(RNS) — By Sunday morning in the United States, my inbox was overflowing with messages about the mass murder at the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration. All carried some version of the same three-part message: Antisemitism is surging; this is what happens when you chant “globalize the intifada” all over the world; they all hate us — “us” being Jews, wherever we are.
It’s hard to ignore the truth in those claims, and I would suggest that anyone who does so needs to carefully consider the facts and their own read of reality. But I would say the same to anyone who thinks that those three claims are the fullness of the Bondi Beach story that we need to appreciate and share.
According to Pew’s most recent polling, Jews are still incredibly popular, at least in the United States. That data, however, initially appears to contradict FBI reports showing a dramatic rise in antisemitic acts, and especially those that are violent. Even by the most conservative of estimates, antisemitism is surging, and that is especially true of acts of violence against Jews simply because they are Jewish. That “barbelling” of the good news and bad should not surprise us in a time of such stridency and polarization. It certainly should not lead us to discount the FBI data simply because of Pew’s. Two things can be true at once — which is the story behind this story.
It is true that rising violence against Jews is a reality, and even more so beyond the United States. So to all those who filled my inbox with that claim, I say you are right, but it is not the whole story.
I would say the same to those claiming that the Bondi Beach massacre is the natural result of crowds chanting “Globalize the intifada.” They are not wrong — regardless of what those who chant the phrase often claim, that their chant does not mean to support violence; they are no more entitled to that defense than are those who claim to bear no responsibility for violence against gay people, abortion providers or Democratic politicians and their families when chanted words lead to violence against those people.
To all those who chant words that lead to violence, I say stop, regardless of your claimed intent. We know that deadly acts are virtually always preceded by ugly words. Those who chant that phrase don’t necessarily hate Jews or support violence, but they need to examine their too-easy defense when things subsequently go bad.
But the most “stunningly incomplete truth award” goes to those who claim that Bondi Beach reminds us that “they all hate us.” Which “they”?
The implication, and even the overt claim, is that it includes all Muslims. That claim is as ugly and false as the claim that antisemitism is not a real problem in large swaths of the global Muslim community. Again, two things can be true at once. The “they” that hates Jews certainly includes the shooters — a father and son team who were not only Muslims but claimed allegiance to a number of Islamist causes and even had an ISIS flag in the car they drove to the murder scene.
The world’s antisemitism problem is in part Islam-inspired, but it is just as true that “they” do not “all” hate us. Among the heroes that saved people’s lives at Bondi Beach was Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim who tackled the terrorists at the scene, certainly limiting the death toll by doing so. He is a hero of almost incomprehensible proportions, having taken on the shooters totally unarmed and at very close range. He took his life into his own hands to save the lives of strangers. How many of us would do the same? That fact should also have been part of the emails that filled my inbox on Sunday.
These lessons of Bondi Beach are the eternal lessons of Hanukkah, which we celebrate even in the wake of the mass murder that occurred there.
First, that there is almost always more to the story than the version we are immediately inclined to share. That is certainly true for the Hanukkah story, so often told as a story of the victorious fight against Jewish assimilation into a larger Hellenistic-Greek culture. But the Hanukkah story was recorded and spread across the world in the Book of Maccabees, originally written in Greek and included in the biblical canon for Orthodox Christians, part of the Apocrypha for Catholics and a book of historical significance for Jews. Hanukkah is both a story of resistance against assimilation and a story of successful assimilation.
All those commenting on Bondi Beach should hold this lesson in their hearts. All those who filled my inbox on Sunday should also spread the name of Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim hero. At the same time, all those who minimize the problem of antisemitism, in whatever community they call their own, should see their own community’s role in perpetuating the problem, however unintentionally.
Another eternal lesson of Hanukkah is that there is more light to be found than we are inclined to imagine. That was true for those who dared to light an insufficient amount of oil 2,220 years ago, and it is true today. There is always more to the stories we tell and more possibility in any situation than we often imagine. It is up to us how much we dare to live into those eternal truths.
(Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is president of Clal — The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)