Intelligence? Bombs? No.
In order to in, you need more. You need spirit. You have to know wand believe what you’re fighting for. It’s how they were successful. IT was a miracle but they had the burning fire behind them.
We saw this in the Vietnam War decades ago. America couldn’t beat them, even with the ‘stronger army’. Vietnam had spirit.
If you have vision, you can be victorious against any foe. Internal or external. The way to win is to know what you stand for. Have the passion what you believing with you. Overcome the inter destructive elements.
Always add light. Always be growing in light. Always adding more and more light to what’s around you.
Thank you to everyone visiting from out of town, especially you from the East Coast and New York.
Here are some brownies if you’d like them (he threw like 5 packaged brownies into the crowd).
Food Distribution
The guys passing out the sandwiches and food were really sweet. Wishing everyone “Happy Hannukah”.
The crowd was happy to share food. Some people took multiple sandwiches, but there was still plenty to go around.
After serving the sandwiches on a platter (with fancy plates, too!) they opened up the latkes to serve. There were more than enough to go around of those! That was a nice treat too.
While everyone ate, music played and many of the men started dancing. At first, I thought “oh… are kinda only the men allowed to dance like this? That’s the culture?” but soon the women were doing the same dance too, in a separate circle. So, that was good to see, I suppose.
Definitely the dancing and celebration was fun. I love a high-energy event of happiness haha.
“Networking”
Okay. This event was kinda in the middle of a public place and no one was talking to each other. It wasn’t really an environemtn/setup to make new friends, not in this town (hahah, maybe if we’d all been transferred to friendly Texas or something, who cares… but this city it’s rare to get social with strangers, especially somewhere like this).
Then suddenly the Rabbi came up and talked to me. He asked if I was from out of town. I panicked and said yes (I just didn’t want to get into details about myself). Then he asked where I was from and I said one of the 50 states that’s far away but I know a bit about. That answer stopped him from asking more details on that, but then he asked if I was Jewish. I said, “a lot of my friends are!” (atm - if you’re wondering and I’m oversharing, I’m thinking “God” is actually your mind/maximum intelligence. I have been leaning more and more into this lately, it’s our smartest version of ourselves, just to summarize it. But I didn’t want to say that either. I think there are elements of each religion that are nice to learn from {though you don’t need religion to learn these things, it could be separate, but anyway, another time})
SO yeah - I just said I have friends who are jewish, then he asked, “Have you ever celebrated hanukah?” and then he gestured to the menorah. I told him that I hadn’t but I’d heard about it a decent amount before. He said there’s always a time to try and then we parted.
Right after he went up to more people, a girl and her partner. So I think he was talking to everyone, but his style was very surprising and sudden… I didnt’ like being approached and interrogated about my religion (but, I mean, what do you expect… look at this event, and they’re giving out free food!)
That being said, it was a clever idea for recruiting more people to your synogague if that’s your plan. I think they could reevaluate their goal a bit more. If that is the goal, pass out more info about it? Or some nice songs/lyrisc to bring home. Make it a big more interactive and hands-on with feeling connected to the location already. This is all so much easier said than done, but great to consider.
I think, also, if the mood was flipped - if he could sit back and “be cool” and just give a great speech, host a great event, and let peopel come to him, that could work too. IDK, it’d be interesting to A/B test in an alternate universe… but I think if he’d just been “cool” I’d have maybe come up to him and said “thank for this nice event” and it just is kinda better that way. Rather than feeling like “hey hey! i’m small-talking to you but actually I’m trying to recruit you”.
“After Party” at AMC
There wasn’t an official after party, from what I saw - but defitneiyl going all the way downtown just for this short event (and then getting scared away by having to talk to someone) haha, we couldn’t say “okay, that was the night!” To be honest, I’d promised my daughter a trip to the movies.
This morning before daycare I said to her, “okay… today we have daycare, bus, train, party, movie, train, home” haha. Okay? okay!
I knew it when I saw the event’s location… we were right next to AMC!
And this girl is HOOKED on Mufasa 😂. It’s her favorite movie yet. (I’m like, “uh… what about Flow!?”)
So, we had a lot of fun in Pacific Place Mall, where she loves to run all over the lobby.. she was practicing pushing me while I sat in the stroller, and eventually we made our way up to AMC Theaters. The movie was good, again! We, then returned to the subway and headed back home.
BTW at the movie I overheard the funniest back and forth… a dad and daughter:
DAD (at the coke machine): Wow!! One hundred plus choices!!
DAUGHTER: Come on, dad, we’re on a tight schedule.
Also- they have some racing video games in the movie theater. My daughter loves playing video games before/after movies. 😁. Same same.
Conference “Overall Rating” Further Elaboration:
Venue (2/5) - Food (5/5) - Speaker Content (4/5) - Networking Opportunity (1/5) - Likeliness to Return (2/5) - - - -
Venue (2/5) - Food (5/5) - Speaker Content (4/5) - Networking Opportunity (1/5) - Likeliness to Return (2/5) - - - -
VENUE - 2/5
Room for Improvement: In theory, this is a great idea! In reality, it’s really hard to hear anything and right by traffic. It wasn’t the best place to gather with a group of people, or maybe if we’d all been standing on the other side of the menorah, away from traffic. But it seemed like the wind and sound really detracted from this event’s attempted easy-going feel.
FOOD - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: Hello! It was free food and so sweet. The food tasted great and there was plenty to go around.
SPEAKER CONTENT - 4/5
Room for Improvement: Although it was hard to hear, he was a good speaker and told a nice story. I’d like to hear him elaborate even more, maybe give more inspiration or share more stories or something. Basically, he was interesting and so it’d be worth it to hear more, since we’re there!
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES - 1/5
Room for Improvement: I felt a bit “called out” at this event hahah (even though it was not like “in front of everyone”) still, not ideal. It was it sorta “not the environment” to meet people and having the Rabbi come interrogate me a bit… not my thing! As I said, I think you do the opposite approach, be so interesting… be chill, and let the people come to you! Make your speech/presentation so great and let the people seek you out to say thank you. Approaching people as the leader, feels so sales-y and makes me want to run away. Which I kinda did after.
LIKELINESS TO RETURN - 2/5
Room for Improvement: Well, I freaked out and said I’m from out of town hahaha. So, what? Next year we’re downtown the same time same place for this event? Maybe. Then again, it was still a nice event and better to go than no! 100%. And technically i’ll return all the time, since I walk by that area downtown nonstop :)
Kelly’s Remaining Questions:
Where do those guys worship? What’s their synagogue’s location? Downtown?
Is the big story of Hannukah that the oil stretched out over 8 days? What were they doing for those 8 days that they needed oil? Just celebrating Hanukah? But where/why? It was after they won? But then nothing was left in the town?
How can that story’s analogy be more directly tied to modern day? What would a relatable story be, parallel to this?
Did people really travel all the way across the country for this event?
If the event hosts could redo this whole event different, with the same budget, knowing what they know now, what would they modify?
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
