I'm not Jewish, but I'm proud to call a number of Jewish people friends. We don't agree on Christ, but we do on plenty else, and that's more of what matters in our day-to-day interactions.
And some of those are very pro-gun Jews. In the wake of Bondi Beach--an attack at a Hanukkah celebration--the calls for gun control seem wrong considering the holiday itself.
As Bethany Mandel notes at the New York Post, Hanukkah is about resistance, not capitulation.
On Sunday, the first night of Hanukkah, a father-son terror team hit Australia’s Bondi Beach and massacred innocents at a family event celebrating the Jewish festival.
Ever since, well-intentioned commentators have proclaimed their anguish that this holiday of “light,” of “togetherness,” of universal values everyone can appreciate, could be marred in such a way.
But that vision of Hanukkah is a lie — and it’s not how we should be honoring the lives brutally taken.
Hanukkah is not a festival of vague illumination or seasonal warmth.
It is not about universalism. Bondi should have taught us that.
The story of Hanukkah is about Jews who refused — violently, unapologetically, and at great cost — to stop being Jews.
In our generation, we are fighting that same battle.
The Hanukkah story is not one of peaceful coexistence interrupted by misunderstanding, but of a foreign empire that demanded Jews abandon Jewish law, Jewish practice and Jewish identity.
Assimilation was not optional under the rule of the Seleucid Empire; it was compulsory.
The Maccabees did not respond with interfaith dialogue. They did not issue statements about shared values or organize conferences.
They took up arms. They fought.
It seems to me that, in light of this, gun control is the completely wrong response to Bondi Beach.
Jewish people cannot effectively resist if you take away their means of resistance. They can't take up arms if you make it all but impossible to acquire arms.
While Australia will probably do all of that anyway, a lot of American gun control advocates are still calling for the same laws. They want the same things put in place here in the United States, and some are using Bondi Beach to justify it, strangely enough.
But the Maccabees didn't exactly bend the knee when powerful forces sought to eradicate them. They did battle, as they should have.
Look, it's not my faith, but I can look at what this holiday celebrates and see that Mandel is completely correct in what she's saying. It seems to me that taking guns away from people in light of an attack, one that took place where it did because these people were Jewish, seems like the completely wrong response.
Sure, I'm biased as hell when it comes to the subject of guns, but how does taking arms away from people do anything to recognize what those innocent people were celebrating?
Taking arms from people isn't the act of a respectful government. It's not the kind of thing that should sit well with anyone, including a group that has been systematically targeted for eradication more than once.
A lot of Jews also need to get this message, of course, and that's really who I think Mandel is talking to in her piece, but whether many are anti-gun or not, I know a lot who are pro-gun, too. I can't look away in light of what's happening, knowing that it won't just be the Jews who have advocated for gun control in the past who face being disarmed. It'll be all of them.
Resistance against tyranny has been a norm in human society since the dawn of time. It's a core value of the American people, and it seems a core value of the Jewish people, too.
