Mourners embrace on Dec. 16 near a memorial for victims of a mass shooting at a Chanukah event two days earlier at Bondi Beach in Sydney. 

As the rabbi of a Bay Area synagogue, I now have an unwelcome personal ritual. Before each Jewish holiday, I pray that no one will attack Jews gathering anywhere in the world. Checking the headlines afterward, I hold my breath, hoping no one has been harmed. 

Another massacre took place on Dec. 14 in Australia at a Chanukah event, the kind of party even secular Jews — and many people of other faiths — have attended. The next day, I was hours late to cook latkes with my children — one of whom is the same age as the youngest victim — because I was writing yet another message to my community about a massacre of Jews on a holiday. As I write this, time and resources that should be dedicated to creating joy are now spent booking security for our community’s Chanukah celebration.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Rather than focus on the heinous acts of the few, I endeavor to see the goodness of the many, hoping it will illuminate a way out of this pattern of killing and hate. Humanity is present in the heroism of Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim immigrant who stripped an attacker of his gun, and Boris and Sofia Gurman, Jewish immigrants who tried to wrest a weapon........

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