A man pays his respects to victims of the Bondi Beach shooting in Sydney on Monday.Hollie Adams/Reuters

Dan Moskovitz is the senior rabbi of Vancouver’s Temple Sholom, and the author of the forthcoming book These Are The Things: Finding Meaning in a Distracted World.

In the book of Genesis, a father gives his teenage son a beautiful, distinctive garment. Joseph’s coat of many colours is not just a gift – it is a declaration. It marks him as visible, different, full of promise.

Jewish tradition understands that coat as far more than a symbol of favouritism. It announces identity in a world that does not yet know how to respond to difference with generosity. And it becomes three things at once: a source of pride, a trigger for resentment, and eventually, something Joseph must learn to shed to survive.

That ancient tension felt strikingly contemporary well before the deadly attack on the Jewish community in Sydney on the eve of Hanukkah; now, it is soul-crushing. Such devastating acts are part of a troubling global pattern that has forced Jewish communities everywhere to ask difficult questions about safety, visibility and resilience – questions that are far from abstract. The security guards outside our synagogues and community centres are not for show: There is real danger for Jews in Canada........

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