The only thing in our hearts and in our minds right now is Sydney.
We’re horrified, shaken, numb.
It’s a small world; we all know each other. One of the murdered rabbis grew up in Johannesburg in my parents’ community.
There are no words sufficient to encapsulate the scope of the barbarism, the loss, the fear.
The truth is, so many of us feel helpless.
In Sydney or Melbourne, Johannesburg or London, Paris or New York,
Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, or Chicago … it feels like everywhere we turn, we are hated and hunted.
Jew-hatred is no longer whispered in the shadows, hidden behind closed doors. It’s spinning freely across the globe, given a platform not only on social media but in the mainstream media as well.
And we ask ourselves the same question over and over: What can we do?
This week, in the middle of all that heaviness, with Sydney and the victims deeply on my mind, I took my kids to Central Park for the annual “Chanukah on Ice” at Wollman Rink.
Jews skating openly in the middle of Manhattan. Lights. Music. Sufganiyot. Children laughing.
I dropped the kids off and went to park the car. As I walked back toward the rink, it was dark and extremely slippery. The snow hadn’t been shoveled and I carefully picked my way around the many icy patches that were hard to see in the dark.
Ahead of me, I watched an elderly woman walking slowly and carefully. No one else was around. And then, right in front of me, she slipped and fell hard, the back of her head slamming into the ground with a terrifying bang.
I ran to her, my heart pounding. “Are you okay?”
She looked up at me, dazed, frightened, completely vulnerable. “Am I dead?” she asked. “Am I in heaven? Are you an angel?”
“No,” I said gently. “You’re alive. You’re here. You’re with us.”
I asked for her name and where she lives. I spoke calmly, trying to reassure her and assess the situation.
“I think I’m bleeding in my brain,” she said. “I think I’m going to die in the next few minutes.”
With 8 kids, I’ve seen a lot of banged heads. I know the signs. I watched her closely and although she was badly shaken, she was okay.
I helped her up and walked with her, one step at a time, one hundred feet, two hundred feet, until we reached the entrance where there were people and light.
Later that night, she found me and thanked me.
When I told my wife what had happened, I felt something unexpected wash over me. I felt so good. Accomplished. I had done something so small, with no audience or fanfare, but I had done my part to spread light in a time of immense darkness.
In a world that feels completely out of control, I was able to help one human being not feel alone in the dark.
And suddenly, everything became clear: This is who we are. This has always been who we are.
Our job is not to scream louder to convince the world to love us.
Our mission is simply to spread light.
And then more light. And more light. And more light.
That is our response to Sydney, to hatred, to fear. It’s exactly what the rabbis murdered on that beach would have wanted from us.
Think how much darkness one small flame can illuminate. When we all flicker, we can completely dispel the darkness.
The darkest moment of the night comes right before dawn—surely we are standing on that precipice right now. The exile is almost over and Moshiach is coming imminently.
Until then, we light the candles, we help the fallen, and we refuse to let the darkness win. Not today. Not ever.