At least 15 people are dead and dozens wounded after two shooters opened fire on a Hannukah gathering held at Bondi Beach, the iconic coastal landmark known for its white sands in the suburbs of Australia’s largest city. Among the victims are a 10-year-old girl and a survivor of the Holocaust. Almost 10,000 miles away from the bloody scene in Sydney, Jews in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, are feeling the impact of the brutal attack on a gathering intended to celebrate the winter holiday of lights.
“My first reaction is, I'm just devastated. That's the first piece. The second piece is that I'm not shocked," said Rabbi David Weiner, who serves Congregation Knesset Israel. “A good portion of my family is in Australia. My wife is Australian, she's from Sydney, and so we have firsthand experience of the Jewish community of Australia and what it's going through and what they've been going through over the last few years. Antisemitism has been building in Australia in pronounced ways over the last couple of years, and this is, in many ways, the natural sort of next step as to what's been happening there. I spoke with them right away after the attack, heard about it in the morning yesterday, reached out just to make sure that everybody was okay. They were not, there. But it's really scary stuff.”
Weiner says the last thing Jews should do is hesitate to carry out Hannukah’s core objective: taking delight in community, food, and tradition in the coldest, darkest time of the year.
“Certainly, there's a need to commemorate and to remember, but it's important to celebrate this holiday of light, and to bring light to a place where the terrorists would only spread darkness and carnage," he said. "We need to stand up together.”
The rabbi says the intervention of a bystander into the attack should also be celebrated by Jews across the world.
“We really need to be inspired by the heroism of the unarmed bystander who attacked and disarmed one of the two shooters," said Weiner. "I believe his name has been reported as Ahmed al-Ahmad, and I understand that he's critically injured, which is heartbreaking, and so we're certainly praying for him. He might have saved 10, 15, 20 lives by attacking the gunman.”
The Syrian-born Australian Muslim has been reported to be a fruit vendor, the son of refugees, and a father of two. He was shot multiple times while disarming one of the killers who attacked the beach gathering.
“Thank God some people have a moral center, people have courage, people have the capacity to stand up and do what's right and be the light to beat back the darkness,” said the rabbi.
Weiner blames the Australian government for failing to listen to the Jewish community in the years leading up to Sunday’s massacre.
“Australia, over the last few years, has slid from sloganeering and demonstrations against Jews to property crime, to firebombing of restaurants and synagogues, to now murderous anti-Semitic attack," he said. "And its society now faces a test. Government and public institutions and people in general, which the government has been up until now, non-responsive to Jewish concerns, even ignoring reports and commissions that have been submitted for not just for consideration, but for implementation. They've been shelved. The government's got to turn this around and rally around the Jewish community and the restoration of safety and security for everybody in Australia in the face of those who would murder innocent people just celebrating on the beach.”
The violence in Australia leaves Weiner with concerns about the safety of the Jewish diaspora. As many experts have called Israel’s widely-condemned military campaign in Gaza a genocide, some people have conflated the wider Jewish community with the Zionist political project. The rabbi is worried about violence similar to the Bondi Beach incident happening closer to home.
“We also need to look at what's going on in the United States and wonder about whether we're on the same track here, and if so, what we as a total society can do to prevent us ending up with the same kind of outcome," he said. "We don't want to see this here, either.”
Weiner didn’t mince words about how deeply the Bondi Beach massacre weighed on his spirit as Jews across the world prepare for another night of Hannukah.
“I'm having a very hard time with hope right now," he told WAMC. "And it's important to find, it's important to remember, it's going to be important to come together in community and celebrate and affirm that that's what we're here to do. But no, I'm finding this very challenging.”
The Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York issued a press release condemning the attack on Sunday, and confirmed that law enforcement had found no evidence of credible threats to Capital Region Hannukah celebrations.
