After Bondi Beach shooting, Seattle Hanukkah festivities shine light

Hanukkah is supposed to be a joyous holiday, said Bothell resident Marisa Klein. Instead, she’s feeling worn out and hopeless.

The antisemitic mass shooting during a Sunday Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in which two gunmen killed fifteen people and injured several more, has left her and many others in the Seattle area’s Jewish community feeling a mix of heavy emotions.

Days earlier, Klein attended the WildLanterns event at Woodland Park Zoo proudly wearing a light-up menorah headband. Now she’s reconsidering such open displays of her Jewish identity, Klein said. She’s thinking of removing the small menorah on her desk at work.

She had planned to attend a public menorah lighting in Kirkland, but decided against it this year. Klein said she knew security is ramped up this year at events, “but (having) armed guards looking out for terrorists, it just colors the holiday.”

“I don’t want to get shot, so I’m not going anywhere,” she said Wednesday. “I didn’t even light (my candles) last night because I’ve been barely able to get through the workday, I just crash.”

Across the Seattle area and around the globe, Jewish leaders said they are increasing security and police patrols at public menorah lightings, vigils and Jewish institutions. Some have urged community members not to be deterred from showing up to public events.

The Jewish community is no stranger to deadly antisemitic attacks, said Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. A shooting at the federation’s offices in 2006 left one dead and five injured.

After the 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in which 11 people were killed and several others injured, Seattle synagogues spent weeks comforting community members. Earlier this year, two people were killed in an attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England. On Wednesday, King County prosecutors charged a Seattle man with a hate crime for making phone calls last Friday threatening to murder people at Temple De Hirsch Sinai.

“I think that when we see incidents like Sunday, the echoes of all of these ring loudly in our ears,” Kane said. On Wednesday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle held a community vigil at Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation in the Seward Park neighborhood.

In many parts of the country, Jewish leaders have reported higher turnout at Hanukkah events this year. But some in the Jewish community have opted to celebrate more quietly at home.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel and the country’s bombing campaign and invasion of Gaza, diaspora Jews have become increasingly afraid they will be the target of violence and hate, Klein said. Data from the FBI shows a rise in reported anti-Jewish hate crime incidents since 2021, spiking just after the Oct. 7 attack.

Klein said she needed to take a mental health day Monday, as she wrestled with her feelings of despair watching the news of the Bondi Beach shooting unfold.

But Klein said she’s trying to carry on celebrating Hanukkah. She FaceTimes with her dad so they can light another candle each night, Klein said. She bought a bag of onions and potatoes, summoning the will to make latkes.

“It takes a bit of effort, physically, and I’m very tired and not feeling super spirited,” Klein said.

Hanukkah, the eight-day celebration known as the Jewish “festival of lights,” honors the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago after a small group of Jewish fighters known as the Maccabees successfully revolted against occupying Syrian-Greek forces.

It is a story of resilience that teaches a clear message, said Rabbi Yoni Levitin with Chabad of Northwest Seattle, and has never been more relevant: “That we fight darkness through light.”

In pouring rain and blustery winds Tuesday, Levitin lit a menorah on the third night of Hanukkah at Green Lake Park, surrounded by a small group of community members illuminated by the lights of a Seattle Police Department car parked nearby.

“Increasing the light, coming together, being a prouder Jew, that’s how we fight,” he said.

It feels more important than ever to show up to Jewish community events, said Seattle resident Sara Eizen.

While in past years she may have attended just one public menorah lighting, this year, “I was joking that I feel like I need a spreadsheet to figure out where they all are so I can map it out for every night,” she said.

Still, the shooting in Australia and other recent acts of violence against Jewish people have left her feeling fearful for her and her family’s safety. In Redlands, California, police are investigating the drive-by shooting of a home with Hanukkah decorations as a possible hate crime.

It is tradition in Eizen’s house to keep an electric menorah in the front window of the house with the shade up so it can be very visible. Not this year, though. Her family’s safety has to come first.

“It broke my heart that I have the shade down,” she said. “It really bothers me because it’s wrong, and I want that shade up, and I want it proud, and I’ve had in the past wonderful experiences of people walking by and seeing it.”

The shooting in Australia is just one of a number of violent tragedies, antisemitic or otherwise, that Seattle-area Jews may be grappling with this week, said Rabbi David Basior with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle.

For some, the school shooting at Brown University that killed two people and injured nine others on Saturday may be hitting particularly close to home, Basior said. For others, the 13th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting weighs most heavily in their hearts, he said. “There’s a lot going on right now,” he said.

Basior said his congregation still plans to hold a Hanukkah party on Sunday, joined by other interfaith leaders and community members invited to attend “out of an act of solidarity and safety.”

Sadness and grief will be in the room, he said, but “we (will) harness the joy that Hanukkah invites us into as well.”

“We will hold it all and name it all and give space for it all as we do what our ancestors and calendar and rituals give us time and places to do,” Basior said.