{"id":200041,"date":"2025-12-19T11:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T11:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200041\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T11:26:12","slug":"in-recorded-message-rob-reiner-urged-resiliency-for-holocaust-survivors-at-hanukkah-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200041\/","title":{"rendered":"In recorded message, Rob Reiner urged resiliency for Holocaust survivors at Hanukkah event"},"content":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM (AP) \u2014 In a video message recorded weeks before he was killed, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner urged Holocaust survivors participating in a Hanukkah ceremony on Thursday to \u201cbe resilient\u201d during difficult times.<\/p>\n

Reiner and his wife, Michele, were found stabbed to death Sunday at their home in Los Angeles, law enforcement officials said. Their 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has been charged<\/a> with two counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bail.<\/p>\n

Reiner, who was Jewish, recorded the message for the Hanukkah event in the beginning of October. He noted that his wife\u2019s extended family was killed at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, giving the ceremony special meaning for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re living in a time where what\u2019s happening in our country is scary and reminiscent of what we\u2019ve seen happen in the past, and we just hope that we can all survive this and that we can hold on to our democracy,\u201d Reiner, who was an outspoken advocate for liberal causes, said in his message.<\/p>\n

The video was broadcast as part of a virtual candle lighting ceremony honoring Holocaust survivors internationally on the fifth night of Hanukkah. The event is an initiative of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an organization that advocates for Holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n

Around 100 Holocaust survivors gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon for a candle-lighting ceremony.<\/p>\n

In Hebrew, Hanukkah means \u201cdedication,\u201d and the holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem<\/a> in the second century B.C., after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated it from occupying foreign forces.<\/p>\n

Jews celebrate the eight-day holiday, which this year began on Sunday, by lighting a nightly candle in honor of the tiny supply of ritually pure oil that they found in the Temple that lasted for eight nights, instead of just one.<\/p>\n

Many Jewish communities are reeling from the attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia<\/a>, where 15 people were killed. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven in these difficult days, when antisemitism is rising and Jewish communities around the world are under attack \u2014 this very week on the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia \u2014 we draw strength and inspiration from you, the survivors, from your personal and collective resilience,\u201d Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference, told the group of survivors in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

In addition to Reiner, Barbra Streisand, Billy Crystal, Jason Alexander, Julianna Margulies, Debra Messing, Adam Arkin and Jamie Lee Curtis were among those who made prerecorded videos for the event. Journalists Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash also recorded messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf ever we needed to be resilient, it\u2019s now,\u201d Reiner said in his message. \u201cLet\u2019s be resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reiner was a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, calling him in a 2017 interview with Variety \u201cmentally unfit\u201d to be president and \u201cthe single-most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States.\u201d In a shocking post after Reiner\u2019s death<\/a>, Trump suggested that Rob Reiner\u2019s outspoken opposition was partially responsible for his murder.<\/p>\n

\"InRob Reiner, director, Castle Rock Entertainment, and First 5 California chairman, speaks at Visitacion Valley Family School to kick-off the city\u2019s universal preschool program, in San Francisco, June 2, 2004. (Kat Wade\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM (AP) \u2014 In a video message recorded weeks before he was killed, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner urged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-200041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}