My Murdered Friend Eli

"On the first night of Hanukkah, I learned that Eli Schlanger, a rabbi I had known for decades, was gunned down at a Hanukkah celebration he had organized in Sydney, attended by roughly 1,000 people. When Eli and I were 16, we volunteered together at a summer camp for indigent Ukrainian boys in Odesa. The early mornings we spent watching the sun rise over the beach, as he spoke with quiet certainty about his dream of becoming a rabbi and building a Jewish community,"

"Some will argue that Israel's actions have provoked recent surges in anti-Semitism, tacitly collapsing Zionism, Israel, and Jewishness into a single moral object-so that Jews everywhere are made to answer for the conduct of a state. When I visited Istanbul last year, I spent hours speaking with a local café owner who insisted that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, yet in the same breath told me not to be surprised by the rise in anti-Semitism given Israel's actions in Gaza."

"Many may focus on the faith of the two shooters, and lose sight of the fact that the brave father of two who risked his life to stop one of them, and was shot multiple times, was also Muslim. Hanukkah does not commemorate despair or isolation. It marks rededication-to Jewish life, Jewish practice, and Jewish responsibility. As Schlanger himself put it earlier this year, the way forward in the face of darkness is to "be more Jewish, act more Jewish, and appear more Jewish.""

Eli Schlanger, a rabbi, was shot dead at a Hanukkah celebration he organized in Sydney attended by roughly 1,000 people. He volunteered at a summer camp in Odesa at age 16 and devoted his life to building Jewish community. Reactions to the attack and rising antisemitism have polarized: some link the surge to Israel's actions and conflate Israeli policy with Jewish identity, while others claim perennial global hatred and argue safety exists only in Israel. Hanukkah represents rededication to Jewish life, practice, and responsibility; Schlanger urged Jews to "be more Jewish, act more Jewish, and appear more Jewish." A Muslim father who intervened was shot multiple times.

Read at The Atlantic