The moment a Labor minister offered Adass rabbi a permanent home in Australia

Last Friday, Rabbi Shlomo Kohn woke to the news that the home of his Adass Israel congregation had been burned down.

The Orthodox synagogue in the suburbs of Melbourne found itself at the centre of Australia’s reckoning with antisemitism after several ugly incidents. However, Kohn and members of his three-generation family were only temporary residents of the country.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Rabbi Shlomo Kohn, now granted permanent residency.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke phoned Kohn on Thursday to change that.

“If people made you feel unwelcome, then in the most direct way I can – and I’ve got the paperwork in front of me – I would like to make you and your family permanent residents of our Australia,” Burke said on a video call this week with the rabbi, his wife and grandchildren.

Flanked by Department of Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster, Burke said Kohn, who led Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on a tour of the burnt-out synagogue on Tuesday, deserved to stay in Australia.

“You and your community, the dignity you have shown and the way you have responded to the awful hatred, with so much dignity and a sense of peace, is inspiring to all Australians,” Burke said in the call, the text of which his office shared with Kohn’s permission.

“The hatred that was shown is not who we are as a nation and the best way that I feel I can respond to that is to send the loudest public message that an immigration minister can send.”

The rabbi, who has been in Australia on a working visa, thanked the minister. “Great, great, thank you. We really appreciate it,” he said.

“Six years [living in Australia], ’til now, I enjoyed every minute of it,” Kohn said. “The community is nice, the culture is nice, everything is nice over here.

“Events should never repeat themselves.”

The Adass Israel synagogue was firebombed on Friday in an act authorities have said was “likely a terrorist attack”. Days later, eastern Sydney residents found antisemitic graffiti and a burnt-out car in an area with many Jewish residents.

The move by Burke, a pro-Palestine voice in Labor seen as a potential party leader after Albanese, marked a moment of government outreach to a tight-knit, non-Zionist part of Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community who are not politically active in the debate on Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon.

On the call, Burke said his visit to the synagogue Tuesday truly moved him.

Albanese too appeared emotional at points this week during visits to the synagogue and the Sydney Jewish Museum, trips that came after he remained in Perth in the immediate aftermath of the fire and enjoyed a tennis match, attracting criticism from parts of the Jewish community. Burke, who is also home affairs minister in charge of domestic security, was also accused by the Coalition of being missing in action in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

Media baron Rupert Murdoch and billionaire Lindsay Fox have also visited the synagogue. Late on Friday, the Herald Sun and Murdoch donated $150,000 each to a campaign dedicated to rebuilding the shul.

Adass Israel board member Benjamin Klein speaks to Lindsay Fox at the synagogue on Friday.

In the shadow of the political debate over the antisemitism crisis, the Adass Jewish community have been coming to terms with the trauma.

Albanese was told on Tuesday of a nine-year-old child who, according to their mother, hadn’t slept since the synagogue was torched.

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