Hanukkah lasts just eight days each year, but, if you head to Julie Romanoff’s Sylvania Township home, you can spot a menorah pretty much any day of the year.

There are rows of tulips, of high-heeled shoes, and even cherubic-looking children who hold the nine candles associated with the holiday — one for each day of Hanukkah and one shamash, or “helper” candle, to light the others.

A more traditional metal menorah, an abstract rendering of an oil lamp, is tied to childhood memories: Ms. Romanoff inherited it from her mother.

“Hanukkah, for me, elicits happy times,” she said of the Jewish holiday that begins at sundown Tuesday. “I think that’s why I was always attracted to collecting menorahs. It’s family. It’s all about family and making memories.”

The menorah is perhaps the most visible symbol of Hannukah, recalling the unlikely victory of the Jewish Maccabees over the militarily superior Syrian Greeks, who sought to stifle the Jews’ religious expression in the 2nd century B.C. Its eight candles reflect a miracle that followed: A jar of oil that should have lit the reclaimed Temple in Jerusalem for one night lasted eight.

It’s also a powerful symbol, said Rabbi Yossi Shemtov, director of Chabad House of Toledo, which each year organizes a public menorah lighting in Toledo.

“The menorah is the symbol of religious freedom,” he said. “That’s why, in America, the celebration has a special flavor to it, because that’s what our country stands for.”

This year’s public menorah lighting is slated for 5 p.m. Tuesday at the food court of the Franklin Park Mall. The menorah will be constructed of donated toys to benefit children in the hurricane-ravaged Virgin Islands.

New and unopened toys and games can be dropped off at Gan Yeladim Preschool or at Chabad House in marked boxes through Sunday. Toys can also be donated at the mall on Tuesday; they must be received by 5:15 p.m. to be included in the menorah, which will be lit at 5:45 p.m.

Chabad House is also coordinating its seventh annual Car Menorah Parade at 5 p.m. Dec. 17. Vehicles topped with menorahs will travel Toledo thoroughfares before a menorah lighting, music, and refreshments at Chabad House, which is temporarily located at the Jewish Community Center campus in Sylvania.

‘Oldest Hanukkiah in the world’

Eli and Fagie Benstein of Sylvania Township figure they have the “oldest Hanukkiah in the world.”

Hanukkiah is another term for a Hanukkah-specific menorah, which can more generally refer to a candelabra. Theirs is pieced together with ceramic shards from an archeological site in Israel, where the couple, their sons, and their grandchildren participated in a dig about 13 years ago. The site dates back to the Maccabean period, when the story of Hanukkah was unfolding.

With a site guide’s permission, Mr. Benstein left the dig with several shards that archaeologists had been unable to piece back together into cookware. Back in Toledo, he recalled, he began to consider what he could do with them.

“It was obvious to use them for something that would be indicative of the time,” he said. “So I figured, ‘I’ll make a menorah.’”

Today the shards frame eight plastic pill bottles, arranged on a flat stone Mr. Benstein found back home in Toledo. A trip to a Home Depot and a Hobby Lobby allowed him to fashion each pill bottle into a candle, lit with paraffin oil and a wick the couple lights on each night of Hanukkah.

“It connects us back to the story of Hanukkah and to our families in Israel,” Mrs. Benstein said. ““For Eli and I, there’s no question that when we light this particular menorah, I think there is such a sense of awe and connectedness. There’s an aura about using pieces of archeology during the holiday that connects us to the holiday.”

‘It should once again see light’

More than 20 years after he inherited it, Dr. Blair Grubb still finds it emotional to talk about Jeanette’s menorah.

The heavy brass menorah is designed to hang on a wall. It came to him as a gift from a French family who benefited from his expertise as a specialist in autonomics in 1994. When he was in the country for a conference two years later, he met the grateful family for dinner at their home.

The conversation turned to Judaism and to Hanukkah, he recalled, and his hostess eventually stood up and retrieved the menorah, explaining that it had belonged to a young playmate whom she saw forced onto a truck at gunpoint one day. This was during World War II.

The woman picked up the menorah, which she recognized as something that her friend’s family would light around Christmas, from the looted home. With a child’s logic, she later relayed to Dr. Grubb, she reasoned that she would keep it for Jeanette until she and her family returned.

The gravity of the story weighed on Dr. Blair, who said that he struggled to share it with others. When his late wife encouraged him to try writing it down, he said, it “flew out.” He initially shared the story as a column in Annals of Internal Medicine and later more broadly, including as an essay in Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul.

He credits the menorah with opening a new aspect to his life, as a writer who has published 50 to 60 personal essays in addition to the medical texts that he had already been publishing.

When Dr. Grubb left the French family’s home after dinner, he recalled in his written account, his hostess said of the menorah: “It should once again see light.”

In his Sylvania home, he said, “we light it every year, without fail.”

‘All together’

Joel and Linda Beren’s artistic menorah is a bit more modern.

The couple picked it up on a family trip to Israel about 18 years ago. The multi-piece anodized aluminum menorah is the creation of contemporary metal artist Emil Shenfeld, who has been running a studio at the Artists Colony of Jerusalem since 1984.

It’s an attractive piece when arranged cohesively as a menorah. Likewise when it’s separated into four individual candleholders, of the sort used on sabbaths, each of which is engraved with the Hebrew version of a family member’s name: three for each of their three adult children and one for Mr. and Mrs. Beren.

“Our intent at the time was that once [the children] were grown and gone and had their own households, that each of these would serve as a set of sabbath candlesticks,” Mr. Beren explained.

“They would then take them, and each year we would try to all be together for Hanukkah,” his wife continued. “Everyone would have to bring their sabbath candlesticks to form the menorah.”

That’s still in the cards for the family, whose children range in age from 27 to 34 and have moved away from the area. But, for now, the grandparents of two continue to keep the pieces together at their home in Ottawa Hills.

They might light the candles of the menorah on Tuesday, they said. Or they might instead position a simpler electric version in front of a front window on each night of Hanukkah.

They, like Ms. Romanoff, have plenty of options when it comes to menorahs.

Contact Nicki Gorny at ngorny@theblade.com or 419-724-6133.

First Published December 8, 2017, 5:00 p.m.