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“What has been will be again,
What has been done will be done again;
There is nothing new under the sun.”—
Ecclesiastes 1:9
“AND THERE WAS LIGHT”: HANUKKAH, AFTER EVERYTHING
There is nothing new under the sun.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose American-Israeli son, Hersh, was murdered in captivity in Gaza, returned to those words this weekend.
In an essay for The Free Press, she describes seeing footage filmed by Hamas during Hanukkah 2023 of her son and five other hostages lighting candles in a makeshift menorah of paper cups.
The experience was “confusing, teasing, sickening, befuddling, cruel, shocking, soothing, and mostly just a mindscrew,” Goldberg-Polin writes. “That was the point.”
There is something particularly unsettling about watching people light Hanukkah candles, a ritual of endurance and hope, when we already know how the story ends.
In the footage, the hostages struggle to keep the fragile flames alive in the airless tunnels — an effort echoing their own fight to survive in what Goldberg-Polin has called “the bowels of hell on earth.”
Within the year, all six were shot and killed.
Last month, I took my 9-year-old son to his school’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” In the annex where they hid from the Nazis for more than two years, Anne and the others light Hanukkah candles and recite the blessings.
Later, we hear voices below, a door opening, the sound of boots on the stairs. My son — aware of what is coming — covers his eyes. But what follows is not shown. The stage goes dark.
The final scene returns to the annex after the war. Otto Frank stands alone. He is the only survivor.
These two moments of hope followed by horror — Hanukkahs nearly 80 years apart — unfold under confinement: Jews marking the holiday in hiding or captivity, with no illusion of safety.
This weekend, Jewish families gathered in the open to light candles on Bondi Beach in Sydney, near a playground. Gunfire followed. At least 15 people were killed, including a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor, and a 10-year-old child. Dozens more remain hospitalized.
It was an image of innocence: parents and their children listening to music, blowing bubbles, gathering around a menorah — unaware of what was about to happen.
In the hostage footage, Hersh says that lighting candles in the tunnels reminds him of a 1931 photograph: a family’s Hanukkah menorah glowing on a windowsill, a Nazi flag hanging from the building across the street.
In January 2024, as the 100th day of the hostages’ captivity approached, thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv to call for their release. A banner stretched across the crowd: “And the world remains silent.”
At the same time, the hostages’ families unveiled a replica of the tunnels in Gaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. I walked through it last summer — a dark, narrow corridor, oppressive in scale, with recorded gunfire and explosions overhead. At the far end, the passage opens to light. In Hebrew are the words Vayehi or — And there was light. After learning that their son had been wounded and abducted on Oct. 7, Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, made a deliberate choice to continue living, regardless of the outcome. After Hersh’s death, she described what that resolve would require. “I will limp for the rest of my life,” she said. “But I can limp toward the light.” Hanukkah is often dismissed as a minor holiday. Yet it insists on a difficult truth for Jews wherever and whenever they live: The past does not remain at a distance. The span between the Maccabees, the Holocaust and Oct. 7 can seem wide, until it collapses near a playground by the sea. Hanukkah has always been a holiday of instruction as much as commemoration. It asks parents to teach a history of danger without letting that knowledge eclipse the joy, pride and continuity of Jewish life. And so we light the candles anyway. After everything. Johannah Lowin is an editor at The Tea and a senior producer at MS NOW, with a background in national security and counterterrorism. An Israeli arranges nightlights in the form of the Star of David during a candlelight vigil hours after two gunmen shot and killed people gathered on Australia’s Bondi beach for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, in Tel Aviv on December 14, 2025. This week, actor Simu Liu joins us to discuss his upcoming spy thriller series, “The Copenhagen Test.” Want to ask a question? Send it over, and we will pick our favorite to ask on the show!Recommended
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