Members of the Jewish community put the Israeli flag over flowers laid in memory of the victims of a shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday. A father and son toting long-barrelled guns shot and killed at least 15 people including a 10-year-old girl at Sydney's Bondi Beach in what authorities say is an antisemitic terrorist attack on a Jewish festival.DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty Images
The invitation for the Chanukah by the Sea event at Bondi Beach in Australia had all the holiday lures: a giant menorah lighting. Kosher food. A petting zoo. Face painting. Free doughnuts (but only one per person).
Then this phrase: “And much much more.”
The “much much more” turned out to be at least 15 dead – surpassing the death toll in the 2018 attack 15,500 kilometres away in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were slaughtered at prayer in the heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighbourhood.
“It is awful to happen to any community at any time,” Howard Fienberg, son of Joyce Fienberg, the former Toronto woman who was slain in Pittsburgh, said in an interview. “For us, it was Shabbat. For Sydney, it is Hanukkah. There is a common thread, though. But for us it also was the police officers who rushed in and prevented a broader massacre across Squirrel Hill. For Australia, there is a bystander, someone who did the same. That is the positive I look to.”
Bystander who disarmed gunman at Bondi Beach shooting hailed as hero
Former Bloc Québécois MP Richard Marceau was in Bondi Beach last week and witnessed the Jewish community preparing for the festival that became the latest symbol of antisemitic attacks.
“This is a relatively new community of Jews who thought they were in paradise, and in many ways they were,” said Mr. Marceau, now general counsel for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “They were not able to escape this ugliness. World reality came to them and hit them very hard.”
The violence erupted at the end of a summer day when thousands had flocked to Bondi Beach, an icon of Australia’s cultural life.
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The attack came on a popular Jewish holiday sometimes known as the Festival of Lights, an eight-day event celebrating the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC. It is marked by candle lighting, one additional candle for each night. The holiday is an homage to the story that when Jewish forces led by Judah the Maccabee defeated a Greek army, they found oil for one night’s lighting in the rites of the temple rededication. The wonder at the heart of the holiday is that the oil lasted for eight nights.
“The main takeaway from Hanukkah is a universal message of hope and resilience,” said Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal. “But Hanukkah is also the story of the Jewish people claiming their identity and not hiding even in the face of violence and hate. Even if we go into this holiday with hearts that are heavy once again, it is really important we come together to celebrate, that we are not scared off.”
Authorities across Canada and in Pittsburgh – where emotions remain raw even though seven years have passed since the rain of bullets at the corner of Shady and Wilkins avenues – planned special security for Hanukkah celebrations.
“We are experiencing a global epidemic of violent antisemitic attacks and it feels like an attack on all of us, no matter where we live,” said Carole Zawatsky, chief executive officer of the Tree of Life synagogue, site of the 2018 killings. “When I light my candles this week, I will think of those of us who know only too well the cost of this kind of violence. We will use the lighting of our candles to remind us of the need to uproot antisemitism and hate.”
Already fingers are being pointed, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Australia – home to about 150,000 Jews, slightly smaller than the Jewish population of Toronto – had not done enough to fight antisemitism.
“We are seeing attacks on Jews all over the world,” said Shaul Kelner, a professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University. “We have to stand up and fight it.”
Netanyahu lashes out as world shows sympathy over Bondi Beach shooting
But the fight against antisemitism has several battlefronts, none of them particularly well secured in a period when the number of antisemitic incidents has soared. There is enormous controversy about the definition of an antisemitic incident, but B’nai Brith Canada counted 6,219 such episodes last year. The Anti-Defamation League reported 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the United States last year, an increase of 5 per cent from 2023.
The Hanukkah story is rooted in the second century BC, a time much like our own. In a 2023 article in the journal Biblical Archaeology Review, the Boston University archaeologist Andrea Berlin speaks of the middle of the Hellenistic Period as “a time of great material wealth” – a time, she wrote, “of broad prosperity, robust international contacts, and comfortable cosmopolitan lifestyles.”
There are several songs associated with Hanukkah but one that might resonate this year was introduced in 1982 by the American folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. One of its verses goes this way:
Light one candle
For those who are suffering
Pain we learned so long ago