What Does Evil Look Like?

Hanukkah is meant to begin with light.

Candles lit against the dark.

Stories of endurance.

A reminder that even when the world feels hostile, we gather, we remember, we persist.

And yet this year, the first nights of Hanukkah arrived alongside grief.

Violence at a Hanukkah gathering abroad. Fear aimed squarely at Jewish joy.

And here at home, the death of Rob Reiner—a Jewish father, husband, artist, and lifelong cultural voice—met not with shared mourning, but with cruelty.

What does evil look like?

Sometimes it looks like bloodshed.

Sometimes it looks like hatred armed with weapons.

But sometimes—and this is harder to confront—it looks like calloused words some people choose to say afterward.