- [Will] Just ahead, on this Holiday-themed "One Detroit", the celebration of Hanukkah kicks off in Downtown Detroit with the lighting of a one-of-a-kind Menorah.

Plus, we'll take you inside a Japanese New Year Tradition, known as Mochitsuki.

We'll celebrate the skies over the Great Lakes, and we'll hear about Detroit Opera's Holiday Performance of "Aida in Concert".

It's all coming up next, on One Detroit.

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(upbeat music) - [Will] Just ahead on this week's One Detroit, we're focusing on the traditions and beauty of the Holiday Season.

We'll take you to the Japanese New Year Celebration of making and eating mochi for good luck, plus we'll celebrate the skies over the Great Lakes when we meet a photographer who captures the beauty of the Northern Lights.

And a performance of the music from the popular opera, "Aida", is coming to the Detroit Opera.

But first up, a 26-foot Menorah is the star of this year's Hanukkah Celebration in Downtown Detroit.

The observance of the eight days of Hanukkah kicked off with a community event in Campus Martius Park on December 18th, called "Menorah in the D".

One Detroit contributor Daijah Moss was there and has more on the history and meaning of the Jewish Holiday.

(program theme music) (upbeat traditional music) - Here we are live in Campus Martius, and we're logged in to Zoom and Livestream, and viewers from around the globe.

(everyone cheers) Happy Hanukkah!

(upbeat traditional music) - [Daijah] What better way for Detroit to celebrate Hanukkah, also known, as the Festival of Lights, than by coming together in the heart of the city to light the Menorah.

The 12th Annual Menorah in the D brought huge crowds to Campus Martius to share in this special celebration.

- We gathered together at this open-public area, and we show we're proud of who we are, and we have the religious freedom, we have the inspiration that's supported by all of this, the Government, it's supported by the City.

It's supported by all levels of Government in this wonderful country that we live in, and we're able to really be proud of who we are.

- I just want everyone to know that the entire State of Michigan is celebrating today, and through this entire season.

On behalf of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and all 10 million people who call Michigan home, we see this Celebration of Light as a celebration of humanity.

What this celebration represents is the fact that darkness is defeated not only by light but by the people of light.

- You are what has brought us so much joy, and so much opportunity, and, yes, we will rise above hate.

We will rise above the things that are seeking to break us apart because when I look out here tonight on Campus Martius, and this Hanukkah Greeting, I see the triumph of good over evil.

I see love shining forward.

I see the spirit of Detroit, and I see everything that makes us an incredible place to live, work, raise a family, and even retire.

- The Menorah is a eight-branch Candle Labra that we light each night in additional candles.

So, the first night, tonight, we lit one candle.

Tomorrow, we'll be lighting two, and we do that for eight days until on the eighth night, all eight candles are lit.

- Well, it was over 2000 years ago, when the Syrian Greeks were oppressing the Jewish people in their homeland, and really were oppressing their practicing of their tradition of their faith.

And a small band of Jews stood up to go free, and that's when they were able to survive.

They were able to continue with their path of their Judaism, go back into the Holy Temple, but they only found one jug of oil to light the Candle Labra of the Temple.

And miraculously, that jug of oil lasted for eight days.

And this became a day of celebration, and we celebrated by kindling a flame.

Kindling a flame when it's dark.

You know, my friends, this immense gathering is particularly appropriate this year, because every seven years in the Holy Temple in ancient times, there was a year where all the Jews came together in the Holy Temple to be inspired, to be committed.

This is the year, so we're here with an extra energy gathering together for this year's Hanukkah Menorah in the D. - This Menorah Lighting is really important because it carries our tradition, and it showcases that, you know, us as Jews, we're gonna continue to light, and we're gonna continue to spread light and joy throughout the world, for generations to come.

- It symbolizes the unity of the Jewish people.

It really, there's no place like Detroit, and the Jewish Community here, who stand strong together.

And I think this Menorah Lighting really exemplifies that.

- I grew up watching my parents dedicating their lives to spread this message of spreading light and warmth to other people and other Jews, and that's what I wanna see myself doing with my life.

And every opportunity that I can get to be part of such a thing is amazing.

- I love the Lamp Lighter Ceremony.

That means so much to me, and I like learning from that to see how people just in their day-to-day lives get to be a lamp lighter to other people, and I try to do that.

- I hope to see next year, even more people gather together.

I hope that the events continue to grow.

The community grows.

(energetic traditional music) (crowd laughing) (crowd cheering) - We now invite Ryan Fellon.

(Rabbi speaking in foreign language) - Did anyone of you ever see a player with a kippah on his head?

(crowd cheering) We celebrate Hanukkah.

(both singing in foreign language) (crowd cheering) The message really is for us that whenever you feel a challenge, whenever you feel darkness, the way to handle that is by lighting a candle.

Each one of us has a powerful soul, and we have to light that candle and that brings brightness and warmth to ourselves, to our homes, to our communities, and to all those around us.

(upbeat traditional music) - [Will] Now, we turn to a Japanese Tradition during the Holidays.

Mochitsuki is the art of pounding rice into a gooey paste, and molding it into round cakes.

It's an annual celebration at the start of the New Year in the Japanese culture.

Eating the mochi is believed to bring good luck.

The Japanese American Citizens League invited One Detroit to its Mochitsuki Holiday party a few years ago, prior to the pandemic.

(program theme music) - And we'll be making another round of mochi so just pace yourself, okay?

(everybody laughing) - [Will] A Community Center in Madison Heights, this is a Japanese Mochitsuki New Year's Celebration, Detroit style.

- Put on some gloves and roll.

- [Will] Members of the Japanese-American Citizens League are making and eating mochi, made from a well-beaten, gooey rice paste.

- We created a lot of different ways to have it.

We have it, the way I grew up eating it was with soy and sugar.

- [Will] Soy, that's Soy Sauce.

- And I have a frying pan actually, so if you wanna fry some, we have kinako, the soybean flour with sugar and a little salt, and you roll it in there.

- One thing I remember is because it stretches if you pull it, and I think it has something to do with longevity of your life.

But my memory is kind of fuzzy, so.

- [Will] Mochitsuki goes back 1,000 years.

In Japan, the celebration can go all day.

The rice cakes take center stage to music and activities for the kids.

- The rice harvest is in the Fall, right?

The celebration of New Year's is a big deal.

So, I think that's kind of related to it too.

- [Interviewer] Is it good?

- Very good.

I'm very fond of mochi.

- [Will] Like lutfisk in Sweden, or the fruitcakes of the Western World, mochi returns every holiday season.

Some love it, some don't.

- Can you make this size of mochi?

- Oh, yeah.

- But with mochi, it's not just the texture but the danger.

A choking hazard if you're not careful.

- Chew it good.

(Margaret speaking in foreign language) Chew it good.

- (chuckles) Oh, chew it good, huh?

(chuckles) Wow, I've never had it like this before, this is- - Oh, why don't you have it in the soup?

- Well, this is ozoni.

This is the New Year's soup, but... (people in background chatter) And it has a lot of, it has carrots and tofu, and fishcake, and lotus root.

- The mochi sits in the bowl, like a mats ball.

This is just the second year, the Citizens League has held Mochitsuki in Detroit, even though the group has been here more than 70 years.

- It started out as a support group of, obviously, Japanese Americans and it turned into a more of a Civil Rights focus organization.

And we have chapters everywhere, including obviously here in Detroit.

The Detroit Chapter started when a lot of people who came out of camp relocated to Detroit.

And at its peak, I understand there are about 400 members.

- [Will] Mary Kamidoi was born in California, held in a Concentration Camp in Arkansas during World War II.

She's long retired from Ford Motor Company but remembers Mochitsuki as a child.

- All the time that we were making mochi to the kids just played around with it.

Our parents made it every year and had friends come over.

And so, you know, I'm one of these, I didn't eat it.

I didn't like it.

So, I cramped every time we were molding, I'm saying, "Ma, I don't even eat the thing, why do I have to come home and do this?"

She said, "Mary, just keep molding."

- [Will] Molding mochi, that's the easy part.

You need people to pound the rice, swinging a big mallet over and over again.

- But for you to pound, that's a job.

It's like my dad used to say, "If you don't pound right, you will hurt your back."

And then, the one that had to turn it, "If you don't time it right, the mallet will come down on your hand or your head."

- [Will] Technology to the rescue.

The mochi-making machine.

Mary Kamidoi's brother-in-law found one in Los Angeles.

- He brought it home and my sister said, "Come on over, you gotta see this machine, Mary, it's really funny."

- This one just works on (indistinct), it steams, and when it's already the pounding starts.

The other two, you have to push the button.

(chuckles) (mochi-making machine beeps) - I've always been saying, I would say it to my mom, "Why is it Japan hasn't made a machine so that the mochi comes out in like this, you know, out of it, and it cuts off at a certain..." "Mary, then there'd be no fun to this."

You can see these machine's the way they're cutting it.

It's a mess.

- [Interviewer] Now, do you like to eat it now, Ma?

- Not really, I will eat one or two, but that's it.

Not because I like it so well, I just eat it because it's just custom.

(people in background chatter) You know, after a while, when you don't have it you sort of miss it.

(people in background chatters) - [Will] Now, a celebration of the beautiful skies over the Great Lakes.

Michigan is one of the best locations to see the Northern Lights.

The team at Great Lakes Now, met up with a photographer who has perfected the art of capturing the nightly view over Lake Superior from the Milky Way to the Northern Lights.

(program theme music) - [Shawn] My photography, and cinematography is Lake Superior Region-base inspired, and I've been at this for about 20 years.

- [Will] Shawn Malone is a photographer in Marquette, Michigan, and she's been photographing the night skies since 1998.

- When I started out photography, just regular landscape photography, I was using film cameras, slide negative film, or slide film.

You would have to wait until you get the film back to see what you got.

So, when I got the film back, it was like, wow!

I was just amazed.

And then, like a once-in-11-year event happened in 2004, it was an Aurora that was in every direction, every color.

And I shot two whole rolls of slide film that night.

- [Will] And when digital cameras became capable of capturing low-light scenes, Shawn began shooting night sky time lapses, often featuring the Northern Lights.

- And then, I just really started learning all about space-weather data and that kind of thing in order to try to put myself in the right position at the right time in order to be able to capture the Aurora.

You really have to scout out your own undiscovered locations where you are not gonna have like a car light ruin your shot, you know?

And if you plan a three-hour shot for a time-lapse, that's something that can be an issue.

Here in Marquette County where I'm at, we have a tremendous amount of public access to Lake Superior, and that allows people a chance to get to a dark sky location facing North over Lake Superior.

That provides me just geographically the ability to look directly over Lake Superior, and see a completely dark night sky facing North, directly north, and then I have a field of view that is 180 degrees to the East and West that has no obstruction.

So, that's half of the battle in seeing the Aurora.

And then, number two is getting rid of the obstructions and then being North enough in order to be able to catch the display.

So, this is one of the best places in the Lower 48 to see the Aurora.

- [Will] Nick Lake is Adler Planetarium's Manager of Theater Experience and Presentation.

He's been introducing people to the wonders of the Night Sky since 2004.

In the Planetarium's Domed Theaters.

The real Night Sky can be less reliable, especially as you get further South.

- The Northern Lights are are visible, occasionally, from sort of the Great Lakes latitudes.

I've seen them several times from just about halfway up the midpoint of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.

So, just North of Muskegon.

With nighttime landscape photography, you can allow the lens to drink in more and more light, and add in this sort of canvas of light on the picture.

And it really, it will add more than you can see with the naked eye, which some people say, "Well, it's, you know, that's not really what it looks like," but it is in fact real.

It's what is actually out there in the sky.

- [Will] One obstacle in scene or photographing the Night Sky is light pollution.

- [Shawn] Keep in mind that your night sky cameras now are much more sensitive than your eye.

So, they're really gonna pick up any kind of light pollution that's around.

If you're in Detroit, you just need to get out of Detroit because it's just gonna be too bright, and you won't be impacted by cities further North where you really have a shot at looking at a nice dark sky.

Same with Chicago, Milwaukee.

- [Will] Another source of troublesome light, the moon.

If it's too bright, it can obscure other celestial bodies.

- [Shawn] When you get past the Quarter Moon, Half Moon, then you start to lose the darkness of the sky.

So, you do have to pay attention to that.

- [Will] Satellites are yet another concern.

They've been orbiting above for decades but they're becoming more numerous.

- Last February, I'm sure you've heard of SpaceX, they started launching their Starlink Satellite constellation.

The goal was to do every two weeks, have a launch of 60 satellites to eventually have thousands and thousands of satellites into this mega constellation that is encircling Earth.

And I made it a point to follow the data on the satellite launches, and try to track these things and document it, and it really gives a good look at how intrusive these satellite trains are to the Night Sky, and the astronomers are just going nuts about it.

So, yes, it's very difficult to do a time-lapse now of, let's say, a two or three-hour shot with the Milky Way going through the frame with just not being able to watch it because it's so jarring from all the satellites flying through the scene.

And it's very disturbing to the point that we don't even know if we can continue with the night sky stuff because it's just gonna be so busy with these trains of satellites.

- [Will] In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic Nick Lake had to change the way he talked to the public about the Night Sky.

- When Adler closed to the public in middle of March, I was suddenly thrust into a place where I didn't have domed theaters to present contents.

And I was itching for a way to continue to communicate with the public about the wonders of the sky, what they could see, and to inspire them to get out there and look up for themselves.

- [Will] Nick now hosts the Planetariums video series "Sky Watch Weekly".

- Hey, Stargazers, welcome back.

"Sky Watch Weekly" is a five to 10-minute weekly video series that we started at the middle part of April.

Most of what we talk about is really visible from the Northern hemisphere, specifically, the Mid-Northern latitudes.

So, the entire Great Lakes region.

We're trying to keep it accessible to all audiences.

There really is no substitute for being out and seeing these things for yourself in the sky.

That's, we hope to inspire people to do that.

I kind of give examples of what you might see if you know where to look, and when to look, kind of bringing the wonders of space to you, and then hoping you realize that it's right outside your front door.

You can go up there and see a lot of it for yourself.

We really encourage people to start with the moon.

It's the easiest, the most obvious thing to see up there.

So, I think our moon, as big and as bright as it is, it really, really allows the imagination to work, and, hopefully, inspires people to get out there and see more.

- We can really get caught up in the screens of phones and computers, so it's really nice to just unplug, calm down, and just take a walk or just observe what nature has to offer.

I think it's really important for people to not forget that.

- I think through the time of COVID which we're still in, and we'll be in for a while, it's been important to find ways where we can still be united and not just separated and socially distanced.

And the sky is a great way to do that, and especially the moon.

If the moon is full, it's full for everyone.

Everyone that night from a dark sky on Planet Earth will see a Full Moon, and whatever phase might happen to be.

So, I think it does lend a sense of unity, a sense of the same sky that we're looking up at.

- [Will] And finally, Detroit Opera is closing out the year with the classic "Aida in Concert".

The performance takes place at the Detroit Opera House for one-night-only on December 30th.

Cecelia Sharpe from WRCJ 90.9fm, sat down with the Detroit Opera's Artistic Director, Yuval Sharon for a preview.

(program theme music) - We're here to talk about "Aida" which is coming up on December 30th.

What can the audience expect in this one-night-only performance of "Aida in Concert"?

- You know, when I plan the season, I try to create a journey for the audience which needs to include, I think, some of the real masterpieces of the genre.

And "Aida" is, of course, one of the most popular operas in the history of opera.

It's also, usually a very expensive opera to mount.

There's a lot of pageantry to it.

But I will say that in my overall mission for the opera to invite the audience to think differently even about the classic masterworks, I thought that presenting this piece in Concert was a great way to actually remove some of those assumptions about "Aida" because a lot of that pageantry, I think, now we look at quite differently because what's happening is quite literally, enslaved people are coming onto the stage.

And in a less critical production, this can feel like an exploitative act.

And I think that actually, that's really detrimental to what Aida's actually about.

It's quite an intimate opera that is fundamentally about individual freedom and how that individual freedom tends to get suffocated under the weight of an oppressive regime.

It's a strong political statement that he made, and that doesn't always come across in "Aida", because of all the pageantry.

So the audience, I think, has total freedom in this concert because there's no scenery for this production, right?

It will just be the concert presentation of the entire score of "Aida".

From beginning to end, so we still get to tell you the story of "Aida" but the theatrical parts get to be completely in your own mind.

Another key element of this was my partner at Detroit Opera, the Associate Artistic Director, Christine Goerke, you know, she is one of the great sopranos of our day, And we work very closely, she's quite close friends with Angel Blue, and she's the reason Angel has agreed to do this is because of her friendship with Christine, and thinking what would they like to do together.

So, Angel is doing "Aida" for the first time, and Christine is doing Amneris, the rival to "Aida", also for the very first time.

So, this is an exciting role debut for both of these incredible artists, one of whom is a key member of the artistic team for Detroit Opera, so I think that's gonna be thrilling.

- So, where can people get more information about this concert?

- Our website has all the up-to-date information including tickets, time, all of that.

It's detroitopera.org, and if you visit that, you can also see what's coming after "Aida".

There are two coming up that I'm really looking forward to this season.

There is "Handel's Opera Xerxes", which is the first time the Detroit Opera has ever done this opera.

The second piece, is a contemporary piece called "Fountain of Tears" by the Argentinian composer, Osvaldo Golijov.

- Yuval, thank you so much for all that you have done and continue to do for opera, especially here in Detroit.

- Thank you.

- [Will] You can see more of Cecelia's interview with Yuval Sharon on One Detroit Arts and Culture on Monday, December 26, at 7:30 PM.

That will do it for this week's One Detroit.

Thanks for watching, and Happy Holidays!

Head to the One Detroit website for all of the stories we are working on.

Follow us on social media, and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Masco, serving Michigan Communities since 1929.

Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

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We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our State.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

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(upbeat music)