by Kevin Cody
The Chanukah celebration on Pier Plaza in Hermosa Beach Sunday afternoon was meant to begin with singing, dancing and eating hot latkes, followed by the lighting of the Menorah.
Instead, Rabbi Yossi Mintz, of the Jewish Community Center, began the event by asking the 200 people gathered before him how they are to respond to the shootings the previous day at the Bondi Beach Chanukah Celebration in Sydney, Australia.
A father and his adult son shot into the Bondi gathering, killing 15 and injuring over 40.
Among the dead, Mintz said in an unsteady voice, was “a 41-year-old colleague whose wife is expecting their child.”
The colleague was Chabad of Bondi Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a native of the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Rabbi Mintz is also from Brooklyn.
Many more would have been killed, Rabbi Mintz said, had one of the two shooters not been wrestled to the ground by a man, shown in a passerby’s video, sneaking up on the shooter, tackling him and taking away his rifle. The man all must thank is a Muslim,” Rabbi Mintz said.
“How are we to respond?” the Rabbi then asked. “We respond by each of us being a small menorah that brings light into the darkness.”
“We are all menorahs,” he said.
Following the Hermosa Menorah Lighting, Rabbi Mintz was scheduled to attend Menorah Lightings in Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach. A police chief advised him to wear a bullet proof vest.
He said he told chief, “Not a chance. We will not live in fear.”
Then he called for the latkes to be served, and for the singing, and dancing, to begin, led by children from Academy of the Arts in Redondo Beach.
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May the Blessing of Peace follow each of us through out the end of this year in celebration and into the coming year and beyond!