Happy Hannukah

Weeping Endures for a Night...

On Saturday afternoon, Jim and I joined a latke party at my son and daughter-in-law’s house. My main job was to play with the grandbaby so Mom could fry the dozens of potato pancakes on the stove. We all know that toddlers and hot oil are not a good combination. When Mom was done, the little one got to try her first latke, and I think she liked it. We enjoyed both the company and the food. (I might have to concede that my daughter-in-law’s latkes are better than mine!)

Across the international dateline, in Australia, Jews were already gathering to light the candles for the first night of Hannukah. By now we all know the story: at a family-oriented gathering on Bondi Beach, a much larger scale version of the party we attended, two terrorist assassins, father and son, launched a planned attack on the crowd, killing at least fifteen people, wounding many more. One of the dead was a ten-year-old child.

Post after post in the Jewish world is shouting out: “This is what happens when you talk about ‘globalizing the Intifada.’” I will add: This is what happens when democratic countries minimize the viciousness of the terror attacks by Hamas. This is what happens when antizionism becomes the new antisemitism. This is what happens when every Jewish statement of the collective grief we have been suffering since October 7 is automatically answered by a “whataboutism.” This is what happens when Jews become fair game.

We will be brave. A video of six of the hostages imprisoned by Hamas in the tunnels under Gaza, lighting the Hannukah candles in Decemember 2023, has become available. They were brave, these six young people who would be killed, execution-style, only a few months later.

We in the U.S. will light the menorahs in our homes, display them in our windows. In the Seattle-Tacoma area, there are a number of public Menorah lightings scheduled. They will be well attended. There will also be good security. Anyone who wants to stand in support of the Jewish community might think of finding such an event in your area and joining it.

If you want a more articulate discussion of these issues, the following is a helpful explanation.

The Bondi Beach Massacre

Here’s a picture of our menorahs lit for the first night. The larger one was my parents’; the smaller one was given to us as an engagement present by a dear friend fifty years ago.