May Hashem Avenge their Blood

12/19/2025

We were awoken Sunday morning by our son Mendel, who ran into our room proudly exclaiming, "it's winter!" as he excitedly pulled our attention to the beautiful layer of snow that blanketed the street outside.

But the glowing flurries that morning were quickly clouded by painful fury out of Sydney, with the news that murderous terrorists had shot up a Chabad Chanukah Celebration on Bondi Beach, claiming 15 innocent lives and injuring dozens more.

The news was devastating. And it was personal.

The Chabad community is small, and I personally know people who were at Bondi Beach that afternoon. The Director of Bondi Chabad is a mentor of mine and suffered the unfathomable loss of his son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was murdered in front of his wife and little baby. And a classmate of mine from yeshiva was at the event with his little daughter, sheltering her from the bullets whizzing by their heads.

But you need not know someone who was at Bondi for the shooting to be personal for you. Jews are all one small family. And it was painful for all of us.

I quickly sat down and wrote a note to the community about the horror, reaffirming that our Chanukah celebration would continue on schedule that evening. We would pick up the bloodied menorah from Bondi and continue its light in Edgartown.

"May Hashem avenge the blood of his servants and grant a complete healing to the wounded," I wrote.

I knew those first words would be unsettling to some, but I chose to write them anyway.

I had had enough of Jews being murdered for being Jewish, and I was angry. And I was not just going to make as if I wasn't.

"May Hashem avenge the blood of his servants" is a phrase taken from Psalms. It does not suggest that we take revenge. But it recognizes and sanctions our anger. And it asks that G-d seek justice on our and their behalf. Fear is not a Jewish trait. But rage as our people are butchered is, King David teaches us.

In Jewish tradition, these words were always the phraseology used when mentioning holy souls who were murdered for being Jewish. Whether during the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Holocaust, Jewish tombstones of the murdered would always bear the words, "Hashem Yinkom Damam," Hebrew for "May Hashem avenge their blood."

But sadly, in recent years, and as Jewish blood has become cheapened by its continued spillage, we've become numb to the pain. Or more numb than we should let ourselves become. We're used to it.

I'm young, but I'm old enough to remember when the mass murder of Jews would pull every community together for a vigil and gathering of solidarity.

I was only 12 years old when Chabad of Mumbai was attacked and Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and their guests were slain in their Chabad House. It remains one of the most formidable and formative memories of my childhood. And I remember that in its aftermath, as well as in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting, every Jewish community worth its salt gathered in large numbers to cry, to mourn, and to plead never again.

But today we've become immune. How many Jewish communities have scheduled vigils in honor of those slain in Bondi? How many Jewish communities are raising funds for the wounded and bereaved of Sydney?

And we can't be blamed. We are rightfully tired of it. We've just about started to recover from October 7, and we have no emotional capacity to appropriately respond to another.

We've become desensitized to tragedy.

But the greatest tragedy of all is when we become desensitized to tragedy.

And we've become so desensitized that we forbid ourselves the rage that's only natural and only becoming of us as humans and as fellow Jews.

So instead of using the traditional honorific asking G-d to seek justice, we settle for the more polite and sweet "may their memories be for a blessing," subconsciously minimizing the gravity of what occurred, as if these are only another few natural deaths whose memories should be a blessing.

And so in my note to the community on Sunday, I decidedly chose to use the traditional honorific to remind myself and the community that we are not asked to be more forgiving than G-d, and that we should not be.

We are human beings, and we are hurt. And when we are hurt, we should cry. We should not let our politeness deny our humanity, and we should not attempt to minimize the anger and the pain.

And so as we come to the close of a horrible and most difficult week for the Jewish people, let us pray for the wounded who were shot as they celebrated Chanukah, and let us remember and honor the memories of those slain while practicing their Judaism.

May their memories be for a blessing, and may their lessons be a shining light for us forever.

And may Hashem avenge the spilled blood of his servants.

Tzvi