Here Come the Hanukkah Videos: Melissa Manchester Sings Her Song "Let There Be More Light"

Melissa Manchester has been in show business for more than 40 years as a singer, songwriter, musician, actress and teacher.     

She has released 20 albums and performs about 70 shows a year.Last week she performed Let There Be More Light, a song that she composed, in a concert with the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. She is best known for her rendition of songs such as Marvin Hamlisch's Looking Through the Eyes of Love, the theme from the movie Ice Castles.

Manchester's connection with Judaism is strong. As Mala Blomquist wrote in Arizona Jewish Life,

Melissa’s mother was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, but her father was an atheist. Since the couple had agreed early on that it was a battle they chose not to pursue, Melissa and her sister would just watch their mother light the Shabbat candles every Friday night, never being encouraged to learn the prayers. “We just watched this beautiful woman dawdling over the candles,” Melissa describes. But there was also an ironic twist, “As God would have it, we lived right next to a shul, which we never went into, but on High Holy Days we would open all the windows and we could hear the service.”

Melissa raised her two children Jewishly and they both became b’nai mitzvah. While preparing for these events, she was moved to celebrate her own bat mitzvah – at the age of 50. “It was really a deeply interesting experience because I was mostly in a class with converts. It was fascinating to see what moved my fellow students to choose Judaism. Over and over and over again I would hear the word community and it was very touching because I always felt community.”

When asked if she is observant today, her reply is genuine, “I light Sabbath candles. I pray to God every day, all the time. I pray to God in a way that I have come to understand him/her. I can’t imagine life without that component of my life.”

Enjoy, and Chag Chanukah sameach!

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