How to Clean Your Chanukah Menorah

Chanukah starts at sunset tonight!

... so you may be facing the same problem that many people do at this time of year: how do you get all of the gunk out of your menorah (or chanukiah, as some prefer to call it)? If leave your Chanukah candles lit until they burn themselves out every night, as most people do, you are likely to have wax debris and wicks in the cups that hold your candles, and that makes it harder to get this year's candles into the menorah. Many years ago, a friend (thanks, Wally!) taught me a trick that makes it quite easy to get the gunk out!


All you need is a cookie sheet, some aluminum foil, and a lot of Q-Tip swabs! Oh, and one more thing: you need an oven.

This is safe for the basic metal menorahs that most people have, but use caution with anything that has wood, plastic or painted on designs. They should be able to hold up to a low oven temperature -- they're designed to be used with fire, after all! -- but I wouldn't want anybody to risk damaging something like that. If you are concerned, I have seen many sites that recommend using a hair blow dryer to soften wax for removal, and you can try that, but it will take longer and require more work. I've also heard that Goo Gone can help with this, and as a former librarian I'm a big fan of Goo Gone to remove stickers from books and shelves.

But the easiest way I've found, for the basic metal menorah that most people have:

1. Preheat your oven to its lowest setting (usually between 150 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit)
2. Cover your cookie sheet with aluminum foil
3. Place the menorah in the middle of the cookie sheet, lying down, ideally at an angle that will allow wax to drip out
4. Place the sheet into the oven for about 10-15 minutes, really just long enough to soften the wax
5. Take the menorah out of the oven. You can lean it straight downward over the cookie sheet and shake a little to dislodge any loose wax
6. Put the menorah on the counter on another piece of aluminum foil and swab out the cups with the Q-Tips. Use both ends of the Q-Tips and use lots of them, because you'll be amazed at how much wax comes out.

Try to the swabbing quickly: You don't want the menorah to cool down and reharden the wax! If you don't get it all in one run, you can always put the menorah back in the oven for another 10 or 15 minutes to reheat quickly. 

I have a few menorahs in the house, and I usually put a second one in the oven while I'm swabbing out the first.

A thought about the difference between a MENORAH and a CHANUKIAH

People sometimes tell me that I am wrong to call the thing we light on Chanukah a menorah. The correct word, I am assured, is chanukiah. The word menorah, they insist, refers only to The Menorah in The Temple, which has only 7 branches (not the 9 of the chanukiah).

Imagine if you told someone, "that's a nice dog!" and the owner insisted, "he's not a dog, he's a poodle!" That would be silly; a poodle is simply one type of dog. Similarly, a chanukiah is simply one type of menorah.

The word "menorah" means candelabrum, a candle holder. A chanukiah is one type of candle holder specifically used for Chanukah. It would be wrong to refer to the 7-branched candle holder of The Temple as a chanukiah, but it is not wrong to refer to a Chanukah candle holder as a menorah, just as it would be wrong to refer to another breed of dog as a poodle, but it's not wrong to call a poodle a dog.