We Do Not Go Down In Darkness

Following the brutal Chanukah massacre at Bondi Beach, a Menorah that had once burned brightly, illuminated throughout the year, was quietly extinguished.

In a Sky News interview, a Jewish woman identified only as Sorella, a close friend of the murdered Chabad Rabbi Eli Schlanger, shared what happened in the days after October 7th. In defiance of rising hatred, she and her husband made the deliberate decision to keep a large Menorah burning brightly outside their home.

But when the family finally returned home from the beach, their children were in tears.

“Please,” they cried. “Turn off the Menorah. Our house is going to become a target.”

At first, Sorella and her husband refused.
“No,” they said. “We can’t go down like this.”

But the children kept pleading—through sobs and fear—
“Please, Mom. Abba. Turn the Menorah off.”

Sorella looked at her children and made the hardest choice a parent can make.
“As a mother,” she said softly, “we are going to turn the Menorah off.”

That night, the light went dark.

The next day, a Christian neighbor knocked on their door. She explained that she and her daughter had driven past Sorella’s home the evening before and noticed the Menorah was no longer lit. Her daughter began to cry and said,
“They’re turning off the Menorahs. Evil can’t win.”

That was all it took.

Sorella and her husband relit the Menorah.

Sorella later said, “That would be Rabbi Eli’s message. If he were standing here today, he would say: we do not go down in darkness. We shine light. That is the only way to push out darkness. We spread goodness and kindness. That is all we know as Jews.”

This is precisely how the Jewish people have educated and raised their children—generation after generation—through centuries of massacres, persecution, and bloodshed.

The word Chanukah itself comes from chinuch—education.

The Chanukah story begins with a father: Matityahu, a priest of the Hasmonean family, who educated his five sons—among them Judah the Maccabee—to understand that darkness cannot prevail. Through faith, courage, and conviction, they defeated the Greek oppressors, ending terror and persecution in the Land of Israel.

More than 2,000 years later, another father chose to educate his son very differently, with hatred and bloodshed. Together, father and son unleashed horror and devastation upon thousands of innocent Chanukah festival attendees, driven by a single goal: to extinguish the Jewish flame.

One father taught his son to murder.
The other taught his sons to stand up against tyranny.

There is a Chabad custom to light the Menorah just before nightfall, while there is still light outside. There is a chilling lesson in this tradition.

On October 9th, 2023, just two days after the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, protesters marched outside the Sydney Opera House chanting, “Gas the Jews.”

Was decisive action taken by the Australian government?

No.

The warning signs were there, before the sky fully darkened.

For months, Australian Jews pleaded for meaningful action. Long before this latest terrorist attack, synagogues were vandalized, Jews were assaulted, and threats were normalized.

Why did it have to reach the moment when the sun’s final embers faded, when hateful rhetoric became total nightfall?

It is not enough to put a token projection of a Menorah on the Sydney Opera House after 15 unnecessary deaths. The world must take note and take action before we slip into complete darkness.

The Menorah outside Sorella’s home may have gone dark for one night. But it has been rekindled, brighter than ever, with a renewed pledge to live louder, prouder, and unafraid. And all of us need to do the same, we can’t let our lights quietly turn off. Now is precisely the time to do more, as the murdered Rabbi Eli said in response to October 7th, “We need to be more Jewish. Act more Jewish”.

Because the flames of Sorella’s Menorah, and the Jewish people, will never ever  be extinguished.