UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in Hebrew).
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Jews around the world are mourning the victims of an attack in Australia, victims who included a young girl and a Holocaust survivor. The target was a celebration marking the start of Hanukkah on Sydney's Bondi Beach.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Hebrew) Sydney, Bondi Beach.
KELLY: In Israel, the tragedy is casting a heavy shadow. NPR's Jerome Socolovsky reports from Tel Aviv that people of all ages were looking forward to the holiday, especially this year.
SHAUL REIZES: (Speaking Hebrew).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yay.
JEROME SOCOLOVSKY, BYLINE: Rabbi Shaul Reizes lights the first candle on the giant Hanukkah menorah. It was at a ceremony like this one that two gunmen opened fire over the weekend in Australia. The Chabad movement organizes them every year in cities around Israel and the world. Reizes says the gunmen in Sydney won't change that, even though a Chabad rabbi was among the dead.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
REIZES: What they want to do is to bring more darkness to the world. And we are sure that our mission now, especially this night, is to bring more lights to the world.
(Singing in Hebrew).
SOCOLOVSKY: As the rabbi sings with the children, they play with toys that glow and sparkle.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPING)
SOCOLOVSKY: Alice Eldar is happy to be out celebrating again with her toddlers.
ALICE ELDAR: Hanukkah is back after a couple of years of...
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Vocalizing).
ELDAR: ...Being canceled.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Vocalizing).
ELDAR: Hanukkah is finally back.
SOCOLOVSKY: It is back in Tel Aviv, with lots of activities around the city for the first time since COVID and the wars that followed the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Now they can go out and buy the traditional jelly-filled donuts called sufghaniyot.
ELDAR: You know, eating sufghaniyot, celebrating. Come to see the lights...
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Vocalizing).
ELDAR: ...And everything.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Vocalizing).
ELDAR: Yeah. I feels like we can actually celebrate again.
SOCOLOVSKY: But the celebrations this year are overshadowed by what happened on a beach thousands of miles away.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES)
SOCOLOVSKY: I just walked down to the beach here in Tel Aviv where several volleyball games are going on under the floodlights. People are out for a stroll. There's some joggers on the boardwalk, and there's a vigil going on for the victims of the shooting in Australia.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing in Hebrew).
SOCOLOVSKY: People sing a song of peace as they huddle around memorial candles laid out forming a star of David on the boardwalk.
BEN FREEMAN: I'm here because I'm an Australian Jew, living in Israel, and I believe that it was important that I show up this evening.
SOCOLOVSKY: Ben Freeman says the rise in threats and violence back home became too much.
FREEMAN: When October 7 happened, things shifted massively in Australia. And I hung around for another year, and then I decided to pick up and come to a country where I wouldn't have to explain myself, and I could be free.
SOCOLOVSKY: He agrees with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's charge that Australian leaders didn't take antisemitism seriously.
FREEMAN: It was coming. It's been coming for a long time. I think their response to October 7 was really disappointing from the Australian government. And I think that we were far, far, far too left-field, and I think that, to be really, really honest, the blood is on their hands.
SOCOLOVSKY: Australian Jews here say they're heartbroken. Still, they miss their country, as you can hear when they conclude the vigil with their national anthem.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing) Australians let's us all rejoice, for we are young and free.
SOCOLOVSKY: Jerome Socolovsky, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing) In golden soil and wealth for toil, our home is girt by sea. Our land abounds in nature's gifts of beauty, rich and rare. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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