‘More light’: NYC crowd answers Sydney attack with defiant Hanukkah celebration

Participants in lighting of world’s largest menorah maintain upbeat atmosphere despite ‘pain beyond description’ following Bondi Beach terror attack on Hanukkah party

NEW YORK — Jews from around New York City danced, sang and huddled against the cold at a menorah lighting in Manhattan on Sunday night, at a celebration marked by mourning for those killed in the terror shooting targeting a Hanukkah event across the world, at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

“Tonight, our hearts are with the Jewish community of Sydney, Australia,” Rabbi Velvl Butman told the crowd at the start of the event, dedicating the service to the victims. “We pray for the souls that we lost.”

The event on the first night of Hanukkah centered around a massive, 36-foot (11-meter), 4,000-pound (1,800-kilogram) menorah that is erected every year at the southeast corner of Central Park by the Chabad Hasidic movement.

The lighting of the menorah, certified as the world’s largest, is an annual, public celebration of Jewish life in the city dating back to 1977.

The shooting in Australia also targeted a Chabad event, and at least two of those killed were rabbis with the Hasidic movement.

The slaughter in Australia cast a pall over this year’s lighting, but the crowd and Butman insisted on maintaining the event’s upbeat atmosphere, despite the tragedy.

“As you all know what happened, we are caught in a bind, because on the one hand, Hanukkah is a celebration,” Butman said. “But on the other hand, our hearts are heavy.”

“The pain is beyond description,” he said.

The mass shooting at Bondi Beach killed at least 15, making it the deadliest terror attack against Jews in the Diaspora in decades.

“Our spirit is not broken. The Jewish response to challenge has never been fear or retreat — the Jewish response is to add more light and more action,” he said.

Dancing circles formed in the crowd when music played, volunteers at a table distributed holiday donuts, Chabad-affiliated youths gave out menorahs and candles, and attendees passed around an Israeli flag to pose for photos with the menorah in the background, as a dusting of snow blew down from the trees.

Organizers estimated that at least 500 people attended.

Other public menorah lightings took place around the city, despite the frigid temperature, at Columbia University, Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, and on the Upper East Side waterfront.

Zachary Kerman, a Queens resident, said he had woken up to “anger” and “shock” seeing the news of the massacre, but that “it made me feel my Judaism even stronger.”

It was his first time at the Central Park menorah lighting.

“As horrified as I was, I wasn’t surprised,” he said, citing the deluge of “antisemitic rhetoric” worldwide.

“This is the world we’re living in now, but we still have to be proud of who we are, we still have to celebrate. That’s why we’re all here,” he said.

A perimeter of police officers armed with assault rifles circled the gathering.

Butman ascended above the crowd on a cherry picker to light the massive menorah with a blowtorch.

“Good will always outshine hate,” he said.