The rabbi leading the National Menorah Lighting outside the White House on Sunday night ripped into President Obama for allowing a United Nations vote condemning Israel to pass Friday at the international body.
“I know that some of us are so sad at what happened there with regard to Israel,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, an executive at the American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), according to the Washington Examiner.
“We must remember that the way to counter any darkness, any disappointment is not with harsh rhetoric, not with anger, but when we create light, the darkness dissipates,” Shemtov added.
The US abstained Friday from a UN Security Council vote condeming Israel for settlements, effectively allowing the measure to pass.
The Obama administration’s official representative to the lighting ceremony on the second night of Hanukkah was Adam Szubin, an acting undersecretary at the Department of Treasury. Last year, the White House sent chief of staff Denis McDonough.
“Secretary Szubin spoke before of fighting darkness with light … I remember those words being spoken to a particular man by the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson] many many years ago on Simchat Torah,” Shemtov told those who had gathered.
“The Rebbe told him you are working in a place where there is great grief and darkness, but remember that in that place of darkness, you can only counter it by lighting a candle. By creating light. … That man was Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was at the time the ambassador to the United Nations,” the rabbi added.
Tickets to the event, which was held on the Ellipse outside the White House, were free.