Light From the Darkness: Our Response to Tragedy

“In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” Pirkei Avot’s line is deceptively simple, and deeply demanding. It speaks to moments when moral clarity feels absent and responsibility cannot be outsourced. Chanuka arrives precisely in that space. It falls at the end of the month, as the moon wanes and darkness thickens, and it insists that this is exactly when light must be added. Not later, not once conditions improve, but now.

The shooting at Bondi Beach was one of those moments when the world feels suddenly unmoored. A public space turned into a scene of terror, lives taken senselessly, families and communities left grappling with shock and grief. In the aftermath, the instinct is often paralysis. What can ordinary people possibly do in the face of such violence?

Judaism rejects passivity. Chanuka does not commemorate the eradication of darkness, but the refusal to yield to it. A single candle does not chase away the night. It creates a point of warmth and visibility, and then invites another flame to join it. The mitzvah is cumulative, deliberate, and public. Each night, more light.

That idea takes on painful clarity in light of the murder of Rabbi Schlanger. As a shaliach, his purpose was not abstract. It was to show up, to build Jewish life where it might otherwise flicker out, to gather people together and make holiness tangible. He was murdered while hosting a Chanuka candle lighting party, in the middle of performing the mitzvah that defines this season. The symmetry is devastating.

Rabbi Schlanger was not engaged in confrontation or spectacle. He was doing what Chasidut understands as the core task of a Jew in the world: bringing light into dark places through presence, warmth, and consistency. Chasidic teaching does not imagine light as overwhelming force. Darkness is not defeated by argument or volume, but by steady illumination. One candle, then another, until the space itself is changed.

His death demands a response that matches his life. Not retreat. Not silence. Continuation.

Now, we are all shlichim.

Chanuka reminds us that responsibility does not belong only to those formally sent. When darkness asserts itself through violence, every Jew carries a piece of the mission. Memory in Judaism is active. To remember is to act differently. To mourn is to commit ourselves more deeply to the work that was interrupted.

Adding light does not require grand gestures. It requires intention. Invite neighbors, Jewish or not, to light candles together, even briefly, even imperfectly. Go to public candle lightings, not as a political statement, but as an act of shared humanity. Give extra tzedaka this Chanuka, not anonymously and not abstractly, but personally. Support a family in need, a local initiative, a shaliach working quietly far from attention. Check in on someone who feels alone. Create warmth where withdrawal would be easier.

These acts will not undo violence. They do something more enduring. They refuse to let brutality define the world we inhabit.

As the nights grow longer and the moon fades from view, Chanuka asks us to choose our response. In memory of Rabbi Schlanger, and in defiance of the darkness revealed at Bondi Beach, we can add light deliberately, publicly, and together. Not because it is sufficient, but because it is our task.