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When tragedy struck at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration in Sydney where 10 people died, the question wasn't "why did this happen?" but rather "how do we respond?" and the answer, rooted in the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings, is that we fight darkness not with more darkness but with more light, more Torah, more pride in our Judaism, because you can never truly kill a Jew who dies doing a mitzvah.
Today while learning at the Beit Midrash with my study partner, the news showed what happened at Chabad Sydney, the tragic incident where 10 people died at a Hanukkah celebration. Jews were celebrating light, and Chabad was out there in Sydney bringing light to the world, where thousands of people wanted to come and join in the Pirsumei Nisa, publicizing the miracle of Hanukkah. Yet somehow, even though the mitzvah of Hanukkah is specifically to publicize the miracle, this shaliach and 10 other people ended up being shot. How do we deal with that? How do we make sense of this?
I wasn't sure exactly how to process this question, so I went right next door to where I was learning, the Chabad of Yerushalayim in Ramat Shlomo, and I asked some of the Chabadniks: What would the Rebbe say in this situation? They shared with me the teachings of the shluchim, and the answer was clear: the Rebbe would say that a little bit of light pushes away a lot of darkness. When you have darkness, you make 10 more lights. You don't sit in the darkness questioning why God did this.
This reminded me of Rabbi Akiva. He taught Torah even when people told him he was endangering his life. He said we have no choice, we are Jews, we're like fish in the water, and telling us to leave the water is telling us to disconnect from our very life. A Jew isn't alive simply because he's Jewish; a Jew is alive because he's practicing Judaism. You can't kill a Jew who's practicing Judaism, his light will always stand forever.
This tragic story of 10 people dying became a great publicization of the miracle of Hanukkah. It spread all over the news, showing Jewish people in Sydney coming together to celebrate. This is something that's spreading throughout the world. You can't fight darkness with darkness, we must fight darkness with light.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that if you want to fight anti-Semitism, it doesn't help to question how it happened. There's a story where Rabbi Akiva is saying Shema while they're pulling the skin off his body with metal combs, and the angels and Moshe Rabbeinu ask God: "This is Torah, and this is the reward for Torah?" Hashem responds: "Be quiet, this is My way of thinking." The response is not to overthink it, but instead to be quiet about the questions and ask: What can we do now that this has happened? How can we spread more Torah?
I was at the Kotel the other day when a group of boys from Australia arrived, happy to be in Eretz Yisrael. These Jewish boys from Australia were singing the words they learned in Hebrew: "Wherever I'm going, I'm going to Eretz Yisrael." These Australian boys were wearing tefillin in a big circle, and someone spoke to them the most beautiful words about how important and precious wearing tefillin is.
When you think about Chabad, you think about two things: tefillin and Hanukkah. These are the two ways we show that we're proud to be Jews, spreading light and spreading joy and that's how we fight anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism doesn't mean they hate us for being Jewish. It means they hate us for being happy, for being proud, for having a land, for things going our way. When they see that, they can't stand it. When we respond by crumbling, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, staying quiet or keeping to ourselves and not celebrating in public, that's how they win. But when we say we're happy, when we keep spreading light to the world, when we're proud to be Jews and happy to have our own place, then we win this war against anti-Semitism. Hashem is going to bring us back to the land, happy that we're Jews, happy that we can keep His Torah and His mitzvot.
Not long ago there was an attack in Ramot by the bus stop, a crazy story where one Jew gave up his spot in a ride to someone else who was rushing to the hospital. He ended up on the bus, sitting and learning, and while he was learning, an Arab came on and killed him. You can't understand why, how could it be that a person in the middle of doing a mitzvah ends his life that way?
The Rema says in Shabbat Shuvah that the way a person dies is the way he'll be forever. If a person dies in the middle of a sin, he's like that forever. If a person dies doing a mitzvah, he's doing that mitzvah forever. You can't ever kill a Jew practicing Judaism. Imagine this Rabbi from Chabad, it's like he's lighting the menorah in front of thousands of people in Sydney forever and ever on the first night of Hanukkah, until the times of Mashiach comes.