Yesterday German police arrested three men affiliated with Hamas who were planning an attack on Jewish targets. The news makes especially poignant this reflection by Rebecca Blady and Jeremy Borovitz, two Berlin rabbis who in 2021 moved to Neuköln, generally considered “a ‘no-go zone’ for the city’s tens of thousands of Jews.” Since October 7, they have been even more cautious than usual about public activity, yet have not lost sight of their goal “to make Jewish pride, Jewish confidence, and Jewish visibility a matter of course in Europe.”

Perhaps it was the fear that enabled us to return to our purpose. Although the initial warning to hide invoked memories from the city in its darkest days, we came to see that what we were facing was very different. Ultimately, we realized that although we could no longer be naive, we refused to be afraid of who we are.

While Shmini Atseret feels both like yesterday and a year ago, Hanukkah is now here and one cannot truly fulfill the mitzvah of Hanukkah in hiding. According to the rabbis, an important purpose of the Hanukkah lights is pirsumei Nisa, publicizing the miracle. So this year, on the fifth night of Hanukkah, we’ll still light our massive hanukkiah at the city hall of Neukölln, above the neighborhood’s main square. Despite it all, the Jews are still here, lighting Shabbat candles in Kfar Aza, putting on t’filin in the center of college campuses, and lighting Hanukkah candles in Neukölln.

Do we feel safe? Not as safe as we did on October 6th. But we aren’t going back into hiding.

For a very different perspective, I also recommend this 2019 article on Jewish prospects in Germany.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.