This morning we grieve for the ten Jewish and other people murdered and many wounded at a Hannukah party on Bondi Beach in what looks like another atrocious terrorist attack to kill Jewish people. Tonight we light the candles for Hannukah, the festival that celebrates freedom and light. I usually post a message with the candles and explain the history of this happy festival. Today I do it earlier and a little differently. Here is the history: Hannukah celebrates the Jewish rebellion 167BC led by the Maccabees, five brothers, against the oppression of the Greek Seleucid empire that ruled the Levant – today’s Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, half Iraq - a resistance that re-established the kingdom of Judea. In the religious story, the lights in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem ran out of oil but stayed alight for eight nights – hence Jews light a new candle each night on their menorah – candelabrum. The great candalabrum in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was later captured by the Romans and paraded through streets in a Roman triumph. Here it is on a coin of the last Maccabean king of Judea and on Titus's Arch in Rome. As Jewish people prepare to light their menorahs tonight, everyone remembers the meaning of the Maccabee story, not only for the Judeans of their time and the Jews of our time but also universal ideas of courage, freedom, hope and truth and how they always win – against impossible odds - over violence, bigotry, hatred and self righteous hypocrisy. This murder of ordinary people is not only a consequence of the hysteria of a movement that often encourages and justifies globalizing violence against people because of who they are - it is an essence of it. Killing words lead to killing. And this Hannukah massacre, an atrocity of anti-Judaism, another antisemitic mass murder like that on Yom Kippur in Manchester, is part of a vicious delirium - one that has gleefully disinterred evil mutations and blood libels from the darkest of our European past and has swept up, thrilled and intimidated many who should know better but whom we pray will come to their senses - and that undermines and ultimately threatens the very trust, morals, values and safety of all of us in our open, free societies. Thank you to the noble unarmed hero who confronted and disarmed one of the murderers. Here is the message of Hannukah: let us celebrate the lightness that illuminates the dark. For the dead: Baruch Dayan HaEmet. May their memory be a blessing. For the living: Hannukah Sameach! (or as they used to say elegantly in Ladino: Hannukah alegre!). Light and love to all of you.