Alon Meltzer is the associate rabbi of Bondi Mizrachi Synagogue and director of programs at Shalom Collective.
SYDNEY — Summer is meant to bring long days, sun-drenched afternoons at the beach, melting ice creams and the sound of children laughing. For Jews in the Southern Hemisphere, it is ushered in by the Festival of Light — Hanukkah — a season meant to be marked by joy.
That is not the reality we are living in here.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent two hours guarding the bodies of murdered Jews. Even writing that sentence feels surreal. How does one begin to comprehend such a reality?
That came after hours of hiding and sheltering, after being separated from our children during lockdowns, after learning of friends who had been killed and classmates who had been wounded. All of this for one reason only: the crime of being Jewish.
For the past two years, our community has lived with a rising torrent of antisemitism. For months, communal leaders warned governments and authorities that the discourse was deteriorating — that words would one day turn into violence, and violence into bloodshed.
On Sunday, that warning was realized. Fifteen of our brothers and sisters were murdered at Bondi Beach. Their blood now stains one of the most iconic beaches in the world.
So where do we go from here?
Our community will do what Jews have always done. We will comfort our mourners — including an infant, only months old, now fatherless — and bury our dead. We will hold our children close. We will gather to cry, and, God willing, one day to celebrate again. This week, we will light our Hanukkah candles defiantly.
But what of our country? And what of every other country that claims to value pluralism, tolerance and the safety of minorities?
We need a moral reckoning.
In August, an estimated 100,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbor Bridge to protest a conflict thousands of miles away. Many marched out of genuine concern for human suffering. Others marched because of their hatred toward Jews and Israel — a hatred they made explicit on placards and banners celebrating those who preach violence.
And now?
Now, 15 Australians have been murdered in our own backyard. Yes, they were Jewish — but so what? Is Jewish blood not worth marching for?
If 100,000 people can mobilize for a distant war, surely a million could rise up today and say: enough. Not with flowers alone. Not with thoughts and prayers. But with action. With a collective demand that antisemitism — in all its forms — is wrong and must stop now. This needs to occur in every country claiming to live by Western democratic values. We need to hear your voice!
I fear that such a vision exists only in my imagination.
As David Baddiel writes, Jews apparently don’t count. And as Dara Horn reminds us, people love dead Jews— just not living ones asking to be protected.
Each year, we speak of the miracle of Hanukkah. Some point to the oil that burned for eight nights; others to the unlikely military victory of the Hasmoneans. Those miracles mattered. But the miracle that speaks to me most is simpler and more enduring: that every year, regardless of circumstance, regardless of the storms raging around us, we bring light into the world.
Empires rise and fall. Hatred shifts its targets. Yet we light the candles anyway.
This year, that message cuts painfully close to home.
We will gather. We will rally. We will continue our quiet, stubborn protest — bringing light into the world one candle, one good deed at a time. We will embody the values of those who were killed. We will move forward.
But we will probably do so alone.
And that, perhaps, is the darkest truth of all.
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