After the Bondi massacre, grief was swiftly overtaken by politics. Public mourning and the misuse of symbols raise hard questions about solidarity, power and what genuinely brings light.

Like most in our country and now around the world, I have been traumatised by the magnitude and consequence of the loss of human life and incalculable suffering on one of our golden beaches. Yet sometimes, when feelings run so deep they can numb us, symbols will release them in ways that words simply can’t.

Last week, at my regular Sunday morning coffee, I mentioned that it was the first day of Hanukkah. The only Jew around the table, I struggled to explain that this was our holiday commemorating the 165 BC Maccabee uprising against Seleucids, the Hellenistic-ruled Syrians who desecrated our Second Temple. A holiday that usually coincides with  Christmas, it’s called the Festival of Lights.

Having recaptured the Temple, the Jews took shelter in it, but found only enough oil there to last a single night. Miraculously, the oil lasted for eight.  From this comes the nine-branched candelabrum, or Hanukkiah, to differentiate it from the seven-branched one used for sabbath.

We Jews have many holidays, but Hanukkah was a favourite of the Zionists, for Jewish children in the diaspora too, serving as it could as consolation for our missing out on Christmas. With eight presents instead of one and the Hanukkah gelt, coins made of chocolates wrapped in gold paper, it was an eight-day delight.

For all that, in all my life I never could have imagined that one day I would see a Hanukkiah light up the Sydney Opera House.

There weren’t many Jews in the Australia I came to in 1958, and given its White Australia........

© Pearls and Irritations