JTA — December light is brief in Iceland. It was not yet 4 p.m., and by the time the giant menorah was lit in downtown Reykjavík, the day had already slipped into darkness. A steady drizzling rain blurred the streetlights and soaked the pavement where fewer than 100 people gathered, roughly half of the country’s Jewish population, which has always been small and largely unseen.

The celebrants were calm, almost subdued; security was not. Armed plainclothes police ringed the area. They moved through the crowd while surveillance drones hovered overhead. Air support was on standby, measures almost unheard of in a country that tops the world’s most peaceful list.

The gathering took place just hours after news broke of the most recent terrorist attack on Jews, this one a celebration of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

Rabbi Avraham Feldman and his wife, Mushky, welcomed the crowd, their voices steady but restrained. Iceland’s minister of foreign affairs, Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdóttir, followed, and she lit the menorah herself. Curious passersby slowed, some watching silently before moving on. The event passed without incident.

“The attack in Sydney reminds us that darkness is not only something we read about in history books. It still exists in the world and appears suddenly and violently,” said Avraham Feldman, who is associated with the Chabad movement, which makes public menorah-lightings a centerpiece of its outreach around the world.

“Hanukkah does not ask us to deny this darkness,” he added. “Instead, Hanukkah teaches us that each and every one of us can create light and positivity. Even a small light pushes away great darkness. And when many lights stand together, we overpower the darkness.”

In a statement issued the same day, Gunnarsdóttir condemned the attack in Sydney, which took place at a Chabad event. “I strongly condemn the horrific attack on those celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Australia,” she said. “There is no place, anywhere, for antisemitism or terror. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the victims, their loved ones, and others affected.”

Her presence at the Hanukkah event carried significance well beyond the ceremony itself. Iceland’s government has been among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, and public discourse around the war in Gaza has been........

© The Times of Israel