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Hanukkah Lights Go Public as Communities Respond to Bondi Beach Attack

Security has tightened at menorah events, even in typically tranquil Iceland.

A Hanukkah celebration in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland, drew the country's foreign minister, Dec. 14, 2025. (Courtesy Mushky Feldman)
Yasemin Yildirim, 9, plays dreidel with members of the Bendat-Appell family, during a Hanukkah celebration at the Bendat-Appell's home in Deerfield on Dec. 17, 2017.
The National Menorah, part of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, is seen near the Washington Monument in Washington, DC on December 10, 2015.
People walk past a memorial drawn on the wall of a walk bridge as a tribute following Sunday's shooting at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025.

Overview

  • In Reykjavík, fewer than 100 gathered for a public lighting guarded by armed plainclothes police with drones overhead and air support on standby, as Iceland’s foreign minister lit the menorah and condemned the Bondi Beach attack.
  • Jewish leaders urge visible solidarity this Hanukkah, from placing menorahs in windows to campaigns asking neighbors to display paper menorahs through Dec. 22.
  • Rabbis and educators emphasize the tradition of publicizing the miracle, encouraging messages of light, resilience and joy rather than fear.
  • Opinion writers dispute how the holiday is framed publicly, with some warning against political use of menorah imagery and arguing for Hanukkah’s particularist meaning rooted in resistance to assimilation.
  • The push for visibility comes against data showing rising antisemitism in the U.S., as ADL and FBI figures point to elevated incident and hate‑crime levels in 2024, and it draws on a modern tradition of public menorahs traced to a 1974 lighting in Philadelphia.