MILWAUKEE – In the wake of the deadly attack on Jews at Bondi Beach in Australia, Rabbi Mendel Shmotkin says there is one response that is absolutely off the table for the Jewish people: hiding.
“There isn’t an option of hiding away and sort of keeping a low profile,” said Shmotkin, chief executive officer of Lubavitch of Wisconsin, part of the Chabad movement, in an interview following the attack. “The answer to darkness is not, ‘OK, turn off your lights.’ The answer to darkness is, turn on more light.”
It’s his philosophy, but it’s shared by others in the Jewish world and in Jewish Wisconsin, he said. For the Chanukah festival and gelt drop held annually in Milwaukee, which was moved inside last month due to the cold, Chabad saw record-breaking participation, he said.
“We never had as many signups as we had for any event that we’ve done in the last many, many years,” he said. There were more than 1,800 pre-registrations and over 2,000 people on site. After news of the Australian attack broke, “we had probably another 350 or 400 signups,” not including walk-ins.
“That tells you where so much of the Jewish population is,” he said. “On one hand, it’s shaken us to our core, and on the other hand, it’s woken us to our core to recognize that slithering away and hiding is not an option.”
Night after night of Chanukah, he said, hundreds turned out in the Milwaukee area for concerts, skating parties, a Chanukah walk in Cedarburg and events at schools and Chabad centers.
Appeasement won’t work
For Shmotkin, the assault at a Chabad-sponsored Chanukah event on the other side of the world is both tragically familiar and deeply clarifying. It is another reminder, he said, that antisemitism is not about politics, geography or Jewish behavior.
“Antisemitism really isn’t dependent on anything that we do or don’t do,” he said. “It’s not dependent on Israel or Gaza. It shows up in Australia and in New York and in every other place under the sun with people who have nothing to do with what’s going on in Israel.”
Shmotkin called antisemitism “the oldest hatred” and a kind of “sickness” or “cancer” that has appeared in every era, under every political system, when Jews were powerful and when they were powerless. That’s why, he argued, Jewish strategy cannot be built around trying to appease the haters.
“Our existence cannot be, ‘How can we placate them? How can we somehow make them happy?’” he said.
Security and presence
Shmotkin is careful to add that refusing to hide does not mean being careless. He said Chabad, working closely with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and its security leadership, has “re-examined security at every event.”
“We’re very confident in the security,” he said. “We upped our security for every event. The Federation has stepped up in terms of their security measures. We’re in touch constantly.”
But security, he insisted, must not come at the cost of visibility and Jewish life in public spaces.
“We have to continue to make sure that we’re safe, as safe as humanly possible, without losing our ability to be and to practice who we are,” he said.
Judaism begins at home
While large events matter, Shmotkin stressed that the primary arena for a strong Jewish response is the home.
“Judaism starts first and foremost in one’s own private, personal, family life and home,” he said.
He pointed to Shabbat candles as a core practice that “brings light to the Jewish home,” coupled with turning off phones and setting aside sacred family time once a week. Learning Torah, daily prayer and, for men, putting on tefillin are among the many “opportunities of connection” he listed.
The Bondi attack, Shmotkin said, underlines another reality Jews must internalize: the unity of the Jewish people, regardless of how you dress or practice.
“There’s a shooting on the other side of the world of Jews, and of course every Jew in the world was targeted. They weren’t targeting Jews in Australia, they were targeting Jews,” he said.
“We truly are one people,” he added, “like limbs of a single body.” Jews should not need antisemites to remind them of that, he said, but when they do, the lesson should be lasting.
“We have to strengthen our unity, our recognition of one another, regardless of what we look like and even what we believe,” he said. “They look at us the same. We ought to look at ourselves that way too, honestly.”
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