‘We will not cower’: Suburban Jewish community mark Hanukkah in wake of Australia attack

As Jews across the suburbs prepared to light the first menorah candles on Hanukkah, they were stricken by the news of a terror attack Sunday during a holiday celebration Sydney, Australia that claimed the lives of at least 15 people.

Rabbi Meir Moscowitz, director of Chabad of Northbrook and regional director of Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois, called the mass shooting a horrific, heinous act of antisemitic terror. But the Jewish community will remain strong, he added.

“We will not cower. We will not retreat,” he said. “This attack is meant to spread fear and darkness on the very holiday that symbolizes light. Our response as Jews and as a community is the opposite — it will strengthen Jewish light and Jewish pride with more menorah lightings, with more holiday celebration and with more community and connection.”

Among those killed in the attack was a prominent Chabad rabbi, Eli Schlanger. Moscowitz remembered Schlanger, who leaves behind a wife and four children, as someone full of life, energy and compassion.

“He was like a living menorah. He would light up the room. He would light up people around him,” he said.

Rabbi Yaakov Kotlarsky, co-director of the Chabad Jewish Center of Arlington Heights, urged Jews to double down on the celebration of Hanukkah and the public display of one’s Judaism.

The holiday commemorates the Maccabees' triumph against Syrian Greeks who sought to suppress Jewish religious practice, threatening capital punishment for Jewish observance.

“The Syrian Greeks wanted the Jewish people to stop practicing their Judaism,” Kotlarsky said. “If we lose our ability to live with our Jewish identity openly, then we're really losing what this holiday is all about.”

He quoted Rabbi Schlanger: “In the fight against antisemitism the way forward is to be more Jewish, act more Jewish, and appear more Jewish.”

A Hanukkah celebration in Mount Prospect moved forward as planned Sunday, with a candle lighting, dreidel spinning and serving of latkes.

However, host Howard Kleinstein, the village’s director of digital communications, said the victims in Australia were on participants’ minds.

“This is a happy celebration, but life takes precedence over death in the Jewish religion, and so while we think about it, we carry on,” he said. “And that's the story of Hanukkah, carrying on.”

U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston and Brad Schneider of Highland Park were among the 25 Jewish members of Congress to issue joint bipartisan statement condemning the terror attack.

“On a night meant for celebration, Jewish families in Australia, gathering in joy and peace on the first night of Hanukkah, were grotesquely targeted with hate and murderous intent,” the statement reads. “As we light the menorah each night and remember the miracle of the festival of lights, let us proclaim that light is stronger than darkness, right is stronger than might, and justice is stronger than tyranny. Wishing all Jewish communities and the world around us strength and peace.”