University of North Florida and Jacksonville community members gathered in the Student Union Plaza on Thursday evening to light the Menorah and celebrate the first night of Chanukah.
The night came exactly two months after Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 people on Oct. 7, a number revised by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, NPR reported last month. The ceremony happened at a time when antisemitism on college campuses is on the rise, according to the ADL Center for Antisemitism Research.
Seventy-three percent of Jewish college students have experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the start of the 2023-2024 school year, the ADL found in a survey of American college students before and after Oct. 7.
For those in the Jacksonville community, the lighting of the Menorah represented more than the start of Chanukah.
“This Menorah lighting represents the victory of light over darkness,” said Rabbi Shmuli Novack, who led the ceremony. It was a display of “Jewish unity in the wake of the recent rise of antisemitism on college campuses,” he wrote in an email to Spinnaker.
The ceremony happened alongside protests for a ceasefire and in support of Palestine from Jacksonville residents and UNF students in recent weeks. The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 17,700 in Gaza, with around two-thirds of them women and children, the Associated Press reported, citing the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
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