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 prisons, and is survived by his wife and five young children, including a two-month-old baby. On social media, he described his joy in counseling a Jewish inmate who was released in early December, noting that one condition of the release was ongoing study and spiritual guidance.
“He was just responding to adversity always with positivity, light and doubling down,” said Noach Koncepolski, a friend of Rabbi Schlanger. “Never fear. Always optimism and positivity.”
Jews have been in Australia for centuries and some even arrived as convicts with other Europeans in 1788. In the 20th century, many Jews fleeing persecution from Europe arrived, including after World War II.
Today, Australia is home to about 117,000 Jews, with about 44,000 in Sydney. Many Jews in Sydney are around Bondi Beach, where there are Jewish eateries, a kosher grocery store and several synagogues. The community is a mix of religious and secular Jews, and includes immigrants from the former Soviet Union, South Africa and Israel.
Over the past two years, Australian Jews have been rattled by anti-Israel demonstrations at iconic venues like the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, and an uptick of antisemitic incidents, such as last year’s firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue and a blaze at a kosher food business in Sydney. Authorities blamed the latter two on Iran and Australia expelled the ambassador.
Many more incidents, though, have been recorded. A report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said there had been 1,654 antisemitic incidents in the 12 months from October 2024 through September 2025, about three times the total of any year before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“None of this is of any surprise to the Jewish community,” said Paul Baram, 66, who lives in the Bondi area and visited a memorial to the shooting victims Tuesday at the Bondi Pavilion, a community center just steps from the ocean. “We were dreading this. But unfortunately, I personally thought it’s a matter of when, not if.”
Some Australian Jews have questioned whether the police response to the Hanukkah shooting, which lasted at least several minutes, could have been faster, particularly since there is a police station not far away. Officials have defended officers’ actions, saying police engaged the attackers with handguns and that two injured officers were shot in the front—not in the back while running away.
Others felt that the federal government had dragged its feet in implementing the recommendations of a special envoy to combat antisemitism.
“There’s anger in the community,” said Julian Leeser, a Jewish member of Parliament from Australia’s center-right opposition. “There’s anger because the question for governments is, have they done all they can to deal with antisemitism? And I think overwhelmingly the answer is no in relation to the federal government.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he has acted on a range of recommendations in the report. He has previously said that an attack on Jewish Australians is an attack on all Australians.
Rabbi Eli Feldman, a Chabad rabbi at another synagogue in Sydney, said he was focused on supporting victims and their families. The parents of one victim from the U.S. had come over and would be staying in his house, he said. After visiting the memorial at the Bondi Pavilion on Tuesday, he said he was going to the hospital.
Bondi Beach, he said, “it’s like heaven on earth. And unfortunately, it’s been turned into hell.”
But he added: “The message of Hanukkah is to increase in light, and these people have come to spread darkness. We’re going to fight darkness with light.”
Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com