I went to a Hanukkah party in Sydney

The era of the maximum security religion is over

Mourners lay flowers at Bondi Pavilion (Jack Kessler)

Yesterday morning, I attended a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. There were no fatalities. This was, self-evidently, not out of an absence of people wanting to cause us harm. Rather, it was a combination of luck as well as the usual precautions.

A few days earlier, I logged onto Bluesky and fired off the below post:

I don’t share much about Judaism or Jewish safety on that website, partly because the internet is — as a rule — a hostile place for Jews while Bluesky, like many left-wing spaces tend to — at best — treat antisemitism as a lesser crime. The manslaughter to proper racism’s murder, as it were.

Still, there is something of a pattern. One week before the Heaton Park synagogue attack in Manchester, I posted:

I’m no clairvoyant. Even painfully telegraphed plot twists in Hollywood’s most derivative thrillers often come as a total shock. But there is a reason why synagogues around the world resemble forts — and it isn’t misplaced paranoia. Lots of people really do hate Jews, and some of them are prepared to do something about it.

And the walls came tumbling down

And so Jews are forced to erect fences. Limit access to controlled entrance points. Install CCTV cameras. Hire burly men to stand guard. Co-ordinate with police. Control online event details. We do this not only for places of worship, but for schools, hospitals and cultural centres — literally anywhere Jews may wish to gather and, you know, partake in civic life as Jews.

But this approach of the last 20 or so years — of ever tighter security in response to ever rising antisemitism — has, bluntly, run out of road. There is no wall so high that the oldest hatred cannot scale. The world in which Jews are either warned to stay at home, or shuffle around under the heaviest possible security blanket — is no longer sustainable.

The world in which politicians, community leaders, celebrities and our neighbours appear more concerned about offending antisemites than defending Jews — that is no longer sustainable.

The world in which protesters can on a weekly basis call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state, and for violence against Jews around the world — that is no longer sustainable.

My small tribute (Jack Kessler)

The world in which Israel is treated as a uniquely demonic force inhabited by bloodthirty, settler colonialists — that is no longer sustainable.

The world in which antisemitism is considered a lesser form of prejudice, more akin to having ginger hair (there are people who think this) — that is no longer sustainable.

The world in which — for the last two decades or so, every time Israel has been at war, antisemitism spikes and when the conflict is over, it falls, but always to a higher baseline than before — that is no longer sustainable.

Look, I understand why the police sometimes warn Jews to stay at home, like they did on October 9, 2023, when pro-Palestinian protestors took to the Sydney Opera House, shouting “Fuck the Jews”. But isolating Jews from the rest of society cannot be a long-term solution to this crisis.

After the Manchester synagogue attack, many non-Jewish people revealed their astonishment that Jewish buildings even had such security. I don’t blame them for their ignorance. Jews don’t talk about it all that often. I think because we’re used to it, and we assume that other people don’t really care. It’s time to care.

Have you heard about the Jews?

Antisemitism isn’t better or worse than any other form of racism. It simply manifests differently, because it is based on a conspiracy myth (in fact, many myths) about how the world really works.

This is why antisemitism isn’t restricted to one political ideology. And why the Bondi massacre, like the Manchester synagogue attack and those before, could conceivably have been carried out by the far right, far left, Islamists or the Iranian government.

A largely deserted Bondi Beach (Jack Kessler)

And it is why I’m begging — literally begging — the anti-racists to let us in. I don’t expect neo-Nazis to like me or come to my aid. But if you think racism is bad, I need you to include anti-Jewish hatred in that. It’s weird to even have to ask, but I’m prepared to.

14 December

Yesterday afternoon local time, a father and son stormed Bondi, home not only to Australia’s most famous beach but to one of the nation’s largest Jewish communities, and murdered — at the time of writing — 15 people celebrating Hanukkah. See the witness statement given below to the New York Times. The assailants were encouraging others to flee. They only wanted to kill Jews.

Sometimes I have to remind myself — because I mercifully forget — that the peak of the antisemitic incidents in Britain, as in many parts of the world, took place the week after October 7 2023. That is, before the Israeli Defence Forces had begun any sort of response. In other words, it was for many a celebration. But yesterday’s events were a long time coming. Antisemitism in Australia has been getting steadily worse.

And so the era of the maximum security religion should be over. The era of political leaders managing the crisis instead of seeking to resolve it should be over. I appreciate this is, erm, ambitious. Hey! Let’s eradicate a many-thousand-year-old hatred, one that has demonstrated an influenza-like ability to mutate and act as a vector for whatever polite society finds most repulsive! Thank you, captain obvious!

I’m not saying my approach will work. In fact, I’d be astonished if it did. I just know that the old way of operating — where security has become a substitute for moral confrontation — is done. Antisemitism will not be defeated by higher walls. Rather, it requires the active participation of the societies that host Jewish life — in naming it, confronting it and treating it with the same seriousness and urgency they afford every other form of racism.