Rabbi Benjamin Elton was driving back from co-officiating a wedding in Jervis Bay – a picturesque beach location about three hours south of Sydney – when he started to get the messages.
His WhatsApp groups buzzed with reports – some accurate, some not – about an attack in Bondi, about the number and names of the wounded and dead.
He had a “very terrifying” window when he couldn’t reach his wife who had been attending an outdoor Hanukah event at a park in Dover Heights, just north of Bondi, with their young children, but eventually got through and heard they were safe.
The beauty of the day that preceded the horror of the evening made it even more surreal for Elton, who is the chief minister at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, one of the city’s largest and oldest synagogues.
“I was just delighted because the wedding had gone very well … I was beetling back to Sydney, it’s a gorgeous drive – the green hills and the trees – and I was going to get home for eight o’clock, the family would be back from Dover Heights by then, we would all get together, we would light Hanukah candles, give out chocolate money to the kids, it was one of those perfect days.
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“And, you know, joy snatched away from you so suddenly.”
The disconnection between the beautiful December day and the savage violence that ripped apart the evening has struck many.
It was a perfect, balmy summer’s evening; it was Bondi beach; it was Hanukah; it was a family event, with a petting zoo, food, live music, filled with families.
And then, it was the worst act of terrorism in Australia’s history, an attack labelled as “an act of evil antisemitism” by the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in which two alleged gunmen used firearms to kill at least 15 people, with victims aged between 10 and 87, with dozens more still in hospital and warnings the death toll could rise.
In its aftermath, Sydney’s Jewish community is “reeling and suffering”, says Rabbi Alon Meltzer.
“This is something that not only the Jewish community, but the entire country has never really felt,” says Meltzer, the associate rabbi at Bondi Mizrachi Synagogue and director of programs at Jewish not-for-profit Shalom Collective.
“For this to occur on a sacred space of Bondi beach, a symbol of what it means to be an Australian, that’s difficult to fathom. For it to be as a response to an event that was purely designed to bring light into the world … it’s also hard to fathom.”
Making it all the harder is the ongoing sense of threat. The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, a peak Jewish body, has issued security warnings that Jewish groups in the state should not gather for safety reasons. Elton cancelled the daily morning service at the Great Synagogue.
“We were told not to open up the building,” he says. “It was also the first day of Hanukah so it was going to be a particularly beautiful service.”
He understands and respects the security precautions – “while it’s a victory for our enemies when we can’t gather, it’s a greater victory if people get killed because we do gather” – but is eager to be back with his community. He doesn’t know yet what that will look like for his congregation, given this is a particularly celebratory time in the Jewish calendar.
“We were looking forward to … a huge kids’ party on Friday evening with a fire show and live music and refreshments and doughnuts and a choir.
“It was going to be one of those really fantastic events to finish off the year, and now we’re caught in a dilemma because on the one hand, how can you have music and drinking and a fire show when people’s dead are still lying before them? On the other hand, how can you snatch Hanukah from the children? So we’re deeply aware of the imperatives on both sides.”
Meltzer says that for his community in Bondi, being able to gather again, when it is safe, will be very meaningful.
“I know that at a synagogue level, we’re looking forward to being able to gather as a community to come together in prayer. And as soon as we get the all-clear to do that, we will organise that.”
Meltzer was with two of his children, aged 9 and 11, at the Hanukah event at Dover Heights when the Bondi attack happened. Security ordered a lockdown, with hundreds of people taking shelter in the home of someone living nearby.
But in the process, Meltzer became separated from his girls. He heard not long after that they were safe, but it was more than three hours before he was able to be reunited with them.
“They were understandably very shaken and shocked.”
Meltzer and Elton are contending with how to talk to their children about what has happened.
“It’s very difficult to speak to your children about this,” says Meltzer. “My youngest, nine years old, is asking what happened and asking for details. And you’ve got to be careful, but at the same time, we’ve got to be transparent enough, at an age-appropriate level, that they’re not being lied to.”
While people are rallying to support one another and are “holding their children close”, Meltzer says “at the same time, we’re seeking answers and wanting to know how something like this can happen”.
“The reality is there is no other minority community in this country that has to self-fund the level of security that the Jewish community does … and there is no other community that has had to ever deal with something at this magnitude.”
The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president, David Ossip, told media on Monday the shooting attack showed that “antisemitism has well and truly found a place here in our beloved country” and criticised the federal government, which it said had made “missteps” on antisemitism.
“What we’ve seen has been the logical progression demonising Jews with rhetoric which slowly builds up to acts of violence,” he said.
Meltzer says he will be “particularly interested in how the broader Australian community responds” and called on them to turn out in huge numbers to support Jewish Australians – perhaps in a march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, like the huge pro-Palestinian rally that took place in August.
“I would hope that as a response [to the Bondi attack], a million people were willing to march around this country in support of the Jewish community. To stand up and say that antisemitism has no place here … at the moment you have a community across this nation – 110,000 people – who are wondering whether we belong and whether we have a safe future here.”
Despite the fear and the uncertainty, last night Meltzer and his family did what Jews across the world have been doing on Hanukah for millennia.
“We came home at 9.30 last night, and we lit our Hanukah candles. We’re not going to let this alter what we do and how we do things. We’re very proud Jews, my daughters are very proud Jews and we will continue to be so.”
