Hope this Hanukkah
On Yom Kippur, it was Manchester.
Today, on Hanukkah, it was Australia.
Different dates. Different places. Different sides of the world. The same hatred.
Innocent lives taken because the warnings of antisemitism were ignored.
I just read that one of the victims of this latest attack was a Holocaust survivor. I am heartbroken. I have sworn to myself, and to my commitment to humanity, that the Holocaust will never happen again and that the antisemitism that existed over 81 years ago will not reoccur. I have devoted my life to carrying the voices of survivors forward, to forcing the world to confront the truth of antisemitism and where it inevitably leads, and to educate societies that have forgotten what happened. My heart breaks for him, and for the other innocent Jewish people, murdered for their religion once again.
I saw his name: Alex Kleytman.
A Holocaust survivor. Murdered in a terrorist attack.
Eighty-one years after surviving history’s greatest evil.
Let that sink in.
The world had 81 years to learn. It failed.
Even now, as Jewish blood is spilled, people still debate whether Jews deserve a homeland at all. As if survival is a political opinion. As if history has not already answered that question in ash and smoke, and now again, as Jews simply try to celebrate their holidays around the world.
After Yom Kippur, I lost faith. I watched my own community breached by darkness by evil that was tolerated, normalized, and allowed to grow. Hatred was excused as rhetoric. Threats were dismissed as exaggeration. Until, once again, they became bodies people taken from this world far too soon, on the holiest Jewish day. And today, we see this too, on the festival of light and miracles.
Our countries have failed us. They have failed to stand up for their Jewish communities, failed to protect them, failed to draw a clear moral line. When governments hesitate, when leaders soften their words, when hatred is tolerated in the name of politics or comfort, innocent Jewish lives are taken from this world. This is not inevitable it is the cost of inaction. We say every year “never again.” Countries vow to educate about the Holocaust. Yet, when communities need protection most, they fail to stand up.
Antisemitism does not erupt overnight. It is cultivated. It is justified. It is ignored until events like this happen.
Remembrance alone is no longer enough. Education alone is no longer enough. Silence is complicity, and too many people are complicit by remaining silent.
RAISE YOUR VOICE against the rays of darkness threatening humanity and may you be inspired by the voices who do to be part of the change. I am honored every day to meet the great majority of Muslim allies from around the world who stand against extremism. But when countries do not stand up against the forces of evil growing within them, against the darkness, it wins only momentarily because our spirit wont be broken.
Whenever I lose hope, I remember the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe: “A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.”
I call on us all to gather, to light our menorahs in public places, to wear our Stars of David, and to do good. Light grows, darkness fades, and light will always prevail.
