Bondi, Brown, Hanukkah and Sandy Hook

On Hanukkah, as we mourn victims in Providence and Sydney and recall 20 martyred first graders in Newtown and a grieving mother named Hannah, we cannot allow ourselves to be desensitized to atrocity.

I returned from a weeklong visit to sunny California this weekend to a wintry scene outside my Connecticut home. But my dreams of a white Hanukkah were punctured by the terrible news of the mass shootings at Brown and Bondi Beach¹.

Both of these horrific events hit home for me, a Jew and Brown alum, as they should for all of us for the singular reason that in our increasing numbness to unspeakable violence, we have become evil’s enablers.

How have we done that? By desensitizing ourselves to the sanctification of all life, to the essential truth that all human beings are created in God’s image. Each of us, every single soul, everyone is created in God’s image.

Yes, President Trump, even those who disagree with you politically are children of the same God, created in the divine image. Today you outdid yourself in shaming all Americans and your office with your despicable comments on the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. Despite your clear pathology, you deserve no sympathy. But you are entitled to be treated with the dignity befitting all human beings, created in God’s image.

Just last month, I attended a weekend at Brown celebrating 130 years of vibrant Jewish life. Given the anxiety felt there recently by Jews on campus, with tensions fanned by the Gaza conflict and Trump’s shameless shakedown of the school ostensibly to protect Jews, a move that bullied Brown into a controversial capitulation, I felt a need to be there and show my support for the school as a place where Jews have long felt embraced.

I must admit, at times it felt strange having to prove that obvious point, until I realized that Brown Hillel was the only building surrounded by bollards, and there was beefed up security at all Jewish events that weekend. Still, we had a great time and a video was made to show the world that Brown and its Jews get along just fine.

It felt eerie having to prove to the Trump administration that there is no antisemitism to see here - that was not the original purpose of the weekend, but it was an unavoidable outcome. In a macabre way, watching that highlight video almost felt like viewing those propaganda films from Nazi Germany showing how well Jews were being treated before the 1936 Olympics or at Terezin, the show-camp near Prague. I know this is a harsh thing to say, but we’ve fallen that far. I was wondering if I should smile for the camera and start to play volleyball. And while Jews are just fine at Brown, of course, and we are not living in Nazi Germany, the goal of the autocratic wannabees who lead America right now is to throw some doubt on all that, to gum the works and dull our minds, to make atrocities bearable and chaos inevitable.

According to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, the class that was attacked last weekend was a review session for a course taught by a Jewish professor with close ties to Israeli academia. Rachel Friedberg, professor of economics and faculty associate of the Judaic studies program, said that attack occurred during a review session for her principles of economics class, which, according to her bio, is “the most popular class at Brown, taken by half of all undergraduates.” And at Brown no class is required. That’s what makes Brown Brown.

Friedberg was not in attendance at that review session, as it was led by a teaching assistant. But of all the classes to invade on that day, in a building that is not the most accessible or centrally located, why walk into that one?

The Trumpian autocrats want us to be paranoid, so, to fight that instinct off, let’s assume for the moment that the Providence attacker was not targeting Jews. For what it’s worth, neither of the murder victims was Jewish. One was Ella Cook, vice president of the Brown College Republicans chapter. The other: Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, from Uzbekistan.

We can’t know this for sure, but the killer, who is now on the run, is probably sickened by the fact that his bullets chose the “wrong” victims. I think it’s a safe assumption that a Uzbekistan national and a parishioner from Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama were not on his Bingo card. Cook’s pastor announced her death at services on Sunday, calling her “incredibly grounded and generous and faithful” and a “bright light” in the church and in her community.

It’s just so damn sad.

And in Sydney, where all the intended victims were Jewish, perhaps scores or even hundreds were saved by the great hero of the moment, a Muslim named Ahmed Al Ahmed, a local convenience store owner who stumbled upon the scene and whose heroism was captured for eternity on video.

The horrors of this weekend remind us that we are all part of the same family, all of us created in God’s image. According to CNN, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the terrorists were “driven” by extreme ideology, were interviewed by security services in 2019 but “weren’t part of a wider cell.” But their poisoned extremist souls were no longer able to see that image of God in the eyes of his victims, especially Jews. To his credit, Albanese now intends to toughen Australia’s already strong gun laws.

Only some of the victims’ names have been released thus far, but I have an old friend who is a rabbi in Sydney and it’s just terrifying….

Only with the sanctification of all human life will we become safer.

These beautiful souls have been taken from us, people of different faiths and backgrounds. The killers have achieved in their crime, and the victims in their martyrdom, the kind of inclusiveness that the fascists call “woke” but in truth is a kaleidoscope of divine colors. All the dead, of all hues, are now together in divine embrace. And we the living are left to wrestle with evil remnant who only seek to divide and destroy.

So what does this all have to do with Hanukkah?

Over the centuries, Hanukkah has become as sanitized as a New England front lawn after a snowstorm, but at its historical core it is quite violent, with the focus on martyrdom.²

When you get right down to it, Hanukkah is a rather gruesome holiday. Victory for the Maccabees did not come without cost. Some of the heroes died gruesome deaths, like Elazar, Judah’s, brother, who met his demise when he crushed by an elephant. And the entire war started when Mattathias killed a Jew – not a Greek but a Jew – who was forced by a Greek soldier to sacrifice a pig to a pagan god, a Trumpian offer he couldn’t refuse. Sounds like the offer Trump made to Brown.

In the books of Maccabees, which did not make it into the Jewish sacred canon, time after time Jews are put to the sword, often willingly submitting to death rather than betraying their faith.

Among all of the Hanukkah stories, one is the most tragic of them all: the story of a woman named Hannah. Actually, in the book of Maccabees she doesn’t have a name. Later, she was given several names by rabbis and historians. But Hannah stuck, probably because she reminds us of the other Hannah, Samuel’s mother, who wept and prayed for a child she did not yet even have. She cried for the hope of having a child – any child – and in doing so she cried for all children.

In Maccabees, this mother who came to be known as Hannah saw all seven of her sons die in front of her – they were all victims of a cruel ruler who killed those who refused to betray their faith. It’s an unspeakable position for a mother to be in. Legend has it that when the king ordered the death of her youngest son, she asked permission to give him one final kiss. Granted this permission, she hugged him and whispered to him:

“Go to father Abraham and tell him that he was told to offer only one son – I’ve given seven.”

She died soon thereafter, some say by jumping from the synagogue roof.

Geez, all I want is a few latkes and chocolate coins, and instead I get this? Happy Hanukkah to all!

When the rabbis decided to deemphasize Hanukkah for political reasons (they were not fans of the Maccabees and their ruling Hasmonean descendants who were so ruthless they make our dog-killing ICE Barbie look gentle, but the festival was too popular to kill) they also downplayed the violence. Military victories could no longer be portrayed as the motivating miracles of the festival. Centuries later, with the gift of hindsight telling them that things would turn out very bad for the Jews, the rabbis shifted the focus to the miracle of the tiny bit of oil that went on an eight-night cruse.

So the martyrdom and military victories were downplayed, that is until the Maccabees staged a comeback in the 19th and 20th centuries, propelled by Zionism and other new assertions of Jewish pride.

Although I’m not a full-out militarist, I believe that to sanitize this story and downplay the senseless deaths of innocent people is to miss an opportunity to recall that God did not intend for humans to waste this precious gift of life. Martyrdom might sometimes be necessary, but cold-blooded murder never is.

Hanukkah always falls near the anniversary of the worst day ever in the state where I reside: the Sandy Hook massacre. Those 20 murdered first graders in Newtown were our modern equivalent of Hannah’s seven sons, sacrificed to the power and greed of the gun lobby.

Perhaps the grieving mother whose story is so tied to this holiday got her name of Hannah (Chanah) because it is also the name of the holiday. Chanu-kah means, literally, “Here is Hannah.” Hannah rests here. The last day of the festival, the eighth day, is known as “Zot Chanukah” echoing a phrase where the Torah uses in the feminine “Zot” (“this”) in relation to the word Hanukkah, which in this passage means “dedication” and is not the name of a holiday. But why is this day of the holiday spoken of in the feminine? One rabbi suggests that each candle on the eighth day serves as the as a yahrzeit (memorial) candle for Hannah and her seven sons.

I too have a yahrzeit at the end of the festival, for my father. I know what it is like to have the candles of joy and candles of sorrow intermingling.

We can’t deny the tragic. We cannot allow ourselves to be desensitized to atrocity, so that when it does occur, we will respond, and in doing so, light the light of hope.

Hanukkah is really a time of great darkness that was transformed into a festival light because people had the courage to kindle. It is through the lighting of those candles that we transform tragedy into hope for better days to come. To do so, we can not allow ourselves to avert our eyes.

And through those flames, we are reminded to cherish every life, for while friends and enemies come and go, all human beings are created in the image of God.

1. A selection of front pages from the past two days:

2. Ironically, the original focus on resistance to Greek oppressors through martyrdom is itself an example of the impact of Greek culture on ancient Judaism.