BOULDER, Co. — Hundreds of people gathered on the downtown mall of this college town on Monday to watch as three flames on a tall menorah helped illuminate the dark December night.
The occasion was a Hanukkah celebration that has been held annually for nearly three decades. But for members of the Jewish community here, the event felt different this year.
It was a chance to find peace in a space that had been violently scarred six months before by a deadly firebombing attack on a demonstration supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza. And it was a moment to assert resilience even in the shadow of an antisemitic attack at a similar Hanukkah event in Sydney just one day before.
“Boulder is our home and we want this space, this block, to be a place of community and joy,” Jonathan Lev, executive director of the Boulder Jewish Community Center, told the crowd. He urged them to “look at how a single candle can defy darkness.”
That mood — of both reflection and defiance — was echoed over the past two days at Hanukkah celebrations across the United States. While the deadly shooting in Australia and a heightened climate of antisemitism prompted many to boost security measures, Jewish leaders and participants from New York to Washington Minnesota said it only deepened their determination to express their faith publicly by focusing on a holiday centered around light.
In many places, the grim news led to higher than typical turnouts, as Americans of various faiths showed up to support Jews still rattled by an attack that killed 15 people on the other side of the globe.
With a half-foot of fresh snow on the ground and windchills in the single digits, Rabbi Zalmy Plotke, the leader of Chabad of White Plains in New York, was prepared for sparse attendance at the menorah lighting he led on Sunday, the first night of the eight-day festival. He even scaled back the number of doughnuts he had ordered from a bakery.
Instead, he said, “the opposite happened,” after word about the event began spreading that afternoon on local social media channels. About 75 people came out to Tibbitts Park, Plotke said, more than usual. Plotke said that enthusiasm, even amid sadness, will continue to define the Jewish community throughout the holiday season.
“Our job as Jews is to be a light unto the nation and a light unto the world,” Plotke said. “We can never let darkness or evil prevail.”
It can be difficult to maintain that kind of optimism amid an increasing drumbeat of antisemitic incidents, Jewish leaders say. In 2024, there were 9,354 such incidents in the United States, a large number of which were categorized as harassment, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks reports. That represented a 5 percent increase over 2023 and an 893 percent increase compared to a decade ago. The ADL said it will finalize 2025 data early next year.
Chabad.org, a global Orthodox Jewish movement, said Chabad centers around the world were proceeding with thousands of public menorah lightings and Hanukkah celebrations, though with increased security, the Associated Press reported. The idea, the organization said, is to “drown out hate with greater light and goodness while mourning those lost and wounded in Sydney.”
In St. Paul, Rabbi Tzemach Feller woke at 5 a.m. on Sunday, excited for the menorah lighting he organized in the city’s downtown. Then he checked his phone. His sister’s brother-in-law had been shot at Bondi Beach, and so had the brother of a colleague.
Feller, who runs the Chabad of Macalester-Groveland, felt shock, then grief — and then worry. Was it right to continue with the Hanukkah event? Soon, though, he learned that a rabbi killed in the Bondi Beach attack, Eli Schlanger, had once said that in the face of antisemitism, “the way forward is to be more Jewish, act more Jewish, appear more Jewish.”
Rabbi Feller decided to go forward. Despite near zero temperatures, more than 100 people showed up — the largest crowd Feller said the four-year-old event has seen so far.
“The terrorists want us to be afraid, and we felt we needed to respond by redoubling our efforts,” he said.
Across town, Hennepin County Commissioner Heather Edelson also considered canceling a Hanukkah event on Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. But reassurances about security from local police and a Jewish community group persuaded her to stick with the plan. About 50 people came out to sing songs and drink cider, she said, including Asian American and Muslim neighbors.
“People pit us against each other,” she said on Monday. “That’s the story that doesn’t get told. We’re friends.”
Alexander Rapaport, a Hasidic Jewish leader in Brooklyn, said he attended several indoor menorah lightings on Sunday night and predicted the Sydney attack would change little about his community’s gatherings.
“Part of our built-in survival mechanism is nothing from the outside affects how we do things,” said Rapaport, who operates charitable soup kitchens in New York. The Australia shooting was a “meaningless killing, which it makes so sad and chilling. But on the other hand, we were brought up with these horror stories.”
Rapaport had plans Tuesday to run a food pantry at Congregation Shearith Israel on the Upper West Side, which was founded in 1653 and is America’s oldest Jewish congregation.
“We will be very public, and very visible,” Rapaport said.
‘Can’t bend to terrorism’
In Boulder, the lighting was staged on a plaza outside the historic county courthouse on Pearl Street, a quaint pedestrian mall flanked by bars, bistros and boutiques. It was the same site where the gathering has been held for years, each one drawing a larger crowd, sometimes as many as 600 people.
But the significance of the spot changed indelibly for local Jews on June 1, when a man disguised as gardener hurled molotov cocktails on a group gathered there after a peaceful weekly walk in support of Israelis who were captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that set off the Israel-Gaza war. The man shouted “Free Palestine,” and the flames he ignited wounded 15 people. One victim, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, died of her injuries nearly a month later.
The alleged perpetrator, Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, has been charged with hate crimes in federal court and more than 180 counts, including first-degree murder, in state court. Soliman, who prosecutors say told police he wanted “to kill all Zionist people,” has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to face trials in both courts next summer.
The June attack ruptured the sense of safety and tolerance in the heart of this liberal, outdoorsy city of 108,000. Still, Jews gathered at the site of the firebombing a week later for an annual Jewish festival that was bolstered by attendees from across the state. The menorah lighting on Tuesday, organizers said, was another way to reestablish the location as one with meaning transcending that violence, and to use flames to fuel serenity, not harm.
The months since have been “chilling and difficult,” Rabbi Pesach Scheiner said on Monday as the crowd swelled. “We’re seeing that the threat is worldwide,” he added. But “the only way we can fight that is by adding more light.”
Organizers increased security for the event following the Sydney shooting, said Scheiner, co-director of the Boulder County Center for Judaism, part of the Chabad movement.
But they did not consider canceling, Scheiner said. “Our philosophy is that we can’t bend to terrorism and evil,” he said.
Around the plaza, several police officers and at least one police dog kept watch as Barbara Steinmetz, a Holocaust survivor who was injured in the June attack, helped start the flame used to light the 7-foot menorah. It was a new one this year, created by an Australian-American rabbi and artist, Yitzchok Moully, who said he was inspired by the Boulder attack to make a “bigger, brighter, more powerful, more proud menorah.”
Several members of the walking group that was attacked, the local chapter of Run For Their Lives, were present on Tuesday. The group continued its walks after the attack, though eventually they were moved away from Pearl Street and to undisclosed locations after harassment from Pro-Palestinian protesters.
Ed Victor was there on the day of the attack, and he helped put out the flames that enveloped Karen Diamond, who eventually died of her burns. On Tuesday, he walked over to precise site of the attack, where he noted that the black charring that marked the ground in the weeks after the firebombing had washed away.
News of the Sydney shooting was “devastating,” Victor said — but not deterring.
“The places we think we feel safe are not. It’s really tough,” said Victor, a 57-year-old who recently retired from a technology career. “Does that prevent us from going out to Pearl Street tonight? No.”
Craig reported from New York. O’Donovan reported from Minneapolis.
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