This Hanukka, while many parents are lavishing their kids with clothes they'll soon outgrow or toys they'll soon discard, one mother has given her son — and their synagogue — a gift that will last for years to come.

A nine-foot hanukkia now stands on the lawn of Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, courtesy of Lori Katz and her son, Joshua, a third-grader at Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange.

While more than 125 kids at Beth Shalom's religious school scampered around the social hall on Dec. 6, spinning dreidels and singing songs, Lori Katz explained the reason behind the gift.

"Every December, in honor of my son, I have to do a mitzva," she said. "And this year, the mitzva I picked was donating the menora. All the other shuls have them and it's so noticeable that it's absent [here] that I felt that it was necessary to do."

Katz has donated similar menorot to Schechter's upper and lower schools. She declined to disclose the cost. "It's priceless," she said.

As the students, faculty, and guests gathered to sing the Hanukka brachot before heading out into the cold evening for the main event, Rabbi Geoffrey A. Spector, Beth Shalom's religious leader, thanked Katz and her son for their present.

"They said, ‘Something is missing. We don't see a big menora.' So they donated one for all of us to enjoy at this holiday of Hanukka.

"We are so blessed as American Jews where we are able to go out in the middle of the town to publicly light Hanukka candles and not feel we're in danger," he told the students, which included a group of 25 11th-graders visiting from Merchavim High School in Ofakim as part of a Schechter exchange program. Ofakim is a sister city of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ under the Jewish Agency for Israel's Partnership 2000 program.

The party moved outdoors as Lori and Joshua Katz, accompanied by Spector and Beth Shalom president Michael Silverman, threw the switch to light the electric candles for the third night of Hanukka. After a round of "Ma'oz Tzur," everyone headed back to the warmth of the synagogue for a snack of latkes.

"I think it's great that I donated it," Joshua said of the menora that will be a Hanukka fixture at the synagogue long after he's grown. "I think it's a real good deed."