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A multi-faith commemoration in Brisbane of the Bondi massacre shines a light to the worldDear , This year it’s late. Blame Trump’s adventurism in Venezuela for that, along with a Spectator commentary on it I’ve published. We may not live in a majority Christian society anymore, but our culture still operates with a Christian grammar. Antecedents matter. If we don’t rehearse them, we end up with formalism without substance – something on display at the Lord Mayor’s Christmas Carols, which managed only one or two actual Christmas carols amid a forest of high-stepping musical numbers. But this year is different. On December 14, fifteen people were massacred on Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists during a celebration of Hanukkah, a Jewish religious festival. Our complacency in comfortable Australia has fractured. The illusion that we are insulated from the world’s troubles has been shattered. The shallowness of our leaders has been exposed. The evil that lives in parts of our community has erupted. Life cannot go on as before. And we owe it to those fifteen martyrs to redeem our world and make it whole again. That task belongs to all of us. I include not only political leaders and law enforcement agencies who have allowed this evil to fester – or even fostered it – but also the communities from which the killers emerged. There is little I can add about the martyrs themselves that has not already been said. There was innocent Matilda. Boris and Sofia Gurman died trying to disarm one of the terrorists. Tibor Weitzen died shielding his wife. Reuven Morrison died after throwing a rock at an attacker. Alex Kleytman survived the Holocaust only for Hitler’s work to be grotesquely finalised on Bondi Beach. Rabbi Eli Schlanger died with his flock. And nine more innocents besides. What I can do is place these events in both a Jewish and a Christian frame. Some of these reflections were prompted by the Queensland Solidarity Event for the Bondi Chanukah terror attack, held at Brisbane City Hall on December 21. There were eleven speakers: four politicians, two Christian clergymen, one imam, one rabbi, and three representatives of the Jewish community. There were stirring moments. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, a father of four, focused on Matilda and spoke of the power in the room to ensure this never happens again. He broke down at one point. Premier David Crisafulli, speaking without notes, was particularly impressive and pledged the full support of the state. I was disappointed by the clerics. Their speeches were woolly, abstract, and often disconnected from the horror we were there to confront. The event also revealed how tangled interfaith gatherings can become when theological differences are papered over rather than acknowledged. Rabbi Jaffe of the Brisbane Synagogue told us he had spoken to Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York, whose tradition many of the martyrs belonged to, and that the Rebbe assured him the Messiah would be coming shortly. This is ironic. The two Christian clerics believe the Messiah has already come and were days away from celebrating the two-thousand-and-somethingth anniversary of his birth. Muslims, too, believe Jesus is the Messiah. All three traditions mean very different things by the word. This is a reminder that religions are not interchangeable moral dialects, however comforting that idea may be. The Anglican Archbishop, Jeremy Greaves, acknowledged that the Christian Church has at times promoted antisemitism. The Catholic Archbishop, Shane Mackinlay, made no such acknowledgement, despite Rome’s greater historical complicity, particularly its failures during Nazi Germany. In the current context, the imam should also have acknowledged Islam’s historical designation of Jews as second-class citizens, and the fact that some branches of Islam explicitly authorise violence against them. The standout speech came from Hesam Orouji, an Iranian-Australian community advocate and Brisbane-based leader of the Iran Novin Party. There is a deep historical connection between Persians and Jews, going back 2,500 years to 538 BC, when Cyrus the Great of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity and rebuild the Temple. Hesam received a standing ovation because he did something rare. He named Iran, and fundamentalist Islam, as the source of the current wave of antisemitism. Compared with the careful metaphors and fine sentiments of others, his was a call to action. He refused to dance around the problem. At the end of the event, the Hanukkah menorah was lit. Watching this, I wondered why none of the religious figures had actually explored Hanukkah itself. So I have. Hanukkah is a celebration of resistance. It commemorates the retaking of Jerusalem and the Temple from Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek Seleucid ruler of Judea, in 164 BC. Antiochus desecrated the Temple, declared himself a god, and forced Jews to publicly renounce their faith. There are nine martyrs whose deaths precede the uprising. First comes Eleazar the scribe, who refuses to eat forbidden meat even when offered a way to survive by deception. Integrity, the story teaches, matters more than survival. Then come seven brothers, martyred one by one. As they die, they proclaim belief that God will raise them from the dead and punish Antiochus. Resistance, even unto death, is not merely existential defiance; it summons divine justice and restoration. The Jews rise up under the priest Mattathias, and the Temple is retaken by his son Judas Maccabeus – “the Hammer”. There is only enough oil for the menorah to burn for one day, but it lasts eight while fresh oil is prepared. This is the origin of the nine-branched Hanukkah menorah. Today, Hanukkah emphasises the miracle of the oil. Originally, it celebrated the rededication of the Temple. With Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus, a Jewish boy born in Bethlehem about ten kilometres from the Temple, I wondered whether there was any biblical evidence that Jesus attended Hanukkah. There is. And like most Christians, I’d missed it. Only John records the event: Then came the Festival of Dedication [Hanukkah] at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts, walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” (John 10:22–24) NIV There’s that word again: Messiah. Jesus responds by making two claims. First, that he is divine: “I and the Father are one.” Second, that his followers will be resurrected. These are not what Jews mean by Messiah. They are radical, heretical claims made at a festival celebrating the re-establishment of proper worship of YHWH. It is not surprising that the crowd wants to stone him on the spot. According to John, this is when the Sanhedrin begins to plot his execution. Three months later, at the Crucifixion, they succeed. Whatever one thinks about literal resurrection, the continued existence of Christianity is testimony to the generative power of martyrdom. Jesus is very much “alive” today. Early Christians were Jews. They would have celebrated Hanukkah, but with a different emphasis. Jesus claimed to be both the Temple and the Light. It is difficult to imagine that these claims did not reshape how they understood the festival. Early Christians did not celebrate Christ’s birth. That comes in the fourth century. Easter – death and resurrection – was central. Even Christmas carries this shadow: myrrh, one of the Magi’s gifts, is a burial perfume. In this way, Hanukkah symbolism seeps into Christian understanding. Like the menorah, Christ is light in darkness. His martyrdom leads not to extinction, but to renewal – a re-dedication of the world. In that sense, there was power in the room at Brisbane City Hall. Both Jews and Christians understand, in different ways, that martyrdom is not the end. It is the beginning. The terrorists believed they were destroying. In fact, they were creating something they cannot destroy. This is not a passive insight. It demands action. It demands that we identify and confront the sources of evil rather than cloak them in euphemism. No more kumbaya sermons. Be more like Hesam Orouji. 
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