After Bondi Beach

On Sunday, I texted my friend Ariella in Sydney to offer my condolences. She wrote me back: “As you can imagine, we are shocked and in complete disbelief … however the writing was on the wall. The antisemitism in Australia is beyond comprehension. Our government is spineless.”

This attack was horrifying. A father and son armed with guns and pipe bombs murdered 15 people at a Chanukah celebration and injured many others. Among the victims were the event’s organizer, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and a 10-year-old girl.

The murderers paid no attention to age or infirmity. They just wanted to kill as many as possible.

And yet, as Ariella pointed out, this attack is not at all surprising. There have been multiple arson attempts against Jewish targets around the world; among them have been attacks on Australian synagogues, private homes in Denmark, and the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania.

And in just over half a year, attackers have murdered Jews in Washington, D.C., Boulder, Manchester, and now in Sydney.

This crescendo of violence has too often been met with half-hearted apathy. A year ago, an arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne nearly killed the people who were in the building. But Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese played tennis that day instead of visiting the synagogue. For progressive elitists like Albanese, too much attention to antisemitism is uncomfortable; they worry they might appear “Islamophobic.”

And because of this apathy, Jews no longer feel safe in Australia. After the massacre in Sydney, Avner’s, the local bagel shop, closed. The owner explained in a statement that he did so because, “In the wake of the pogrom at Bondi one thing has become clear—it is no longer possible to make outwardly, publicly, proudly Jewish places and events safe in Australia.”

The genesis of this violence is a decades-long anti-Zionist propaganda campaign to demonize the State of Israel. Since Oct. 7th, that campaign has metastasized, inciting increasingly violent attacks.

Anti-Zionism is killing Jews.

Anti-Zionism is killing Jews. 

Anti-Zionist propaganda is a tapestry of lies and half-truths. It claims that Jews in Israel are settler-colonialists, an invasive population that is destroying the indigenous people.

In other words, the Jews started this conflict.

Propaganda like this cares little for facts; the 3,000-year Jewish connection to the land of Israel is denied. It is a particularly bitter irony that this anti-Zionist murder took place on Chanukah, a 2,200-year-old holiday that celebrates Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

From there, it gets worse. There is the blood libel of genocide, the accusation that Israel has systematically set out to kill all Palestinians.

This claim has been around for years. The U.N.’s Francesca Albanese has accused Israel of genocide since 2014. Immediately after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7th, pro-Hamas groups around the world declared that the Israeli counterattack was genocide; this includes New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mandani, who shouted this at a rally less than a week into the war.

The genocide libel was prepackaged propaganda, ready to disseminate the moment ‌Hamas attacked.

These inflammatory claims are only the first step. Then you have the argument that the best way to protect Palestinians is by “globalizing the intifada” and eliminating Israel’s supporters (i.e., Jews) around the world.

And now there’s a new term being used by pro-Hamas talking heads: Supporters of Israel are “Jewish supremacists.”

After the mass murder in Sydney, Nerdeen Kiswani, a New Yorker and the founder of Within Our Lifetime, wrote the following on X justifying the attack: “Chabad is a racist genocidal organization working as a literal foreign agent of Israel, all around the world. This organization should not be allowed to operate anywhere.”

In other words, don’t feel bad about Jews being murdered; they are, after all, genocidal racists.

Woven together, these propaganda threads create a unified message: Jewish interlopers, who are racist supremacists, are killing off the indigenous people of Palestine; and those interlopers, and their supporters around the world, must be destroyed.

This propaganda is an invitation to murder.

Many have spoken about what the Jewish communal response to this tragedy should be. I wish I could catalogue here all the meaningful suggestions. We need to ramp up security. To pressure politicians to stop ignoring antisemitism. To attack the purveyors of antisemitism and make them too toxic to be accepted by the mainstream. To build a network of positive social media influencers.

This makes a lot of sense. We need all of the above and more.

But what we must remember is that the battle against antisemitism begins in the Jewish heart. To defeat antisemitism, we need Jews to embrace a positive self-image.

After the Adass Israel firebombing a year ago, Rabbi Eli Schlanger of blessed memory made a video showing himself taking an electric menorah and attaching it to the roof of his car. He entitled the video, “Here is the best response to combat antisemitism.”

This is not just a slogan. Rabbi Schlanger is absolutely correct. When we encounter hate, the best weapon is Jewish pride.

 And that is precisely the message of Chanukah.

The purpose of lighting the menorah on Chanukah is pirsumei nisa, to publicize the miracle. By lighting the candles, we recall the Menorah in the Temple that lit miraculously. But, as the Maharal and others point out, the menorah also recalls the miracles of the battles the Jews fought against their oppressors.

The objective of the menorah is to publicize the miracle of Chanukah to non-Jews. According to the Talmud, the menorah should be lit during the time the Palmyrenes, members of a non-Jewish nation, are still in the marketplace. The goal is for Jews to share the Chanukah story with the world.

Moshe Benowitz explains why the Talmud specifically mentions Palmyrenes. There was a short-lived Palmyrene empire in the 3rd century that oppressed the Jews in the land of Israel, so much so that Rabbi Yochanan once remarked, “Happy is he who witnesses the fall of Palmyra.” In defiance, Jews exhibited the Chanukah menorah, a symbol of their previous victory over a Syrian empire, in front of the Palmyrene crowds.

Pirsumei nisa is also the rationale for reading the Megillah on Purim and drinking four cups of wine in celebration at the Seder.

The Megillah and the four cups have an internal audience; we share memories of the miracles with Jews attending the same synagogue or at the same Seder. Not so the menorah, which speaks to everyone outside, Jew and non-Jew.

And the question is: Why is the pirsumei nisa of Chanukah different?

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik offers a fascinating answer. He explains that the foundation of lighting the menorah is kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God’s name. The Seleucid empire tried to erase Judaism, but the Jews held tight to their traditions. They resisted and refused, sacrificing their lives in order to preserve their identity.

Even against overwhelming odds, they stood tall with pride.

And when we light the menorah, we remember those heroes.

This is why the menorah’s method of pirsumei nisa is different and focuses on telling the story to non-Jews. Rabbi Soloveitchik explains that the purpose of the menorah “is to show to the world that we will never bend before religious persecution and never lie down before anyone.”

The menorah is there to announce our Jewish pride to the world.

The first step in battling antisemitism begins here. Jews who apologize for being Jews will never fight back. Jews who are ambivalent about their own identity will only invite more criticism. Jews who piously care for every trendy cause, while at the same time throwing their brothers and sisters under the bus, will find that so-called allies are happy to throw them under the bus too.

The fight against antisemitism begins with lighting a candle in the presence of our enemies.

From there, anything is possible. Just ask the Maccabees.

In an interview last year, Rabbi Schlanger said that in response to antisemitism we should “be more Jewish, act more Jewish, and appear more Jewish.”

And after Bondi Beach, that is exactly what we will do.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.