Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 20th December 2025/30th Kislev 5786

"IT DID NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM". INDEED

I’m in shock, as I’m sure you all are. The horrific news from Sydney has left us devastated and anguished. A large crowd—Jews like me, like my family, like you—were attacked by two terrorists, a father and son. They opened fire on people celebrating Hanukkah at a popular beach gathering.

The death toll has reached around fifteen, including children and elderly attendees, with many more injured. Among the victims identified were Matilda, a ten-year-old girl; Alex Kleytman, 87, a Holocaust survivor who was killed while shielding his wife; and Rabbi Eli Schlanger, 41, a father of five and a cousin of a well-known and widely respected rabbi in our city [1]

One of the shooters was wounded and disarmed by a courageous bystander, reported to be a Muslim—a small detail that feels strangely heart-warming amid so much horror [2].

That evening, in our city—as in Jewish communities around the world—we faced a painful question: should we still light the candles of Hanukkah? It was not a simple decision. In the hours after an attack, danger does not always end; it can spread. There were fears of copycat violence and of openly Jewish gatherings becoming targets. Parents hesitated about bringing their children.

We all realised that if this could happen in Australia, long considered one of the safest places for Jews, then it can happen anywhere. No city is immune; no community is invisible. The dilemma was not only about ritual, but literally about survival.We also wondered whether celebration was appropriate so soon after bloodshed. Jewish law recognises this tension. Pikuach nefesh—the preservation of life—overrides almost all commandments. Where danger is real, public celebration must yield. Candles may be lit quietly, without crowds or music, affirming faith without provocation and resilience without recklessness.

All of this, sadly, is not new. This is Jewish life after October 7. It began on October 7, 2023—remember? It was Simchat Torah, a day meant for joy and dancing, and we were confronted with the news of massacres and kidnappings. Many asked whether to celebrate, and how. Do we celebrate, or do we mourn? Do we cancel the hakafot for reasons of security, dignity, or sheer human grief, or do we proceed? Communities answered differently, and halakhah allowed for that diversity.

We made a decision on October 7: we went ahead. They celebrate death; we celebrate life. They want us to mourn; we choose to celebrate instead.And the community took the same decision last Sunday. The Brighton Jewish community gathered in front of Hove Town Hall, and the planned public lighting of the Hanukkiah went ahead. It proved to be the right choice. The square was more crowded than in previous years.

The same spirit guided us here at BHRS. We did not retreat into darkness or cancel joy. We celebrated Hanukkah. We sang, we danced—well, the teenagers and the mums at least, not the rabbi, not this year. Children filled the space with laughter, running and playing at being Maccabees, searching for the missing shammash. And, by the way, kol hakavod to Ben, who found it.

But let us not kid ourselves. This is a reality we must learn to live with. As painful as it is to admit, we all know that there will likely be other moments when we once again ask ourselves the same question: do we celebrate, or do we hold back?

This dilemma is becoming part of the landscape of Jewish life, for the same reasons that we now have to lock the parking gate every time, be extra careful about who enters our buildings, think twice before extending invitations; not distract the security staff; not bring people into the building without informing security in advance; not allow non-members to take photos; not post photos on social media; and so on.

All of these are consequences of October 7—or rather, of October 8. Remember what the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, commented? He said that “it did not happen in a vacuum.” [3]

So, I will say it clearly: the Bondi Beach massacre did not happen in a vacuum either. Because the Australian Jewish community—like Jewish communities across the world—is living through a sustained wave of hostility, intimidation, and violence.Consider just a few examples.

 In the days immediately following October 7, Jews in Australia watched crowds gather in major cities not to mourn murdered civilians, but to celebrate, provoke, and threaten. In Sydney, outside the Opera House, demonstrators shouted antisemitic slogans, including what many clearly heard as “gas the Jews.”

Across the country, synagogues received bomb threats. [4] Jewish schools were targeted with hoaxes and intimidation. [5]  Kosher businesses were firebombed. [6]  Cars were set alight in Jewish neighbourhoods. [7] There was an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue [8].

And all of this occurred before the Hanukkah massacre—which, yes, “did not happen in a vacuum,” to quote Mr Guterres again. It was not an isolated eruption of madness. It was the moment when rhetoric crossed into mass violence.

And this is not only Australia. It is happening all over the world. On the same evening of Hanukkah, just a few hours after the massacre in Sydney, peaceful Jewish celebrations in Amsterdam were disrupted by antisemitic protests. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered, set off smoke bombs, and chanted hostile slogans accusing Jews of having “blood on your hands,” even as families attended holiday events [9].

This mirrors what we experience in our own city, where anti-Israel protesters have the habit of gathering in Palmeira Square on Saturday mornings, precisely when worshippers leave this synagogue and take the bus from that stop. The same slogans are heard, over and over again: “Globalise the Intifada”—an incitement to target Jewish civilians, as occurred in Israel during the First and Second Intifadas between 1987 and 2005—and “From the river to the sea,” a slogan that denies Jewish self-determination altogether. These slogans are accompanied by threatening gestures, aggressive posturing, and intimidation. [10].

When the same language, the same gestures, and the same targets appear again and again, we recognise the pattern. This is not about borders or policies, but about making Jewish life feel exposed and unsafe.

This is not coincidence; it is a global script. If the aim were truly solidarity with Gaza, protests would take place outside embassies, parliaments, or government buildings. Instead, the targets are Jews—visibly Jewish, publicly Jewish, religiously Jewish. The message is unmistakable: you are responsible, you are accountable, and you are not safe.

This was made brutally explicit in the United States. During protests outside synagogues, demonstrators have been heard repeatedly saying, “We need to make them scared”—“them” meaning us, the Jews. [11]

Those words remove all ambiguity. This is not about Israel. It is about making Jewish life uncomfortable, visible, and fearful. The scenery changes—Sydney, Europe, America—but the intent does not. It is not protest; it is pressure. It is the plainly stated intention to terrify the Jews, to make us live in fear.

It is the same agenda of the left-leaning media, with its obsessive focus on Israeli crimes. Needless to say, criticism of Israel is not only legitimate; it is necessary in any democracy. But what we are witnessing is not criticism. It is one-sided coverage, so saturated with the language of absolute evil that it leads to the conclusion that a genocide is underway, and that therefore any action taken to stop it is justified.

Once that assumption takes hold, restraint collapses. If genocide is occurring, then disruption becomes virtue, threats become warnings, and violence becomes urgency. The moral universe contracts to a single imperative: “We must stop the crime perpetrated in the name of Jewish safety.” Everything else becomes secondary—law, proportionality, and, of course, our religious rights.

When people are told, day after day, that genocide is being committed—and that it is being committed in their name—it is hardly surprising that some conclude that Jews themselves must be confronted, pressured, and frightened.

One example. On 13 December, The New Statesman asked its readers, “Is Britain complicit in the genocide in Gaza?” [12]

Two days later, after the massacre, the same outlet acknowledged that “the Bondi Beach shooting was an attack on Jews”—an attack on Jews as Jews, not on a policy, not on a government, not on a military.[13]

But do you think they realised what their words had prepared? Forget it. Neither the publication nor its readers were invited to ask a harder question: who prepared the ground for attacks on Jews? Who poisoned the atmosphere with the obsessive repetition of the word “genocide,” transforming it into something resembling scholarly consensus?

I know it must be repeated, but this story of genocide is literally bogus. Hamas supporters flooded an academic association; their credentials were not checked; they held an emergency vote on a resolution; and by September 2025 the narrative of genocide in Gaza was ready for media consumption.[14]

You will not find this in The New Statesman. But you will find their acknowledgment that the Bondi Beach massacre was an attack on all Jews. Well, thank you, journalists. You just forgot the context. You just forgot that—as you yourselves like to say—it did not happen in a vacuum.

At this point, it is important to be precise about responsibility. It is not my role to decide whether Prime Minister Netanyahu was right or wrong to link the Australian recognition of Palestine to the recent attacks. That judgment belongs to politicians, historians, and time. What matters more to me—and to us as a community—is something deeper and more troubling: the root from which both the violence and the atmosphere surrounding it grow.

The attacks themselves and the street demonstrations are not identical phenomena, but they are connected. They are nourished by the same impulse: to make Jewish life feel precarious, to force Jews into a permanent state of fear, mourning, or moral defensiveness. Sometimes this pressure takes the form of physical violence.

Sometimes it comes through intimidation, slogans, or the relentless demand that Jews publicly justify their existence, their rituals, or their connection to Israel.

And here the argument becomes more painful. Tragically, this fanaticism is not limited to those outside our people. There are Jews, too, who participate in this reduction, who believe that constant self-denunciation is the only ethical posture available. Their intentions may differ, but the effect is similar: Jewish life becomes associated not with vitality and meaning, but with guilt, anxiety, and retreat.

It is the growing assumption that Jewish life itself should be marked by a state of permanent mourning—a kind of inherited guilt for what Israel is alleged to have done to the Palestinians since 1948. This expectation is rarely stated openly. More often, it is wrapped in good intentions. It presents itself as empathy, as ethical vigilance, as concern for universal human rights. Yet its effect is unmistakable. Jews are increasingly expected to temper celebration, visibility, and joy—not because of any immediate danger, but because of a collective accusation attached to Jewish history and Jewish statehood.

The result is an implicit moral demand: do not rejoice, do not affirm yourselves, do not be publicly Jewish. You must first mourn the erased—and largely imaginary—Palestinian life before 1948. This pressure is not applied to any other community. No other people are asked to live their religious and cultural lives under a permanent moral suspension, as if their very continuity were conditional. Jews alone are told that their life must remain subdued until a historical account is settled, one that begins in 1948 and is told almost exclusively through the lens of Jewish culpability.

Unfortunately, this mindset has also taken root within parts of the Progressive Jewish world. For far too long, there has been a tendency to speak about Israel primarily—sometimes obsessively—in terms of its flaws, as if moral responsibility required little else. Israel is described as an embarrassing friend, sometimes likened to someone driving drunk—an image that always implies the same response: we must stop them, restrain them, intervene. As if Israelis were listening to us. As if our public self-flagellation had any real influence on Israeli decision-making, rather than serving mainly to reassure our own moral self-image.

We have seen Kaddish recited for terrorists in Gaza, always framed as prayer for all victims—even when among those “victims” are terrorists and UN-funded educators of terrorism. We have seen Yom Ha’atzmaut commemorations centred not on independence, but on the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, as though Israeli sovereignty itself were a moral failure requiring perpetual apology. And one could go on.

Beneath these gestures lies a deeper and more troubling ideology, according to which Israel has only defects, that its very proclamation was a mistake, and that a world without Israel—without a Jewish-majority state, without a place of refuge for Jews like you and me—would somehow be a better world. This is a pernicious idea, and it has seeped into progressive Jewish spaces to an intolerable depth. It does not lead to peace or justice. It leads to the quiet erosion of Jewish self-understanding and, ultimately, to the delegitimisation of Jewish survival itself.

When we step back, the pattern becomes unmistakable. The goal, whether explicit or implicit, is the same: do not let Jews feel at home in the world. Do not let them celebrate without hesitation. Do not let them gather without calculation. Do not let them speak without apology. We are being pushed toward a single emotional register: fear or grief. And that is something we must resist.

Judaism has never survived by surrendering its emotional range. We insist on complexity—on mourning and celebration, critique and belonging, responsibility and joy. Refusing to live only in fear or only in lament is not political defiance; it is spiritual self-preservation.

For this very reason—precisely to counter this atmosphere and this ideology—we have insisted on celebrating, on that Simchat Torah and on last Sunday’s Hanukkah. Not out of denial, not out of provocation, and certainly not out of indifference to suffering, but out of clarity.

An ideology that seeks to confine Jewish life to fear, guilt, or conditional existence has nothing Jewish about it. It may speak the language of justice, morality, or even peace, but its effect is erasure. And erasure, in any form, is something Judaism has always resisted.

This is why Hanukkah matters so deeply this year. Not as folklore, not as comfort food for difficult times, but as a direct answer to the moment we are living in. Hanukkah is the festival of light and hope, yes—but it is also the festival of refusal. Refusal to disappear. Refusal to surrender identity in exchange for safety. Refusal to accept that Jewish existence must be justified by external approval.

And do not forget this, as uncomfortable as it may be for certain self-appointed spiritual leaders: at the heart of Hanukkah is a connection to Jerusalem. Hanukkah tells the story of Jews pressured to assimilate into Hellenistic culture, with all its demands for “universalism” and vague “values” in place of text. A culture that demanded conformity—not only in behaviour, but in belief. The Maccabees resisted not because they rejected the surrounding world, but because they refused to let Jewish life be erased or hollowed out. That struggle was not only military; it was spiritual. And it remains so today.

When we celebrate Hanukkah publicly and joyfully, we are making a statement. We are saying that Jewish safety and Jewish happiness do not depend on anyone’s permission—not on the approval of governments, not on the goodwill of crowds, and certainly not on the consent of those who deny our legitimacy.

This does not mean ignoring Palestinian suffering. Judaism has never demanded moral blindness. But it does reject the notion that Jewish life must be suspended, diminished, or morally disqualified in order to acknowledge the pain of others. Compassion is not self-erasure. Solidarity is not surrender.

So we celebrate—especially now. We light candles not because the world is safe, but because it is not. We sing not because fear has vanished, but because fear does not get the final word. We teach our children to play Maccabees, to search for the missing light, because that is how Jewish memory survives—through action, joy, and presence.

We refuse to shrink, to apologise, or to retreat. Our celebration is an affirmation. We are here. We belong. And we will not live only in fear or mourning.

Footnotes

1. Reuters, “Alleged Bondi gunman charged with 15 murders as funerals of victims begin” (16 Dec 2025): https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sydney-funerals-begin-bondi-beach-hanukkah-shooting-victims-2025-12-16/ ; see also The Guardian reporting on the Bondi Hanukkah attack and victims (Dec 2025): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/15/bondi-beach-terror-attack-father-son-duo-alleged-behind-shooting-licensed-firearms-ntwnfb

2. The Guardian, profile of the man who disarmed the shooter (Dec 2025): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/16/syria-ahmed-al-ahmed-who-disarmed-bondi-shooter-lauded-in-home-town

3. United Nations, Secretary-General’s remarks to the Security Council (24 Oct 2023): https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statements/2023-10-24/secretary-generals-remarks-the-security-council-the-middle-east-delivered

4. ABC News, bomb threats to synagogues (11 Oct 2023): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-11/jewish-synagogue-bomb-threats-australia/102964560

5. Sydney Morning Herald, hoax threats targeting Jewish schools (12 Oct 2023): https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/jewish-schools-targeted-by-hoax-threats-20231012-p5eb8y.html

6. The Guardian, kosher business firebombing report (15 Oct 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/15/kosher-restaurant-firebombed-sydney

7. News.com.au, cars set alight in a Sydney Jewish suburb (URL as provided): https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/crime/cars-set-alight-in-sydneys-jewish-suburb/news-story/

8. The Guardian, Melbourne synagogue arson attack report (7 Dec 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/07/melbourne-synagogue-arson-terrorism

9. The Jerusalem Post, report on antisemitic slogans and smoke bombs at an Amsterdam Hanukkah concert (Dec 2025): https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-880316 ; see also JNS report on detentions at the concert protest (Dec 2025): https://www.jns.org/amsterdam-police-detain-22-at-chanukah-concert-protest/

10. Jewish News (UK), report on Brighton memorial being targeted during a pro-Palestinian march: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/brighton-memorial-to-7-october-victims-targeted-during-pro-palestinian-march/

11. Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), statement referencing protests outside Park East Synagogue: https://urj.org/press-room/reform-jewish-leaders-statement-anti-zionist-protest-new-yorks-park-east-synagogue

12. The New Statesman (YouTube), “Is Britain complicit in the genocide in Gaza?” (13 Dec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLIl9r66B8Y

13. The New Statesman (YouTube), "The Bondi Beach shooting was an attack on Jews": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3QqOr9CS_o

14. The Jerusalem Post, piece arguing the “genocide” narrative construction (Sept 2025 as referenced): https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-866398