The Washington Times
By Mary Vought
December 14, 2023
This holiday season, a proposal to light a menorah at a Williamsburg, Virginia, community celebration turned into a Festivus-style “airing of grievances” — with a side of antisemitism for good measure.
Rabbi Mendy Heber had approached a Williamsburg community group seeking to have a menorah lighting as part of a monthly community arts festival on Dec. 10, the fourth night of Hanukkah. Publicly, organizers said that they did not include religious events in their monthly gatherings, regardless of the denomination involved.
But the story doesn’t end there. The festival’s founder, Shirley Vermillion, sent Rabbi Heber a private text message stating that she would nix the menorah lighting “unless we could get an Islamic group to participate at the same time. We are about Peace, Love, and light. … Don’t want to make it seem we’re choosing a side — supporting the killing/bombing of thousands of men, women, and children.”
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Ms. Vermillion also coupled her political bias with the type of casual prejudice popular among “woke” social justice warriors. By conflating the Jewish religion with support for Israeli military action — as she so callously put it, “killing/bombing of thousands of men, women, and children” — she perpetuated the stereotype that all Jews agree with the policies of the Israeli government of the day.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin rightly called out Ms. Vermillion and her group’s actions as “absurd and antisemitic.” Even some Democrats objected, with Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn, Virginia’s first Jewish speaker of the House, calling the incident “shocking and outrageous.”
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Sadly, this incident represents the latest instance of the “woke” left conditioning the acceptance of speech on the willingness of individuals to adhere to its dogma. Witnessed too the university leaders who would not condemn before Congress calls for genocide against Jews yet readily punish students who “use the wrong pronouns” when talking in class.
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Therein lies the true tragedy of this event, which illustrates perfectly why we need commemorations like the menorah lighting. With our nation and our world facing hatred and strife, we need to come together in peace to celebrate our shared humanity and celebrate this special time of year.
