There is a Light That Never Goes Out

It has been almost a week since the Bondi Beach massacre in Sydney, Australia, on the first night of Chanukah. Chanukah is not even over; yet, already, the world is moving on. We will never let the memory of the youngest victim, Matilda, pass into forgotten history. Just ten years old and so full of life. Nor will we let the world forget Rabbi Eli Schlanger, one of the organizers of the Chanukah celebration at Bondi that night and a cornerstone of the Jewish community there. Nor the talented footballer Dan Elkayam. Nor Alexander Kleytman, a Holocaust survivor in a world growing forgetful of its past. Nor Boris and Sofia Gurman. Nor Peter Meagher. Nor Reuven Morrison. Nor Rabbi Yaakov Levitan. Nor Tibor Weitzen. Nor Marika Pogany. Nor Edith Brutman. Nor Boris Tetleroyd. Nor Adam Smyth. All of the aforementioned were murdered for being Jewish. May their memories be a blessing.

I could write now and at length about the despicable terrorists who massacred the innocent. I could write about the ideology of hatred they were captured by; the oldest of humanity’s hatreds, that of antisemitism. I could write about the world’s complicity in letting antisemitism fester in our era and society’s tacit tolerance of the intolerant. I could condemn those who, rightfully, deserve to be condemned.

But I’m not going to do those things; not now, not tonight. Rather than let terror and fear dictate my life, I choose hope in a better future. Chanukah is the Festival of Lights of the Jewish people. It shares that name with Diwali in the Hindu tradition, a festival I also greatly admire. Because they both stand for light against the darkness. They stand for the belief that light will win in the end. It will endure even against all odds. And endurance is the triumph; because evil cannot outlast it.

Those who choose hatred will be swallowed by the immeasurable sands of time, their names forgotten and erased just as so many of the miserable, evil wretches of history have been before them. We who choose light and life choose to weave our names into the tapestry of future history recording the Good. In a world of darkness, I choose the light. My friends, do not let the world extinguish your light.

חג אורים שמח

There is a Light That Never Goes Out