Bondi beach attack badly shakes sense of safety for Australia’s Jews

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In September last year, more than 1,400 people filled the streets in Sydney’s world-famous Bondi Beach neighborhood to celebrate the opening of a new synagogue and community center. It was a different scene on Tuesday, just days after two gunmen killed 15 people and injured more than three dozen people at a nearby Hanukkah festival, including two rabbis affiliated with the Chabad of Bondi center.

Flowers lined the front gate. The street was desolate, aside from the presence of police officers and community security guards. Occasionally, a concerned community member dropped off supplies.

“It’s horrific," said 42-year-old Sreuvi Lazarus, who prays at the center and was at the Hanukkah festival when the shooting unfolded. “There’re no words to describe the events and the pain that a lot of people are going through." The attack, by a father and son who, according to Australian authorities, were motivated by Islamic State ideology, has badly shaken Sydney’s small and tightknit Jewish community. As many mourned their loved ones and cared for the injured, some expressed frustration that authorities hadn’t heeded warnings about a rise in antisemitism since the most recent Israel-Hamas war began, particularly in a country that many had viewed as a model of multiculturalism.

Chabad of Bondi—the local branch of Chabad, a global Jewish organization—helped organize the Hanukkah event and was particularly hard hit by the attack. Rabbi Eli Schlanger, an assistant rabbi at the center who was known as the “Bondi Rabbi," was killed, along with Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, a husband and father who served as general manager, according to Chabad. Rabbi Schlanger, 41, was a community chaplain in hospitals and