In the aftermath of the terror attack at Bondi Beach—where a jihadi father and son murdered fifteen Jews celebrating Hanukkah—grief spread across Jewish communities everywhere.

As the details emerged, the heartbreak deepened and the meaning of the moment grew heavier. A Holocaust survivor. A ten-year-old girl newly arrived from Ukraine. A Chabad rabbi whose home was open to all. Murdered for being Jews. In 2025. On Hanukkah.

And with that grief came a familiar fear, one Jews have learned to recognize across generations: would Jewish life retreat, once again, into the shadows?

And yet, what followed was not retreat.

That very night, the neighboring Chabad in Dover Heights refused to cancel its menorah lighting. From Cambridge to New York, Chabad rabbis and rebbetzins continued lighting menorahs in city squares.

Jews gathered for hastily organized vigils across continents. A video circulated of a young man—a survivor of the massacre—lighting Hanukkah candles from his hospital bed in Sydney. My friend Rabbi Daniel Epstein, the rabbi of the Mizrachi community in Melbourne, urged his community to recite the words we say on Hanukkah—bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, “in those days, in our time”—as a prayer, asking God to protect us in these days.

When I read his message, I heard not only a prayer, but a demand. In those days, God acted—but Jews also acted. They refused submission. They stood. They fought. Bazman hazeh asks us whether we will do the same.

Responding to terror with public Jewish presence—with visibility, resolve, and pride—is not a natural instinct.

More than any other figure in modern Jewish life, the Lubavitcher Rebbe prepared Jews for moments exactly like........

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