This isn’t going to be your average Unpacking Israeli History episode.
About 24 hours ago, at a quarter to 7pm Australian time, two gunmen opened fire on a crowd of some 2,000 Jewish people, and non-Jewish people, including many young children, as they celebrated the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. As of now, 15 people are dead and many more are wounded.
At first glance, an antisemitic terror attack in Australia might not seem directly connected to Israeli history. In fact, our team discussed this at length: should I even talk about this here? How does this episode fit with Israeli history? What’s the connection between two countries separated by more than eight thousand miles?
But if I’m being honest, the connection is obvious. There is a principle in Judaism called – and I’ll say it in Hebrew first – Kol Yisrael Arevim zeh l’zeh. All Jews are connected to one another, are guarantors for each other. All Jews are responsible for one another. Jewish people are a pretty small community. We run 15 million or so deep, maybe up to 15.7 million, so we are often only a couple of degrees removed from each other. And the feeling that a Jewish person feels for a terror attack against the Jewish community thousands of miles is a feeling called peoplehood. We are one people.
There is something else too. There are few Jewish communities I’ve been to who have as deep of a connection to the State of Israel than the Jewish communities of Australia. Zionism is core to the Jewish experience in Australia in a very, very unique way.
And there is a third reason which connects this story to Israeli history. As much as it feels awful to say it, antisemitism, the hatred of the Jews, is a recurring driver of Israeli history. The founding fathers and mothers of the state knew this, in their way. Most of them, anyway. Herzl believed that the mere existence of a Jewish state would end antisemitism. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a disciple of Herzl, was a little more pragmatic, believing that the existence of a Jewish state would protect Jews against antisemitism.
Both underestimated the power and insidiousness of this hatred. But Jabotinsky was right about one thing: when antisemitism spikes, the Diaspora shrinks. And the Diaspora’s loss is Israel’s gain.
We saw this in 1948, when Holocaust survivors, and also refugees who had been removed from the Arab world, flooded into the Jewish state, more than doubling the population in under two years. We saw this with the migration of Soviet Jews, who after years of imprisonment were finally allowed to go free. Over a million used that freedom to come to Israel. We saw this when wave after wave of antisemitism engulfed French Jews, and they flocked to the Jewish state in droves. And we saw this when tens of thousands of Ethiopians returned to their homeland, to Israel.
And I wonder if we are seeing the beginning of another sea change now. I wonder.
This event was cataclysmic for the Aussie Jewish community. And cataclysms usually bring sweeping changes. Changes whose consequences we can only guess at now.
But one thing I’ve learned from hosting this podcast for more than half a decade now: global events, events that happen far, far away from the embattled strip of land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, end up shaping Israeli history.
The Kishinev Pogrom in 1903.
The Munich Massacre in 1972.
The Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Jews are connected to each other. And what happens to a Jewish person in Sydney affects a Jewish person in Jerusalem. What happened last night, as I record this tonight, has the potential to change Israel’s demographics.
All of that is in the future. Much of it is speculation. The event is still fresh, still unfolding. But I needed to talk about it. I needed to address the Australian Jewish community directly.
So if you came here for an episode about, say, the history of the kibbutz movement, or the Lillehammer debacle, or, I don’t know, a brief history of Israeli diplomacy, I won’t be offended if you peace out now. Not everyone wants to listen to a history show talk about current events. Sometimes you just want to escape into the headlines of 100 years ago, you know? I do, that’s what I love. Sometimes you just want a story with a predictable ending. Sometimes you just want to know it’s all gonna be okay.
This isn’t that episode. There is no predictable ending, no definite direction in which the future must unfold. We’re all stumbling around in our grief and uncertainty, clutching thin, fragile candles against the gathering dark.
The Bondi shooting was the most deadly attack on Jews in the Diaspora since 1994, when a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a van packed with explosives into a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, murdering 85 people and wounding hundreds more. And in the string of antisemitic attacks that have terrorized Jews around the world since October 7th, this one stands out: for its scale, for its apparent planning, for its sheer brutality.
It was the first week of summer vacation for Australian kids. The weather was beautiful. People came ready to party. The event, advertised as “Chanukah by the Sea,” was hosted by the Chabad of Bondi, and the assistant rabbi, Eli Schlanger, was MCing from the stage when the gunfire began.
For ten minutes, thousands of terrified people cowered, covering their children, and other peoples’ children, with their bodies, barely daring to look up. For Jews around the world, the footage evokes the aftermath of the Nova festival: prone bodies, desperate EMTs searching for a sign of life, blood, screaming, hysteria.
The carnage only stopped when a heroic, unarmed bystander – a 43-year-old Syrian immigrant named Ahmed al-Ahmed – tackled one of the shooters and wrestled away his gun. Ten or fifteen minutes of concentrated, full-body terror.
And now: now the painful, months- or years-long work of healing, of picking up the pieces. Of figuring out where to go from here. Australian Jews have been sounding the alarm about the raging tsunami of antisemitism they’ve faced since October 7th. The graffiti, the vandalism, the firebombings, and more.
I know this because my Australian friends have even asked me to talk about it here, on this show. To discuss the straight line from “globalize the intifada” to… this.
In fact, Aussies, Jews and non-Jews, make up a significant chunk of our listeners. We’re the number one Jewish podcast in Australia, and we get emails from our brothers and sisters down under all the time. And when I visited in the summer of 2022, I was moved by the passion and conviction of our Aussie community.
My wife and I spent a beautiful Shabbat in Sydney, and as we strolled along the famous Bondi promenade, Bondi to Bronti as it’s called, we looked at each other and agreed: this is the most peaceful place we’ve ever been. We bought books about Bondi Beach, it’s in our living room. We have books about America, Israel, and now Bondi.
Not anymore. The idyll of Bondi is shattered forever.
It’s holy ground now. Consecrated with the blood of innocent people whose only crime was being proudly and publicly Jewish.
Our enemies have a habit of attacking the Jewish people and the Jewish state on our holidays.
Yom Kippur of 1973, of 2019, of 2025.
Hanukkah of 2019.
Simchat Torah of 2023.
And now this. Hanukkah 2025.
Just as Simchat Torah will never be the same – just as we can’t dance with the Torah without recalling 1,400 of our brothers and sisters stalked, hunted, kidnapped, and murdered – Hanukkah is now changed forever, too. Every time we light the first candle, we will do so with 15 ghosts standing behind us. Among them are two Chabad rabbis. An 87 year old Holocaust survivor. A 10 year old girl.
But I’m not here to talk about ghosts.
There will be time, later, to discuss the unexpected and horrifying deluge of antisemitism in Australia that predated this attack.
But right now, I want to speak directly to our audience. The Unpacking Israeli History community. Not just the Australians. Not just the Jews. All of you. Anyone who is listening to this.
I am recording this on the second night of Hanukkah. The second night of a holiday dedicated to being a light in the darkness.
In the words of the very first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, before the state was recreated in 1948, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, quote: “The purely righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.”
I’m not purely righteous. I’m not one of them. I wish I were, but I’m not. My first reaction to this news was rage. Incandescent, blinding fury.
But anger, that’s not a productive emotion. Not here, not now. Not if you want to dispel the darkness. Not if you want to balance out the evil with good, the ignorance with wisdom, the heresy with faith. Not if you want to consecrate the memory of fifteen beautiful souls, gunned down in a moment of joy.
So I did my best to calm down. To breathe. To remember what our people need right now.
And what I think we need is strength. Insight. Inspiration. A reminder that the smallest light can ward off the greatest darkness. A reminder that we are not alone. We are not alone, because we have each other.
So I’ll tell you three stories, three amazing stories you have to hear, about three different Hanukkah celebrations – though “celebration” is not the right word for holidays spent in concentration camps or Hamas tunnels. And I’ll finish with an epilogue, an inspiring story of a tiny, mostly non-Jewish community that turned hate into love. Really following in the footsteps of Rabbi Kook.
Story number one: Hanukkah in Bergen-Belsen, as told to Yaffa Eliach by Rabbi Israel Singer, Aaron Frankel, and Baruch Singer, in June 22, 1975. This is the story of the Holocaust.
Hanukkah came to Bergen-Belsen. …a wooden clog, the shoe of one of the inmates, became a hanukkiah; strings pulled from a concentration-camp uniform, a wick; and the black camp shoe polish, pure oil.
Not far from the heaps of the bodies, the living skeletons assembled to participate in the kindling of Hanukkah lights.
The Rabbi of Bluzhov (Rabbi Israel Singer) lit the first light and chanted the first two blessings in his pleasant voice, and the festive melody was filled with sorrow and pain. When he was about to recite the third blessing, he stopped, turned his head, and looked around as if he were searching for something.
But immediately, he turned his face back to the quivering small lights and in a strong, reassuring, comforting voice, chanted the third blessing: “Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season.”
Among the people present at the kindling of the lights was a Mr. Zamietchkowski, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Bund. He was a clever, sincere person with a passion for discussing matters of religion, faith, and truth. Even here in camp at Bergen Belsen, his passion for discussion did not abate. He never missed an opportunity to engage in such a conversation.
As soon as the Rabbi of Bluzhov had finished the ceremony of kindling the lights, Zamietchkowski elbowed his way to the rabbi and said, “You are a clever and honest person. I can understand your need to light Hanukkah candles in these wretched times. I can even understand the historical note of the second blessing, ‘Who wroughtest miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.’ But the fact that you recited the third blessing is beyond me. How could you thank God and say ‘Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season‘? How could you say it when hundreds of dead Jewish bodies are literally lying within the shadows of the Hanukkah lights, when thousands of living Jewish skeletons are walking around in camp, and millions more are being massacred? For this you are thankful to God? For this you praise the Lord? This you call ‘keeping us alive’?”
“Zamietchkowski, you are a hundred percent right,” answered the rabbi. “When I reached the third blessing, I also hesitated and asked myself, what should I do with this blessing? I turned my head in order to ask the Rabbi of Zaner and other distinguished rabbis who were standing near me, if indeed I might recite the blessing. But just as I was turning my head, I noticed that behind me a throng was standing, a large crowd of living Jews, their faces expressing faith, devotion, and concentration as they were listening to the rite of the kindling of the Hanukkah lights. I said to myself, if God, blessed be He, has such a nation that at times like these, when during the lighting of the Hanukkah lights they see in front of them the heaps of bodies of their beloved fathers, brothers, and sons, and death is looking from every corner, if despite all that, they stand in throngs and with devotion listening to the Hanukkah blessing ‘Who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season’; if, indeed, I was blessed to see such a people with so much faith and fervor, then I am under a special obligation to recite the third blessing.”
Some years after liberation, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, now residing in Brooklyn, New York, received regards from Mr. Zamietchkowski. Zamietchkowski asked the son of the Skabiner Rabbi to tell Israel Spira, the Rabbi of Bluzhov, that the answer he gave him that dark Hanukkah night in Bergen Belsen had stayed with him ever since, and was a constant source of inspiration during hard and troubled times.
That story destroys me. It destroys me because it feels painfully, horribly true.
Australia is many hours ahead of South Florida, where I live. It’s already tomorrow there. They’re living in the future.
And do you know what these future-dwellers of Australia chose to do, one night after the worst anti-Jewish massacre in their country’s history?
They went back to Bondi Beach, back to the scene of the slaughter.
More than one thousand people, crowding together to light the second candle, not shouting slogans of revenge but singing songs of peace.
Ya’aseh shalom b’mromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu, veh al kol Yisrael, v’imru Amen.
He who makes peace in the heavens, He will bring peace upon us, and upon the entire nation of Israel. Let us say amen.
This is the beating heart of Judaism.
This is light in the darkness.
If anyone there was afraid, they didn’t show it.
One thousand people gathered to say The light is not afraid of the dark.
A second story.
Earlier this year, the families of Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lubanov, Almog Sarusi, and Eden Yerushalmi received a message from a man who Rachel Goldberg-Polin describes as, quote “the person from the Israeli intelligence services whose job it is to tell us bad news.”
But this time, his news wasn’t bad, exactly.
What could he tell the families of these six beautiful souls that would be worse than the news he delivered in August of 2024? The news that their loved ones had been shot point-blank, multiple times, their bodies abandoned as the IDF approached.
All six were returned to Israel, to be buried in the soil of their homeland.
They have come to be known as “The Beautiful Six.”
What possible news could the hostage liaison give to their families?
Surprising news, it turned out.
News that seemed to come from beyond the grave.
During its sweep of Gaza, the IDF had uncovered more than three hours of footage, filmed by Hamas as part of their devastating campaign of psychological warfare against Israelis.
Among that footage was a clip of the six hostages lighting Hanukkah candles in Hamas captivity. You see them lighting candles in the thin, oxygen-poor air, struggling to keep the flames alive. Their drawn faces, and Hersh’s missing hand, speak to the horrors they had already endured. And still, they said the traditional prayers, sang the traditional songs. Looked at each other in solidarity. Gave each other hope.
Two years later, we draw the same hope, the same inspiration, the same solidarity from them. Six beautiful souls who have no idea what impact their brief lives, their memory, has had on Jews around the world.
A third and final story.
Maybe you’ve seen this iconic black-and-white photo from 1931: a chanukiah perched on a windowsill in Kiel, Germany, proud against a backdrop of Nazi flags. On the back of a photo, a message of hope and defiance. “‘Death to Judah,’ so the flag says. ‘Judah will live forever,’ so the light answers”.
The woman who took that picture, Rebbetzin Rachel Posner, fled Germany with her family in 1934. Her descendants live in Israel. Every year, they light their Hanukkah candles using the same chanukiah that flickered defiantly from their great-grandparents’ windowsill in Kiel.
The Nazis are gone. The chanukiah still burns – this time, kindled by Jewish soldiers of a Jewish army in a Jewish state.
Those are three powerful stories, to me. In times like these, it’s tempting to wonder if we will always be alone. Sometimes I’m expecting people from the non-Jewish world to reach out, and I don’t hear from them.
Already, social media is exploding with conspiracy theories that the attack was a false flag, that Mossad was behind it, that Netanyahu’s plans were foiled when a Syrian Muslim intervened to take down one of the shooters. I’ve seen allegations that the shooters were former IDF. And I’ve seen people blaming the shooting not on the perpetrators, but on Israel. “Well, what do they expect when they do a genocide?” seems to be the common theme. I’ve seen people wringing their hands about what this will do to “free speech,” how this attack will endanger “pro-Palestine activists.”
These aren’t the primary reactions, of course. Plenty of people from across the political spectrum have reacted with the shock and condemnation that this attack deserves.
But condemnation isn’t enough. It stops short.
It’s good to condemn darkness. It’s better to spread light.
And so I’ll leave you with an epilogue and a call to action. Something you can do regardless of your faith or community or traditions.
Something that the residents of Billings, Montana took on when antisemitism came to their tiny community in 1993.
Isaac Schnitzer was five or six years old when he put up a paper menorah in his bedroom window.
On Hanukkah we’re commanded to “publicize the miracle.” That’s actually part of the whole story. But Isaac’s paper menorah was ripped apart by a cinderblock that a neo-Nazi hurled through his window.
But then something beautiful happened. Something unexpected. Something that makes me think, maybe the Jewish people are not always alone. Maybe we have friends. Maybe we have allies.
Over the remaining days of Hanukkah, the residents of Billings, Montana took to the streets holding light-up chanukiot.
There are very few Jews in Montana, and most of the people out in the streets were not Jewish.
The Sunday School teacher at the local church was absolutely not Jewish. But she decided that come Sunday, she would stand up to hatred. Her pastor was all in. They had their students at the church draw chanukiot, and that night, they all decorated their own windows with their drawings. Including the teacher.
That teacher had young kids, and she was wary of putting a target on her own home.
But her love was stronger than her fear.
The editor of the local paper, the Billings Gazette, was probably not Jewish. But he or she nonetheless made the choice to print a full-page Menorah that residents could tape to their door or window to show solidarity.
Soon, more chanukiot appeared in the windows of Billings, Montana.
And more.
And then more.
Until ten thousand homes across Billings had adorned their windows with the newsprint chanukiah, sending a clear message to the Neo-Nazis that had terrorized their neighborhood with hateful flyers, with slurs, with death threats, with a cinderblock through a child’s window.
The little town of Billings, Montana refused to be cowed. Refused to bow to hatred. And they made the most beautiful, worthy choice a person can make. The choice to stand in solidarity. So I’m going to end this episode with a plea. A call to action, whether you’re Jewish or not.
Light a Hanukkah candle tonight. In fact, light one every night of Hanukkah. It doesn’t have to be all eight. It doesn’t even have to be in a menorah.
And here is the most important point…it absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. If you have a picture, send it my way. You know the email by now – noam@unpacked.media.
That tiny, flickering flame in your window is a revolution. That tiny, flickering flame is the difference between darkness and light.
Now, more than ever, be the light. Happy Holiday, Chag sameach, and may we know no more sorrow.
