An Open Letter

Dear Friends,

I am writing because silence, at a moment like this, feels like another kind of harm.

I am sorry — for the fear, for the rupture, for what was broken at Bondi Beach during Hanukkah, a season that is meant to insist on light even when history argues otherwise. I am sorry for the way violence intrudes precisely where ritual tries to hold the line. I am sorry that a time meant for remembrance and endurance was instead made fragile.

I know apologies do not repair what has been done. They do not restore trust or return ease to public spaces that should have remained ordinary and safe. Still, it feels necessary to say that what happened should never be absorbed as background noise, never be normalized, never be excused as inevitable.

Hanukkah is a story about persistence — about a small, stubborn flame refusing extinction. It is not sentimental. It is practical. It is about survival when survival is not guaranteed. That this story was interrupted by fear feels especially cruel.

I cannot speak for your grief, your anger, or your exhaustion. I can only say that I see the wound, that I recognize the weight of being asked — again — to carry history forward under threat, and that I reject the indifference that so often follows these moments once the news cycle moves on.

May the light return, not as metaphor but as fact. May it be protected. May it be shared without apology.

With sorrow and respect.