Chanukah (“rededication”) commemorates the restoration of Jewish sovereignty, reasserting our agency as a people following a campaign to erase Jewish practice and identity from public life (2nd c BCE).

The holiday exists to mark the moment Jews chose survival with identity over survival without it.

Thank you for sharing, Justin. I think the Jewish community would very much like to see some action taken against antisemitism, which has become extraordinarily pervasive in Australia in recent years. The equation is guns + extremism = violence. We need action on both elements.

It’s very hard for people who aren’t Jewish to understand. I wrote this to help explain it.

bsky.app/profile/rabk...

You chose to post once about this, and the focus is that the NYT didn’t identify the rescuer as Muslim.

Can you explain why narrative protection against anti-Muslim backlash takes precedence, for you, over centering an antisemitic massacre of Jews?

Ben, you can say it: it was an “attack on Jews” in Sydney. Come on, man.

bsky.app/profile/rabk...

8/ Tonight, Jews everywhere are lighting Chanukah candles to banish this darkness. Perhaps our friends and neighbors will join us.
#AmYisraelChai

7/ We may never eradicate antisemitism, but we have to do everything possible to make antisemitism socially expensive and culturally indefensible while protecting Jewish life as core obligation of a democratic society.

6/ Security saves lives, but it doesn’t end hatred. That takes moral clarity, enforceable norms, platform accountability, education that teaches pattern recognition, and leadership that refuses alliance with those who foment hate.

5/ Criticism of Israeli policy too easily morphs into collective punishment of Jews. When Jewish identity, safety, or self-determination is uniquely denied, the line has already been crossed.

4/ “Just rhetoric” online is not harmless. Algorithms turn fringe ideas into norms, norms into movements, movements into action. Memes are part of the threat surface.

3/ Violence follows permission. When leaders hedge, excuse, or relativize attacks on Jews, they signal that Jewish lives are negotiable. Dehumanization always comes before bloodshed.

2/ Antisemitism isn’t just prejudice. It’s a full-stack conspiracy system. Jews are blamed for everything, which is why the ideology travels so easily across left, right, and religious movements.

The word “chemtrail” is completely meaningless and associated with a wacky conspiracy theory. They are called contrails and they do have a significant impact on climate change. So if they want to connect the dots, maybe they can start to admit climate change is a real problem.

This was fun. I fed ChatGPT Chiang’s argument, and out came this.

I, for one, gave it 10/10.

“Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope.”
- R. Jonathan Sacks