Light in the darkness

Of all the difficult conversations one has, this is one I never imagined: discussing with my husband what we each might include in our submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, a nationwide amassing of people’s experiences of antisemitism in Australia. 

My husband plans to share that he doesn’t feel safe having a mezuza on the outside of our apartment any more. It sits on the inside. He also plans to write to the commission of his experience of standing on our street in Bondi Beach with his kippah-wearing brother as two men drove past and screamed an antisemitic slur at them. If my husband is going to a Jewish venue and using Uber, he never enters an address of a shul or Jewish school, he enters the address next door. 

I will write about fear; how I no longer walk the cliffs from Bondi to Bronte alone in the evening, how I question wearing my Magen David in public, how I don’t feel comfortable visiting the cool, artsy parts of town because I will inevitably see posters and paraphernalia against Israel. 

It’s hard to describe how much the world has changed in such a short space of time. From 7 October 2023 to 14 December 2025. My daughter was born on the first night of Chanukah 16 years ago and so this last Chanukah, we thought we would light candles at home to celebrate her Hebrew birthday. We live about a stone’s throw from Bondi Beach. About an hour before sunset, I left my home to run to the Woolies Metro opposite Bondi Beach and buy some salad ingredients. It’s that funny hour when light slowly shifts into darkness, the hour of twilight, Bein Hashmashot. As I left my apartment, I saw about 50 people running down my street, away from the beach. My first thought was, this is a beach-side race and I must have missed the memo. Then I saw the fear on people’s faces. 

“There’s been a shooting. The shooters are still about.” Fear gripped me and I turned around and ran back to my home, we lowered our blinds and we waited. 

In the days and weeks that followed, rabbis in our community tried to comfort us by encouraging us, and the wider Australian community, to spread light where there is darkness. It’s a positive message – a very Jewish message. Even if sometimes the darkness in our world feels immense. 

From Chanukah to Pesach, the Gemara in Pesachim 2a opens with a confounding discussion about light and dark. Or la’arba’ah asar bodkin et chametz la’or ha’ner (On the Or of the 14th [of Nissan], we search for chametz, using the light of a candle). It’s commonly known that we do Bedikat Chametz, we search for chametz on the night of the 14th, the evening before Leil Ha’seder. But the Gemara’s word choice is confusing. The word for night used by the Mishnah is or, meaning light. Thus begins a debate among our ancient rabbis. Is the Mishnah telling us to search for chametz on the day of 14 Nissan or the night? 

For you and me, it’s somewhat of a moot point because we all know that night is the final winner. The night before Pesach, we take our feather and our candle, and we search for chametz once the sun has set. After citing seven biblical sources and seven rabbinic sources, some arguing that or is day and others that it must mean night, the night wins. The rabbis remind us that in Aramaic, “night” is orta. And the case is closed. Well, kind of. 

There’s a reason our rabbinic tradition opens the Gemara on Pesach with pages of word play about light and dark. The rabbis cite sources that refer to morning light, but they bring, in equal turns, sources that point to the illuminations of the night sky, the stars. There is the shining of the day and there is the shining of the night. 

Sometimes, when we do our chametz search, it feels very triumphant and “daylighty” in the world. I have had many Pesachs like that when things feel good and secure. But there are other Pesachs, other cycles of the holiday, that have felt darker. I think of the Piaseczno Rebbe speaking to his community from the Warsaw Ghetto on the Shabbat Hagadol of Pesach 1942. I think of the last two years, when we placed chairs at our table for hostages yearning for their return. And I think about the Pesach holidays they endured in the dark tunnels. I think of us this year, planning our menus, going through the Pesach preparation routines, elbowing our way through the aisles for the last two briskets, as we consider the world our children are inheriting. The Commission on Antisemitism represents a disturbing reality, but it also brings hope to that reality. Maybe our voices and our civic action can change things. 

We didn’t dream we would be contributing our own personal experiences to a Royal Commission on Antisemitism. But G-d knows, there is still a lot of or (light) in the darkness this Pesach. There are the lawyers working for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, giving up their time for the future of our community, and who make time to come to our schools and speak to our pupils. There are the countless non-Jewish staff who walk through our school gates, passing through policemen and barricades each day to be part of our community. There is the young man in my yoga class who thanked me for wearing my We Will Dance Again T-shirt, and the other young man who smiled at me and told me he was Jewish too. There are the children, wearing Magen Davids, smiling bravely, when their Israel trip gets cancelled, asking to start a tefillin club, leading younger students in Modeh Ani. 

The Gemara in Pesachim eventually moves from the linguistic debate about what or means. We search for chametz at night. But the deeper message remains. Some Pesachs will feel darker than others, influenced as we are by personal and communal challenge and tragedy. But somehow, the darkness and the light both possess qualities of or. And so I re-read the opening lines of the Gemara Pesachim 2a, with my own annotations, “In the light that we choose to see, in the light that we create on the evening of the 14th of Nissan, we search for our chametz using the light of a candle.” 

Chag Pesach Sameach! 

• Adina Roth is a South African rabba and director of Jewish Life at Emanuel School in Australia.