Opinion | The humanity amid the horror at Bondi Beach

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There is a particular horror in violent attacks on holy days and in holy places. This is terror in its purest form, rendering a people not only fearful to express their faith, but also to forever associate those sacred days with loss and sorrow.

The holiday of Simchat Torah, the Jewish celebration of the joyful embrace of Torah, will be permanently tied to images of death and destruction after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. And now, just over two years later, another Jewish holiday has been linked with terror: Hanukkah, the miracle of the persistence of light in dark times, as Jews gathering to celebrate on a beach in Sydney, Australia, a crowd of children, parents and elders, were gunned down without mercy.

I’m tired of looking for the silver lining after such tragedies. I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together. I don’t want platitudes and pieties. I want justice. I want accountability for the rhetoric and the policies and — in our own country — the obscenely easy access to weapons of war that endanger us all. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency; I want to see reform.

But as a spiritual matter, I urgently need the silver lining. I need the hints of humanity that remind us that what is is not what must be. The quiet insistence that there is more light than darkness in this world, that tenderness and love can prevail over even the most virulent hatred. Give me the counterfactual that makes it impossible to fall into despair, that will keep me from slipping into the self-defeating certainty of our impending doom.

A great 20th-century Hasidic rabbi, Shalom Noach Berezovsky, known as the Netivot Shalom, argues that “all the miracles and wonders that have occurred for the Jewish people over the generations have been drawn forth through their refusal to accept their circumstances.”

After Sydney, after witnessing the raging gunmen — allegedly a father and son, united in their animus toward my people — after reading of the Holocaust survivor who died protecting his wife, and the 10-year-old girl and a rabbi, and so many more; after all of this, I need that spark of vitality. I need the reminder, small as it may be, that we must not succumb to the darkness.

And here it is, that hint of humanity, that spark of vitality: I see it in Ahmed el Ahmed, the fruit vendor who risked his life to tackle one of the gunmen, no doubt saving lives.

And there are more. I see that spark of vitality in the vibrancy of the worldwide Jewish community that immediately rallied in solidarity, reminding us that when one limb is struck, the whole body is unwell. As far apart as we might be — geographically, politically, religiously — we are family.

I see that spark of vitality in how immediately, and without reservation, the grand mufti of Australia condemned “in the strongest and most unequivocal terms the terrorist attack” targeting Australian Jews.

I see that spark of vitality in all those good people around the world who reached out with concern to their Jewish neighbors, colleagues and friends.

In the videos, the hostages say Hanukkah blessings and light candles. Together they sing “Ma’oz Tzur”(often translated as “Rock of Ages”), the song that accompanies Hanukkah candle lighting, a testament to Jewish survival through the ages and the strength found in our faith in God. The hostages make one another laugh as someone asks: Where are the sufganiyot, the Hanukkah doughnuts?

Then Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23 years old, reminds the group of the famous photo of a Hanukkiah, a Hanukkah menorah, on the windowsill in Kiel, Germany, taken in 1931 through open drapes, revealing in the background a swastika banner on the building across the street. It is a hint, a prayer. A symbol of eternal defiance.

On the back of that photo, it is written: “Hanukkah 5692 / ‘Death to Judah,’ so the flag says. ‘Judah will live forever,’ so the light answers.”

When I light the Hanukkah candles this year, I will think of six Jews, holding one another many feet beneath the shattered earth of Gaza, smiling and joking and singing quietly, even as they must have feared that they’d not make it out alive.

And I will hold the image of the Hanukkiah on the windowsill in Germany, a sign of defiance against the forces of darkness. And I will think of Ahmed el Ahmed, and thank God for planting such a courageous and decent soul in this world. And I will remember that light is born from the midst of the deepest, most impenetrable darkness. That has always been true, and it is today, too.