Chabad rabbis, Ukrainian Holocaust survivor among those killed in Sydney Hanukkah attack |
Two Chabad rabbis, a Holocaust survivor, a recent immigrant and a 10-year-old girl were among the 15 people confirmed to have been killed on Sunday when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in one of the deadliest terror attacks targeting Jews outside of Israel in decades.
The attackers targeted “Chanukah by the Sea,” an event organized by the Chabad Hasidic movement to mark the first night of the eight-day Jewish festival of lights.
They fired some 50 shots at the 1,000-strong crowd and wounded an estimated 38 people, including two police officers.
It was the second-worst mass shooting in Australian history and the deadliest attack targeting Jews outside of Israel since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
These are the stories of the victims who have been identified.
This article will be updated as more information emerges.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger was the assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia.
The 41-year-old rabbi was born in London and studied at Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in Brunoy, France, Chabad said. He received his rabbinic ordination at the central Lubavitch yeshiva in Crown Heights, New York City.
His cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis, told the BBC that Schlanger and his family moved to New York when he was a child, and that he relocated again after marrying an Australian woman.
He is survived by his wife and five children, the youngest of whom, a boy, was born just two months ago.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was murdered in the terrorist attack in Sydney during Hanukkah, leaves behind a wife and four children. pic.twitter.com/4BKcs6xttT
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 14, 2025
Schlanger was outspoken in the face of rising antisemitism in Australia. In an interview on the Chabad website in March, he encouraged Jews to stand proudly in the face of hatred.
“My car — emblazoned with mitzvah symbols — is a living example of pride and resilience,” he said then.
He encouraged others to embrace their Jewish identities more strongly as a response to growing hate.
“Be more Jewish, act more Jewish and appear more Jewish,” he said at the time.
Lewis described Schlanger to BBC News as “vivacious, energetic, full of life and a very warm outgoing person who loved to help people.”
He told the news outlet that his cousin’s answer to the Bondi Beach massacre would have been to tell people to “keep spreading light” and to do acts of charity.
“The world is a positive place and we need to show that and I know Eli would be saying that,” he said.
Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, was celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach with his wife of 57 years, Larisa Kleytman, also a Holocaust survivor, when the attack began.
He was killed while shielding Larisa from the bullets with his own body, his wife told the Daily Mail.
“I think he was shot because he raised himself up to protect me, in the back of the head,” she said in brief remarks outside of St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
The husband of Larissa Kleytman, a grandmother who was celebrating Chanukah, was........