(RNS) — The savage shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, is the deadliest attack on Diaspora Jews in recent memory. Fifteen people were killed after two gunmen opened fire on Sunday (Dec. 14), according to police, with the death toll surpassing the 11 people killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Shabbat in Pittsburgh in 2018. Those killed included a Chabad rabbi, Eli Schlanger. 

The heart has four chambers, mine all holding different emotions after the shooting.

In one chamber of my heart, there is profound sorrow — for those who were killed, their loved ones, the Jewish community of Sydney, Australia itself, the Jewish people and this broken world.

In another chamber, there is profound anger at those who minimize the meaning of the phrase “globalize the intifada.” “Intifada” comes from the Arabic root “nafad,” meaning “to shake off.” Intifada historically has meant organized uprisings against Israeli and Jewish targets — including attacks on buses, cafes, synagogues and civilians — ostensibly connected to the ongoing conflict between militant Palestinians and Israel.

I was in Israel during the Second Intifada. On March 9, 2002, I got a cup of coffee at one of my favorite restaurants, Café Moment, down the street from where I once lived in Jerusalem. I paid the bill and I began walking back to my hotel. 

Halfway there, I realized that I had left my rental mobile phone on the counter of the cafe. I began to walk back to retrieve it, then thought better of it, and continued to the hotel. You can always replace a rental phone. 

As I was walking back, a terror bomb destroyed the cafe. Eleven people were killed. Sixty-five were wounded. 

“Globalize” means “everywhere.” That means there’s nowhere on Earth Jews can feel safe.

The chamber of my heart holding anger is particularly angry at Jews who normalize, rationalize, contextualize and intellectualize the term “intifada.” Whether they admit it or not, they stand by the blood of Jews as it flows in streets, in sanctuaries and on beaches. The least they can do is be honest about it. 

This is an international war against Jews and Judaism, coming from both the right and the left. The pattern of attacks happening on Jewish holidays or holy days is not a coincidence. The attack on Bondi Beach was on the first day of Hanukkah. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was on Shabbat and Simchat Torah. The attack on Tree of Life Synagogue was during Shabbat morning services, during the Torah reading. The 1973 Arab-Israeli war started on Yom Kippur, when Jews were fasting and praying.

The Nazis understood this well. They routinely scheduled aktionen, or activity, on Jewish holidays. During the massacre at Babyn Yar, Ukraine, from Sept. 29-30, 1941, an estimated 33,771 Jews were murdered. The roundups began on Rosh Hashanah, and the killing ended on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Why would the Nazis do it? Why would their inheritors do it? To desecrate holiness. 

This is not just about Jews, but Judaism. Which brings me to the third chamber of my heart: defiance.

For too long, we have neutralized and sweetened Hanukkah so that it might fit into this general holiday season atmosphere of “peace on Earth, good will to men.” We have done to Hanukkah what the ambient culture has done to the Jews. We have forced it to conform.

Despite the latkes and the jelly donuts, Hanukkah is not a sweet holiday. It is a dangerous holiday that’s about resistance — spiritual, cultural and, when necessary, military resistance.  

The Maccabees rose up because the Seleucid regime sought to erase Judaism itself: banning Torah, desecrating the Temple and outlawing the even covenant. Hanukkah was not a fight over whether Jews would be safe. It was a fight over when Judaism itself would be safe.

The miracle of Hanukkah is not only that oil burned for eight days, but that the Jewish soul did not shatter. It refused to disappear. It refused to surrender.

If intifada once meant “shaking off,” then let it be known that Judaism has been shaking off annihilation for 3,000 years. Jewish hostages in Gaza shook off that annihilation in the tunnels as they stubbornly, courageously lit Hanukkah candles.

That leads to the final chamber of my heart, which contains hope. The hero of the Bondi Beach massacre, the man who tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen, has been identified as a Muslim man named Ahmed al Ahmed.

Like those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust — a group that included Muslims — he qualifies as one of the “righteous among the nations.” I have hope because al Ahmed saw across the abyss that sometimes divides our people, and he let the candles of our common humanity burn brightly. 

Our non-Jewish neighbors must realize that if they can target Judaism, no faith is safe. If they can hunt down Jews, no minority is secure, and if they can excuse violence against Jews as a political act, no morality can exist. 

We need you to stand against hatred, against murder and to state that to normalize anti-Jewish violence is to be complicit in our civilization’s failure. Each message I hear from my gentile friends adds to the glow of the candles in my heart.

I am asking my interfaith clergy colleagues to speak out about the attack, forcefully, from your pulpits, in your bulletin articles, in your social media postings. A very good friend, an Episcopal minister, texted me that the victims of Bondi Beach had been in his prayers, writing: “in solidarity with you and all, following the cruelty and violence on the beach in Sydney.”

I am thinking of the words of the Jews of the Vilna ghetto: “Mir zeynen do.” “We are here.” We are also here. We are not going away.