My Rabbi Was Killed in the Bondi Shooting: What His Memory Teaches Me |
On the evening of December 14, the unthinkable happened.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger (my rabbi) organized a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Bondi is home to Eli’s Chabad synagogue and has been an idyllic haven for Jews since the early 20th century. Jewish restaurants and social clubs sit alongside tattoo parlors, Italian pizza bars, and chic boutiques. It’s a magnet for people from every corner of the globe, and it was Eli’s backyard.
For 18 years, he’d organized “Chanukah by the Sea.” It was the quintessential Eli event—families gathered, united in joy and prayer, for the festival of light. It was on brand and on mission for Eli, who would often say, “I want the whole world to light up with the Jewish flame.”
Given today’s climate of vicious antisemitism, he would have known there were some risks in being so identifiably Jewish in a public place—so much so, he had organized both police and additional security for the event. But when I once asked him if he was afraid of being an out and proud Jew, he simply said, “When they hate us, we don’t hide, we don’t cower, we become even more Jewish.”
Witnesses report that around 6:41 p.m., two gunmen opened fire. Eli had just had his photo taken........