In the first months of 2026—two months after the Bondi attack—we pause to take stock of what the last year has taught us, and to reflect on its lessons. And we ask, as Jews and as citizens: what did Hanukkah 2025 ask of us, and what does it ask of us still? How do we move forward, so the mistakes and tragedies of 2025 do not carry into 2026, after the glow of our menorahs mixed with mourning flames?

Hanukkah isn’t meant to be a private religion of secluded comfort and nostalgic memories. It makes a demand: put the light where someone else can see it. Which is why the Bondi Beach terror attack in Sydney, carried out during a public Hanukkah gathering, seemed cruelly ironic: the holiday that commemorates the triumph of light over darkness began with an act of utter darkness. 

For Jewish readers, this wasn’t just another targeted incident. It touched schools, shuls, and the quiet decisions many of us made about public Jewish life in the aftermath. It wasn’t only that Jews were attacked. Society now faces an unavoidable moral reckoning; Jews and non-Jews alike must ask: what gave darkness an opening, and how do we close it?

The cause is not merely a security failure. It is a moral failure.

As we near the two-month mark in a post-Bondi world, many have echoed the same sentiment in different accents: “Australia is not Australia anymore.” Perhaps. But the deeper question is the one that we avoid because of the cognitive dissonance it induces: what was Australia to begin with—ideologically? Not as a tourism brand. Not as a beckoning coastline. Not as a “no worries, life is good” vibe. But as a society: what are you for? Where are you going? What do Australians live for, beyond just living well? In a new year, those questions are not thought experiments; they are urgent calls for introspection and change.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: We cherish freedom, democracy, and tolerance as standalone ideals, but we often misunderstand them. These ideals, as precious as they are, do not by themselves provide purpose. Being free or tolerant answers how we live together, not why we live at all. Simply roaming unimpeded is not a uniquely human aspiration. All mammals are free to roam unhindered. Hence why these democratic notions secure the space for a nation’s soul, but they are not a soul in themselves. They can remove obstacles. They can create space. But they cannot tell you what the space is for or what a collective people live for. 

If a country’s primary philosophy is “Let me be,” the obvious follow-up question is: “Where are you going?” If the answer is, “I don’t know,” you’ve lost the war before it starts.

We keep treating violence like a plumbing malfunction: patch the leak with another law, add more locks, install more cameras, deploy more guards. But the real question is not how many policemen you should add. The deeper question is: why do people resort to crime in the first place? And why does evil, to some, start to feel like purpose?

Evil flourishes where purpose is absent. A society with no inner compass becomes easy prey, because when people are directionless, someone else comes and grabs the rudder. Purpose always wins over no purpose; and even a bad plan always defeats no plan.

And this is not theoretical. Australia’s own Jewish community has been warning for years that antisemitism isn’t a random outbreak; it is a symptom of something broader. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s (ECAJ) 2025 Report on Anti-Jewish Incidents in Australia logged 1,654 antisemitic incidents in a recent twelve-month period—roughly four times the annual pre–October 7 baseline. Then, in December, the violence metastasized onto a beach. One might think that Australia had it coming. But why? 

The roots go deeper than just antisemitism. Yes, antisemitism is an ancient hatred, but it doesn’t strike in a vacuum. Happy, purpose-filled people do not wake up one day eager to shoot up a Hanukkah party. The attack in Sydney was not the spontaneous combustion of age-old bigotry; it was a symptom of a deeper societal breakdown: a void of purpose and meaning that is begging to be filled, even by the worst ideologies. 

A culture that stops teaching right from wrong eventually discovers that wrong has no shortage of enthusiasts.

History offers a sobering parallel. We ask how a cultured nation like Germany—home to philosophers, composers, scientists—descended into Nazi mayhem. However, a society can be sophisticated and still be empty. Germany in the 1930s was economically shattered, humiliated after World War I, fundamentally demoralized and disoriented. Unsurprisingly, when a Jew-hating fanatic arrived with a plan and a narrative—however immoral—millions went along. Not because evil is smarter than good, but because society was ripe for direction and meaning it lacked. The German people were running on empty and “better than nothing” is persuasive when you have nothing. 

Hence, a society that stands for nothing will fall for anything.

This is why the Bondi Beach massacre cannot be answered only with more enforcement. Yes, governments must protect citizens. Yes, hate speech must be stymied. But if your only answer is legislation and surveillance, you’re building a bigger cage while fundamentally ignoring why people are acting like animals in the first place. More armed guards at synagogues, tougher hate-speech laws, and louder condemnations on social media may be well-intentioned, but they’re treating symptoms, not the disease itself. Clamping down on things is not a long-term cure when the real issue is that people’s hearts and minds are empty or unclear. It’s not about needing more police or punishment or laws: those are all placing band-aids on a bullet hole. Flooding the streets with police might deter the next shooter, but it won’t fundamentally address why people are drawn to extremist hate to begin with. We could muzzle every bigot’s tongue, but if the moral void remains, new hatreds will find a way to fill it back up. 

Every society needs an immune system to fight off inherent evil, not just a prison system to clamp down on occasional outbursts. You don’t build a nation’s immune system with cameras. You build it by shoring up conviction: shared, humane, non-negotiable convictions about what a human being is, why life matters, and what decency requires even when you’re angry.

So what should we do—this week, this month, and this year—if we want fewer Bondi Beaches?

Nurture purpose. Comfort is not a mission. “Live and let live” is not a moral system. The longer-term antidote is to give people something to live for that is so compelling they would never throw it away on hatred. We don’t need pity; we need purpose. A society that can’t answer “What are we living for?” will eventually be forced to answer “What are we dying for?” And, increasingly now, the worst people are willing to supply that answer. We need public rhetoric for meaning: responsibility, virtue, sacredness, duty, goodness. Not as throwaway notions, but as foundational building blocks for a meaningful life.

Stop lying to ourselves about real education. The solution begins with education, but not the kind measured only by test scores, rather, it begins with education in values and purpose. It is incumbent to teach children from the youngest age why life matters and why goodness matters. This doesn’t require a specific curriculum in schools, but it does require the courage to say that right and wrong exist and that life has meaning beyond material success. An education that omits moral guidance is itself immoral. We keep asking kids to “be good,” but we have stopped giving them a common language of goodness. “Be nice” is not a moral code. “Don’t be offensive” is not a moral code. If we refuse to systematically teach right and wrong, we will eventually try to enforce ethical behavior by force. And by then it may be too late.

Build identity—because identity rooted in purpose is the best deterrence against evil. Purpose is what produces resistance to evil. It is not a personality trait; it is the natural byproduct of knowing who you are and why you’re here. When identity is flimsy and purpose is lacking, fear takes control. When identity is solid, fear becomes background noise and hatred is easier to defeat. We see the results: disaffected youths seduced by extremism, or by nihilism. In the absence of a healthy identity, even identity itself can turn toxic. People with no strong sense of self or purpose will latch onto tribalism or become putty in the hands of demagogues. A frightened young Jew might wrongly imagine that hiding their Jewishness, or even switching sides, will save them. But history and Hanukkah teach a different lesson: surrender of identity is no safety at all. It only hands victory to the oppressor without a fight. 

That’s why it mattered so much that, after Bondi, Jews gathered again, publicly, refusing to let darkness own the beach. They didn’t return with vengeance. They returned with one of the oldest Jewish answers to intimidation: with light and faith, because the only thing that truly defeats darkness is increasing the light. As we begin a new year, this lesson is not fleeting; it is urgent. If we want fewer attacks, fewer hatreds, and fewer extremist causes, then we must build societies with a soul. And if we want Jews to be safe, we must inspire Jews to lead a purposeful life. Indeed, we must enable all people to be confident in that purpose and confident in their identity. 

Bondi Beach was a tragedy. But tragedy is also a wake-up call. A society that rediscovers purpose becomes harder to radicalize. A person who knows what they’re living for becomes harder to recruit into hate. Jews who know who they are don’t shrink or cower in the face of evil. They kindle, and they invite the world to kindle with them. We are here to bring goodness into the world and, as Jews, we should embrace the responsibility of bearing light through teaching, through example, through steadfast moral leadership in our homes and communities. 

The final night of Hanukkah has long passed, but the lessons of Hanukkah are not over. In a new year, its challenge to us burns year-round: Will we choose to stand proudly with the light, or will we let it dim? By embracing who we truly are, and being confident in our identities, each of us becomes a shamash (the servant candle) that ignites many others. 

Hanukkah was never about being “loud.” It was about refusing to become vague. The Ancient Greeks didn’t need Jews to stop existing; they needed Jews to stop being Jewish. They didn’t want our extinction as much as the evaporation of Judaism and Jewishness itself. The true miracle of Hanukkah is not only that the oil burned longer than expected; it is that a small people with a resilient identity refused to surrender it. They would not barter away the one thing that makes life worth defending: a reason to be who they are. We light a menorah outward not for acknowledgement, but to invite everyone to add their light to it. 

The menorah is not a boast; it’s an invitation. It says: there is goodness in the world, and you can contribute to it. Don’t just applaud light. Join it. Strengthen it. Demand it. For all people, that means more than solidarity; it means moral clarity and the willingness to stand for what is right with enough purpose and direction to hold steady, especially when darkness and evil offer themselves as a substitute for meaning and virtue.

Darkness and evil are necessarily temporary, and in our sober moments we believe that the time has come for all evil to end and for all pain to disappear when nations will “beat their swords into plowshares”. May the new year and all ensuing years be a time not only for peace, but for goodness, when God will wipe away all tears.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)