Candles in the Wind
When lighting the first menorah candle for the usually celebratory opening night of the Jewish festival of lights on Sunday, it was hard not to perceive the dripping wax taking the shape of teardrops, as a confluence of three stories made the launch of the holiday season feel like the Hanukkah from hell. At Bondi Beach in Australia, a father-son terror team opened fire on a public Hanukkah festival, killing 15 and injuring dozens more. The victims included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. There would have likely been many more victims if not for the heroism of a bystander named Ahmed el Ahmed, who disarmed one of the gunmen, in an incredible, selfless act of bravery. The deadly attack on Bondi Beach follows a rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia. This rise (and the associated violence) is hardly limited to Australia. And sadly, it could be most prevalent among young people. Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one. As David Frum explains, “It’s long past time to stop saying ‘Anti-Semitic violence has no place in our society.’ Outrage upon outrage confirms that anti-Semitic violence has a large and expanding place in Western societies—that it is supported by many, that it is tolerated by many more.”
+ Australia is already known for strict gun laws. The country’s leaders have promised to respond to this shooting by tightening those gun laws even more. History shows all too clearly that we’ll see no such American response to the campus shootings at Brown University, which killed two students and injured several others. Campus (and other mass) shootings are so common in America that it doesn’t even surprise us to learn that some of the students who experienced the Brown attack were previously victims of other school shootings. “Officials in Providence, R.I., said Sunday evening that police are releasing a man in his 20s who was briefly held as a person of interest. His release leaves authorities without any known suspect.” Gunman remains at large two days after deadly shooting at Brown University.
+ And then we got the third shocking story of the weekend as we learned that Rob and Michele Reiner had been killed in their home, with their son Nick being held on suspicion of murder. Aside from being a kind, decent, and enormously popular and loved figure in Hollywood who first gained fame in All in the Family, Reiner, A Quiet Titan of Storytelling, is responsible for an almost unimaginable string of entertainment—as a director, a producer, and an actor—that has been released over decades. Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, Spinal Tap, and the list goes on. Reiner’s movies hold a place in American culture, with lines that have entered the cultural lexicon: You can’t handle the truth! … I’ll have what she’s having … Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya … and of course, This one goes to eleven. Some days, like the ones over the weekend, going to eleven is just too much to take. I’m covering these stories together because that’s how I experienced them, and I imagine many others felt the same, as we suffered an extreme version of the bad news onslaught that we dread every time we hear a phone notification in 2025. What’s the solution? I don’t have any pithy lines or humorous outtakes on that topic. The only thing I know for sure is that I’ll strike a match and light the second Hanukkah candle tonight. We could use a little light.
