December 14, 2025
Dear Micah Community,
We are writing in response to devastating news: a shooting at a public Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney that targeted Jews as they gathered to publicly light candles on the first night of Hanukkah.
Our hearts are with the victims, their families, and a global Jewish community that knows this pain too well.
Moments like this clarify a deep message of the Hanukkah story– that bringing Jewish life into the open can require courage, and that light is never lit because the world is already safe or whole.
The rabbis taught that the menorah belongs in the window—exposed, beautiful, defiant. Rachel Posner understood this well. In 1931, in Kiel, Germany, she placed her family’s menorah on the windowsill even as a Nazi flag hung across the street. On the back of the photograph she later wrote: “‘Death to Judah,’ so the flag says. ‘Judah will live forever,’ so the light answers.” That inscription is Jewish defiance.
Writing decades earlier, Theodor Herzl imagined the menorah in much the same way: “First one candle — it is still dark and the solitary light looks gloomy. Then it finds a companion, then another, and yet another. The darkness must retreat. ” Light, in his telling, is persistent. It gathers as it spreads.
Our sages add one more dimension.
נֵר ה׳ נִשְׁמַת אָדָם
“The soul of a person is God’s lamp” (Proverbs 20:27).
Which is to say: the light we place in the window begins somewhere deeper. Every outward act of illumination draws strength from an inner source.
So tonight, when we light our candles, we do so with full hearts—holding grief, fear, love, and resolve. We light for the miracles and the wonders, yes, but also for the struggles our people continue to face. We light knowing that the world is not yet redeemed, but that symbols still matter. Light still matters.
This is the Jewish story: we answer the darkness.
We’d like to offer the poem below by Leah Goldberg and translated by Rabbi Slakman, as a reading for the first night of Hanukkah.
Wishing you light in the darkness,
Shalom,
Rabbi Joshua Beraha
Rabbi Healy Slakman
Rabbi Dr. Kari Tuling
Leah Goldberg
Will there yet come days of forgiveness and grace,
When you will walk in the field as the innocent wayfarer walks?
And the soles of your feet caress the clover leaves:
Though stubble will sting you, sweet will be their stalks.
Or rain will overtake you, its thronging drops tapping
On your shoulder, your chest, your throat, your gentle head bowed,
And you walk in the wet field, the quiet in you expanding
Like light in the hem of a cloud.
And you will breathe the odor of furrow, breathing and quiet,
And you will see mirrored in the gold puddle the sun above,
And simple will be these things and life, permitted to touch,
Permitted, permitted to love.
Slowly you will walk in the field. Alone. Unscorched by flame
Of conflagrations on roads that bristled with horror and blood.
Again
You will be peaceful in heart, humble and bending
Like one of the grasses, like one of us.