Heartbroken in Australia this Hanukkah

📷 credit: Pexels

Waking up in Melbourne to the news of the Hanukkah shooting at Bondi Beach, I sat in my hotel room heartbroken, answering frantic texts assuring people I was safe and checking in on friends. Amidst the texting, my mind kept jumping between memories. As someone of mixed Jewish and Catholic heritage I have only a few vivid Hanukkah memories, but one that kept bubbling up was of my great aunt Bobbe Frankenberg, talking to all her grandnieces and nephews when I was maybe six or seven, about the shamash candle, the helper candle, the ninth candle of Hanukkah that is used to light the other candles each night. As she picked up the pale blue shamash to light the first candle as the sun set, her personal instruction for us was to think about how we could be shamashim to others, “helpers in the world.”

I’ve spent the last decade making annual trips down under, working with dozens of Australian families, philanthropic networks, foundations, and Mannifera, a donor community supporting a fairer Australian democracy and economy that I helped launch. This has included a lot of time within the close knit Australian Jewish community which was at the heart of my visit this year, which made this Hanukkah violence hit even harder.

Another quote which sprang to mind yesterday was about helpers in disaster which my mom would always say to us as kids, in which Mr. Rogers famously recounted “When I was a boy and I would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” I saw that vividly represented in Ahmed al-Ahmed, who tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi Beach shooters, saving lives before being shot twice. His selflessness provided some comfort through the frantic messaging yesterday. 

If you’re feeling called to be a “helper” after the shooting, my friend Tracie Olcha who runs Australian Jewish Funders said the best way to help is by making a donation to the Bondi Beach Terror Attack Emergency Relief Fund. You can donate online here, or if you’d like to make a larger gift or direct a grant from your foundation or DAF, you can find all relevant info here. 

A friend shared some reflections from Rabbi Joel Simmonds hours after the shooting that particularly resonated with me. He wrote, “Time and again, joy is interrupted by grief. Ritual by rupture. Light by loss…. yet we light the candles again not because the night is safe-but because the night is dark, and our people have always answered darkness with light.” He was referring to the Jewish people, but I hope the same holds true for all of us. May we respond to darkness with light…

Today, after flying home from Australia with a heavy heart, I am holding all the families whose loved ones were hurt or killed in my thoughts, and I’m wishing you light amidst the darkness this Hanukkah.