Right now, the full menorah is blazing, its luminosity in full. A comfort. A healing.
Glowing sacred beauty.
It’s the final night of Chanukah.
It’s been a week of adding and replenishing more light as each day passed, deepening the light in our broken world.
The hundreds of menorahs I can see from across the buildings before me are all fully lit too, eight dancing flames, framed by a window.
Completeness.
It’s the pinnacle of Chanukah.
The light is radiating, as the flames tremble until they eventually falter and flicker, then disappear, leaving behind only the intention behind the kindling and a profound, invisible light, in the wake of the tangible fire we witnessed and each night for a week, now going forward, each in our own way, carrying the various candles that burn within us.
It wasn’t always so, even just one week earlier and throughout the funerals in Sydney, Australia. Beautiful public Chanukah lightings at the ancient Wailing wall, the Mamilla pedestrian mall and at Zion Square in the heart of Jerusalem commingled with the grief of fresh burials and memorials.
Chanukah began this year blanketed by so much sadness — even before Chanukah itself. I had viewed an Israeli program showcasing the footage of the beautiful precious six murdered souls: Ori, Almog, Eden, Carmel, Hersh, Alex, lighting their upside down paper cup menorah in the Hamas’ dungeon tunnels two years ago.
To witness the nobility and courage of their brave and faithful choice to light Chanukah candles, to have the courage and daring to hope, to hear them invoke their own hope for a personal Chanukah miracle, to watch them so alive, to see their still innocent belief laid bare while knowing how their eventual, cruel fate — it was just too much. As I viewed this footage imbued with so much hope, yet knowing their end, was soul crushing.
You see them, hostages trapped in the hands of evil terrorists, and you meditate silently on the light of the menorah. Only G-d knows what was in their hearts and souls, but you can almost feel their inner thoughts and emotions . . . you know part of their silent prayer was obviously for their release. Ultimately, the whispers of their souls in the moments of their silent prayers as they sat before the Chanukah menorah are now sealed with G-d, a mystery forever.
You watch these scenes, knowing that just as these beautiful hostages were about to be released, they were instead executed.
The only comfort (if that word can even be used in such a context) was that they were together, a friendship circle that life strung together for them in the worst of circumstances. They seemed to have found a way to have made the best of it with each other. The sense of the near miss and what might have been is beyond heartbreaking.
Yet the footage illuminated for us, the essence of this group. Within their suffering they looked out for each other. They maintained their sense of humor. They held onto Judaism. They sang the Friday Sabbath prayer, “Lecha Dodi,” and kindled the Chanukah lights.
Watching them was like imagining stealth Chanukah lightings we heard about from Holocaust survivors in Auschwitz.
In fact, during a haircut scene, one of the captives referenced the Holocaust by mentioning “The Barber of Auschwitz” and drawing the connection between his captivity and the Holocaust.
They seem so alive as you watch them! It’s simply unbearable! It feels like they ought to be here lighting with us this year, sharing their own stories of heroism.
With this spooky footage, in a sense they always will be here with us.
For me, the beautiful six will forever be kindling the Chanukah menorah, in a sense transformed into a six-branched menorah of lights themselves.
That was my plan. This Chanukah I would light for each of the beautiful six, I told myself. Then, barely taking a breath from the raw pain of seeing the beautiful six seem so alive, yet gone, the news from Bondi Beach hit, just a few hours before lighting the first Chanukah candle here in Jerusalem.
Australia? The place of the Great Barrier and of surfing waves? The laidback place where everyone is your “mate” as in “g’day mate.”
The truth is, though, Australia also changed in the last couple of years. And we knew it.
We knew that the sentiment “globalizing the intifada” — aka, “kill Jews” — was out there, uncondemned by a significant portion leaders around the world.
We knew there were those who marched on beautiful Australia on Oct. 8 chanting “gas the Jews.”
We knew the intifada was globalized this past Yom Kippur in England, so is it such a shock that it was globalized on Chanukah in Australia?
A part of us doesn’t want to believe this shift of our world is happening before our eyes.
Chanukah was a week of wrenching funerals of those Jews who murdered on Bondi Beach at Chanukah candlelighting.
Chanukah, when we invoke ancient battles that we miraculously won, we are brutally reminded of new battles we are fighting and sadly will continue fighting.
“Ba-yamim ha-hem ba-zman hazeh — in the days of yore, in our own time.”
Those words seem to be penned for our time, even as so many previous Jewish generations must have felt the same.
One thing the world doesn’t seem to understand is this. If it thought that globalizing the intifada (or any other plan to hurt, diminish or destroy Jews or Judaism) will succeed, it couldn’t be more wrong.
For every person who was at this gathering in Sydney, henceforth there be at least ten more menorahs lit.
For each of the unforgettable precious beautiful six, there are now millions of people who saw their tenacious, brave insistence in insisting that they ignite the Chanukah menorah in the tunnels of Hamas — and will only amplify their light.
This final footage of their lives, lighting Chanukah candles, is a legacy. No matter what, the menorah will be lit, even in the darkest of places.
In their names and in the names of the Bondi Beach victims, we will redouble our efforts. We will light for them and with their souls and their legacy of proud Jewishness.
It’s a scary time, to be sure. But we will live, love and thrive stronger than ever before.
That is the candle I am carrying forward within me as I depart from this complex Chanukah of 2025.
Am Yisrael Chai is the candle that burns within me, that as long as I am here, I will continue to kindle into the world.
© IJN 2025
