RabbiYossi Lipsker

Rabbi Yossi Lipsker from Chabad of the North Shore said he knows two of the people who were shot on a beach in Sydney this past weekend.

One is the 20-year-old son of a cousin from Texas who was shot in the abdomen but survived.

The other is a fellow rabbi named Eli Schlanger, whom Lipsker knew as a child while studying in London.

Schlanger was among the 15 people killed during the massacre on Sunday.

"My twin sister was comforting his [the victim's] sister in New York at 4 a.m. in her home," Lipsker said. "So the connections are all around and quite, quite strong."

Rabbi Lipsker said this year's local Hanukkah ceremonies have taken on a note of resilience and defiance following the attack.

He said they are attracting large numbers of people, including some newcomers.

Tuesday marked the third night of Hanukkah.

Australian authorities said the father and son who carried out the mass shooting were inspired by ISIS.

The father was killed, and the son remains hospitalized.

In the literal sense, candlelight brightens the long, dark, December nights. For Rabbi Yossi Lipsker, regional directorof Chabad of the North Shore , Hanukkah is also symbolic as “The light illuminates the positives in a time of particular darkness marked by bigotry and hatred.”

The Anti-Defamation League New England , a civil rights agency, recorded a total of 108 antisemitic incidents in Massachusetts last year, a 48 percent increase from 2020 . Vandalism incidents increased by 66 percent.

“Our work tends to focus on the increasing number of incidents of antisemitism in New England and the lasting harm these incidents inflict on a community,” said Peggy Shukur, interim ADL New England deputy regional director. “The holiday of Hanukkah is a much-needed reminder to take pride in expressing our religion openly and without fear as we reflect on and celebrate the strength and resilience of the Jewish community.”

Rabbi Fred Benjamin of Congregation Beth Shalom of the Blue Hills in Milton stressed that Hanukkah is “about religious freedom and overcoming oppression.”

Hanukkah brings Jewish people together to share the light of the menorah candles in remembrance of a miracle more than 1,800 years ago when a group of Jews, despite being outnumbered, defeated a Greek army and reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem. There was only enough purified oil to relight the temple’s menorah for one night, but it lasted for eight nights — thus the miracle.

“The mitzvah [a good deed done from religious duty] of Hanukkah is to put the celebration out into the world,” explained Benjamin. “Traditionally, you put the menorah in the front window of your house facing the street. It is an expression of religious freedom,” said Benjamin, who will preside over the celebration in the community during the city’s annual public menorah lighting at 5 p.m. Dec. 18 on the Hancock Adams Common in Quincy.

The menorah lighting is such a longstanding tradition that Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch can’t even remember when it began. Donated years ago, the electric menorah is set up annually by the Department of Public Works.

“We have been lighting a menorah on the Common for at least the 15 years since I have been in office,” said Koch. “Quincy is a very diverse community and the menorah lighting is just one part of the many events we celebrate during the holiday season. It is important to recognize the holiday season with our Jewish residents.”

Koch expects no antisemitic incidents related to the Quincy menorah lightning, but his office does work with the police department to prepare for public safety during such events.

“Unfortunately, every public event — from our holiday tree and menorah lighting to the Christmas parade — requires preplanning, including restricting parking and setting up road barriers,” said Koch.

Focused on the importance of sharing the holiday with others, Rabbi Jodi Seewald Smith, director of congregational engagement at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, invites everyone to attend its Hanukkah 2022 Hygge Festival Dec 18 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. It will include outdoor lights and projections, fire pits, s’mores, and Hanukkah music. The festival celebrates the holiday and also “life’s simple pleasures, friends, family, graciousness” according to the temple’s website, templeisaiah.net .

“We actually debated whether to keep the event within the congregation or did we want to be open and welcoming,” said Seewald Smith. “We decided to be welcoming and extended the invitation to anyone that wants to come. Participants are encouraged to bring a [menorah] and candles.”

Balancing openness and safety, Temple Isaiah has had security in place for events for several years, according to Seewald Smith.

“It is just a standard precaution. We have full and robust programming and we decided we are not stopping because of worry about external factors,” she said. “Even with antisemitism, we live in a country that protects our religious freedoms. The Hanukkah festival is very much a multigenerational event and we are expecting hundreds of people.”

The Chabad of the North Shore, which serves 22 communities, is coordinating community menorah lightings in a dozen cities and towns from Everett and Revere to Swampscott and Salem. The Chabad owns, stores, loans, and delivers the large electric menorahs to participating municipalities and shopping centers.

Public Hanukkah menorah lightings are important to Lipsker, the Chabad’s rabbi, as “they showcase the beautiful diversity of religious views, faiths, and traditions. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the public celebration shows us at our best.”

One of Lipsker’s favorite events is the menorah lighting at the Northshore Mall in Peabody , which will be held from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Dec. 21.

“It was the first public menorah lighting we ever did 30 years ago,” said Lipsker. “It is important to share the universal symbol of light and Jewish pride among the cultural holiday decorations at the mall.”

Despite Lipsker’s positive attitude, the ADL reports that over the past few years, there has been vandalism to outdoor menorahs. A large menorah was vandalized and stolen from a Brookline temple in 2018 .

In Quincy, Rabbi Benjamin will share “songs and a few surprises which might include chocolate gelt [coins] and dreidels [spinning tops]” with the families that attend the outdoor menorah lighting.

“The celebration of light is a celebration of the diversity of views, faiths, and traditions,” he said. “Every menorah lighting is a little slice of utopia.”

Linda Greenstein can be reached at greensteinlm@gmail.com .

How did a small Hasidic court become a phenomenon that is fomenting something of a revolution in the Jewish world? The 4,000 Chabad emissaries who convened in New York offer a simple answer: energy, motivation, love and tolerance.

NEW YORK — Inspector Charles Scholl scurried back and forth, barking orders and keeping a close eye on the preparations. The veteran Brooklyn South officer, a kind of local sheriff in the Crown Heights neighborhood, did not let the euphoria around him on this bitterly cold November morning distract him from the weight of his annual fall task: to make it possible for a huge number of Hasidim to gather for a group portrait against the backdrop of a certain brick building on the main avenue.

The traditional photo of the Hasidim in front of the building at 770 Eastern Parkway, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe lived until his death in 1994, is one of the high points of the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, which was held last month in New York. It’s a manifestation of the strength of the Hasidic movement, which in recent years has become a global force, exercising dramatic influence on the Jewish world – mainly outside Israel – with bases in 76 countries and some 4,000 shluchim – literally “sent ones,” or “emissaries” – not counting the families that accompany them.

According to the documentation stored in the computer of Chabad’s Brooklyn-based Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch – the movement’s educational arm, which is in charge of the worldwide network of emissaries – every two or three days on average, another Hasid leaves for another part of the world on a one-way ticket. He may open a new center or join an already existing one.

“Many Hasidim want to be emissaries these days, and our problem is to find new places for them,” says Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the educational center and the dominant figure in the management of the global network.

One reason Chabad has become stronger in the United States, says Prof. Chaim Waxman, a senior fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute whose specialty is the sociology of religion with an emphasis on American Jewry, is the diminishing importance of the Jewish establishment in the self-definition of Jews.

“People are no longer looking for affiliation with one of the streams of Judaism, and they are finding that it’s easiest with Chabad,” he says. “You don’t have to connect with any stream or any synagogue. You can come and take what you want from the experience and that is it. People like it that there are no hard and fast rules, that there is communication with other streams.

Chabad has sincerity, and people recognize that.”

But doesn’t Chabad also have a hidden agenda? Emissaries I spoke with in Crown Heights, all of whom are active in the United States, were amazed at the question. “We have no hidden agenda, and therein lies the strength of Chabad, especially in the United States,” said one emissary. “We have no conspiracy beyond helping every Jew everywhere, unconditionally. We aspire to bring every Jew a degree closer to the Torah and to the Holy One than he is today, and that includes people who are defined as religious.”

Rabbi Yossi Lipsker, who founded Chabad House in Swampscott, Massachusetts 19 years ago, intervenes in the conversation. “We will never do anything that departs from the halakha, but each emissary also has a lot of room for self-expression,” he says, thereby also explaining his unusual exterior appearance, which adds to the Chabad look relatively long hair that is mostly hidden by a wool skullcap, along with fashionable spectacles.

He describes the emissary’s role in Hasidic-hippie terms of “plying people with love, giving them hope. We do not judge anyone for his acts and his opinions; we do not look down on others. We are part of the community and its needs. The role of a Chabad House is to create a community, mutual surety and true friendship; to forge a place where there is creativity.”

The five days of the conference concluded with the “Gala Banquet” event held at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal at Pier 12. The organizers of this glittering and gargantuan event went all the way to Brooklyn’s Red Hook section because that was the only place they could find with a large enough space to accommodate the 350 tables and 4,700 guests.

The New York Times declared the event the largest sit-down dinner in the history of the city and was awed by the numbers: 90 chefs, 340 waiters, 15,000 glasses, 182,000 square meters of a spectacularly beautiful structure, with a view of the Statue of Liberty.

Toward the end of the evening, Rabbi Kotlarsky from the Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch read out a “roll call” of all 76 countries in which Chabad is represented and invited the emissaries from each country to stand up, to the applause of the audience. “Let’s go on a trip around the world,” Kotlarsky said, and started to read the list of countries – from Asia via Australia and then to Africa, Europe and the Americas.

Like the traditional group photo, this too is one of the non-spontaneous highlights of the Kinus of emissaries, planned to the last detail. But it was shattered by an outburst of authentic Hasidic joy when, at the conclusion of the list, 4,700 people got up and started to dance to the music of an old Chabad melody, like a winding snake, a great chain of people, all dressed in black, representing every corner of the globe.