The Blogs: Not by Might

“What Is Hanukkah? Light in an Age of Fear”

On this Shabbat, we stand at a rare and layered intersection of sacred time.

It is Shabbat Miketz, when Joseph moves from the darkness of the pit and the prison toward power and responsibility.

It is Rosh Chodesh, the renewal of the moon, when Jewish time insists that diminishment is never the final word.

And it is Hanukkah, the festival that asks not how power is seized, but how light is sustained.

The Babylonian Talmud asks a deceptively simple question in Shabbat 21B: “Mai Hanukkah?” — What is Hanukkah, and why are lights kindled on it?

The Gemara answers by recounting how the Greeks defiled the oils in the Temple, and the Maccabees found only one cruse of pure oil with the High Priest’s seal that was sufficient for one day; a miracle occurred and it lasted for eight days. So the Sages instituted these days as holidays of praise and thanksgiving, Hallel V’Hodaya.

By contrast, the First Book of Maccabees describes the day of rededication without the oil miracle narrative. It records how the altar was rebuilt and the Temple was joyfully dedicated for eight days with song and sacrifice:

“They celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days…and offered a sacrifice of well-being and thanksgiving.” (1 Maccabees 4:54–56).

Both texts root Hanukkah in the historical victory of Judah the Maccabee and his brothers. The Talmud transforms history into liturgical memory, that of lighting our nightly flames, connecting persistence with liturgical innovation.

Professor Jonathan Sarna, among others, has written that Hanukkah became, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a narrative through which Jews articulated resistance not only to ancient Hellenism, but to modern antisemitism. A holiday affirming Jewish continuity, dignity, and moral agency in societies that repeatedly questioned the Jewish right to belong. Hanukkah became a language through which Jews said: we are still here, and we will not disappear quietly.

In his article “The Americanization of Hanukkah”, historian Jonathan D. Sarna from Brandeis University observes how Hanukkah moved from a more marginal festival to a central holiday in many Jewish communities especially as Jews in the modern era sought to affirm identity, continuity, and resistance to assimilation and antisemitism.

For many Jews in recent generations, Hanukkah’s narrative became not only a celebration of ancient victory, but also a framework for asserting Jewish presence, dignity, and moral resistance in the face of modern hostility. The holiday’s light came to symbolize the enduring flame of Jewish life across the world — not just an isolated moment of ancient history.

This week, that affirmation feels painfully necessary.

Our hearts are shattered by the devastation of the past days. We mourn the victims of the horrific shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia, which took place during a Hanukkah celebration; a moment meant for light, joy, and communal safety. A moment recognized by any Jew, anywhere. Who has not gone out to the public square to light a candle, eat a donut, fry a latke?

On December 14, 2025, during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a mass shooting claimed the lives of fifteen people and injured dozens more. The victims we now know include:

Edith Brutman, 68 — vice president of B’nai B’rith NSW’s anti-prejudice committee;

Dan Elkayam, 27 — French IT analyst and athlete;

Boris and Sofia Gurman, 69 and 61 — a married couple killed while confronting a terrorist;

Alex Kleytman, 87 — Holocaust survivor and civil engineer;

Yaakov Levitan, 39 — rabbi and community leader;

Peter Meagher, 61 — retired police detective and photographer;

Reuven Morrison, 62 — businessman and community volunteer;

Marika Pogany, 82 — community volunteer;

Matilda, 10 — the youngest victim;

Tibor Weitzen, 78 — killed shielding another;

Unnamed 40-year-old man — whose family has not yet authorized release of his name;

These individuals are more than statistics. They were parents, grandparents, leaders, volunteers, faithful worshippers, and children. They are the members of any Jewish community. And in their celebration of Hanukah on Bondi Beach, and as they were murdered for being Jews willing to celebrate in the public square, they also became bearers of light in their own right. We are learning of their stories of the bravery of individuals in the face of the fire; protecting a spouse, covering a child with their own body, trying to stop the shooter with their own bare hands. The community continues to mourn and to pray for the injured and for their families.

Our hearts are also heavy with news of shootings at Brown University, where a class taught by a Jewish Israeli scholar was attacked, and in Brookline, Massachusetts, where an Israel-linked MIT scholar was killed at his home. There is no motive or any evidence of antisemitism, and that might not be the reason for either act of violence. But these incidents, irrespective of established motive, come in a context where antisemitic rhetoric and violence have become alarmingly visible, and our experience of them includes our own fears of the ways the verbal expression of antisemitism might be manifesting itself as actions and those fears are our new lived experience of our daily lives.

What compounds these fears is not only isolated acts of violence, but the gradual normalization of hostility within spaces that once promised care, education, and moral discernment.

Over the past several years, demonstrations carried out under the banner of “pro-Palestinian” activism have too often moved away from genuine commitments to coexistence, a two-state vision, or peaceful dialogue. In many instances, rhetoric and behavior have crossed a dangerous threshold, targeting Jews as Jews, on our streets, within K–12 curricula, across higher-education campuses, and in cultural and civic institutions.

At the heart of this moment is a failure of discernment: the inability or unwillingness to distinguish between principled critique of a government and the denial of the legitimacy and dignity of an entire people. When institutions respond with silence or equivocation, they signal that Jewish safety and Jewish belonging are conditional. Such signals erode trust, fracture relationships, and contribute to a growing sense of vulnerability within the Jewish community. The resulting breakdown of constructive dialogue leads not to understanding, but to silencing and deep mistrust.

This erosion has been particularly evident in the past two years, as organized protests related to the conflict in the Middle East have been amplified, and funded we are learning, by external global groups, who have contributed to left-leaning unions and professional associations, including student and faculty groups in higher education and chapters of national organizations. Too often these efforts have proceeded without acknowledging the atrocities of terrorists on October 7th, without condemning violent extremism, and without articulating clear moral distinctions between legitimate political critique and the rejection of Jewish safety and existence.

When that distinction is lost, trust fractures, and violence fills the vacuum.

Fear does not arise only from isolated acts; it grows in the climate that surrounds us, thickens in the atmosphere we inhabit, and is carried in the air of subtle disguised hatred that we are forced to breathe.

Finally, because our work is plentiful and our days are short this time of year, Hanukkah is also heavy with anguish for Israel itself, as there remains unfinished moral and communal work. The Jewish state is still wrestling with a government that has not fulfilled its most basic moral obligation: we do not leave our people behind. The continued captivity of Ron Gvili, and the denial of his dignified burial for his family, tears at the soul of Israeli society. Citizens continue to cry out and await the return of Ron Gvili, and the longer he is held as a deceased and beloved hostage sows deep communal distrust.

Ongoing internal battles in Israel, between radical Jewish factions, other Israelis, police, and minoritized communities, are erupting into violence that wounds the fabric of the state from within. These reflect a society wrestling with its own conscience and cohesion and finding a light from within these battles in an ongoing moral conflict for all of us who love Israel deeply.

This, too, is part of our Hanukkah reality: not a simple tale of heroes and villains, but a struggle over what kind of Jewish leadership, religious leadership, civil leadership, we will exercise, and to what end.

The rabbis insist: What is Hanukkah? We answer in our Haftorah for Hanukah –

Lo B’Chayil, v’Lo b’Koach, but with the spirit and love of Adonai will we all live in peace. (Zechariah 4:6)
Not the sword. Not the army.
But the decision to light, again and again, even when the oil seems insufficient.

A song sung across Israel during this season captures that defiant hope:

“Banu choshech l’garesh — b’yadeinu or va’esh. Kol echad hu or katan, v’kulanu or eitan.”

“We came to drive away the darkness; in our hands are light and fire.
Each of us is a small flame — and together we are a mighty light.”

Hanukkah does not deny the darkness. It refuses to surrender to it.

Where will you be a mighty light? That is the charge of this season.

Where will you shine a light on justice? Where will you shine a light on need? Where will you shine a a light on the pervasive darkness? Where will you be the next light of redemption? Where will yours be the quite but powerful voice? Where will you be a sliver of hope?

Joseph teaches us that redemption often begins quietly, unseen, behind prison walls.

Rosh Chodesh reminds us that renewal comes even when the moon is barely visible.

Hanukkah demands that we kindle light: moral, communal, Jewish light, precisely when fear tempts us to hide it.

May we have the courage to be that light.

May we protect one another without losing our humanity.

May we argue fiercely for justice without abandoning truth.

May the small flames we light together become, or eitan, a steadfast, enduring light.

May this Hanukkah bring healing where there is fear, and light where there has been too much darkness.