By Jordan Baker and Amber Schultz
Parents have begun cancelling applications for Jewish preschools in favour of non-denominational institutions as fear mounts that sending their children to religious colleges will make them vulnerable amid an intensification of antisemitic threats.
Extra police stood guard at Jewish schools on Friday, in addition to the schools’ own security, amid deep distress at the discovery of a caravan full of mining explosives, with a note naming The Great Synagogue in the CBD and The Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst as potential targets.
Children at religious schools have been covering their blazer emblems in public, avoiding public transport and wearing casual clothes on excursions amid concern that identifying their school would put them at risk.
Police were outside five-year-old Remy’s school on his first day of kindergarten amid deep concern from parents about intensifying antisemitic attacks.Credit: Louise Kennerley
At Mount Sinai College in Maroubra, where a wall was tagged with “Jews are the real terrorists” this week, dark-clothed security guards guided cars through the gates while two police officers handed out temporary tattoos and police armbands to ease the tension.
Five-year-old Remy began kindergarten there on Friday. His mother, Gina Ferrer, was unnerved by the level of security. “I knew that it was going to happen, but seeing that many police really shocked me,” she said.
She has discussed safety with her older daughters, especially when they travel in uniforms displaying their Jewish school logos, but will wait to discuss the situation with Remy until he asks.
“I just don’t want him to know about this ugly world that we’re living in at the moment,” she said.
The president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, David Ossip, had urged extra protection for students in a letter to NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb on Thursday, saying recent weeks had featured graffiti, arson, property damage and mass casualty threats.
Police handed out wristbands as students are picked up from Mount Sinai College.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“The situation has now deteriorated further. In our view, informed by recent developments and internal security assessments, the likelihood of further incidents is extremely high,” he wrote.
Webb on Friday agreed to implement high-visibility policing at Jewish schools during peak times, including drop off and pick up, after meeting with Ossip and NSW Premier’s Department secretary Simon Draper.
Additional security measures are expected to be put in place at key Jewish community sites, with the state government and the Jewish Board of Deputies working to finalise details.
Grant McCorquodale, the president of the Emanuel Synagogue and a former president of the Emanuel School board, said parents were very nervous.
“There are a number of parents now across schools and preschools who are questioning whether the safety of their child within a Jewish education model is [secure].”
He knew of cases where parents of preschoolers were “now choosing a non-denominational model for fear of [their child being a] target, and that’s a real worry … we have cancellations for preschool applications”.
Chief rabbi Benjamin Elton at the Great Synagogue on FridayCredit: Dion Georgopoulos
John Hamey, the chief executive of the board that runs Jewish education in public schools, was concerned that Jewish students in public schools were being overlooked. “There are a lot of Jewish families that are concerned about their children being identified as being Jewish.”
The Great Synagogue’s leaders will proceed with Friday evening and Saturday morning services despite finding out theirs was one of two institutions specified on a document found in the caravan alongside explosives capable of a 40-metre blast.
With its Gothic arches and Victorian splendour, The Great Synagogue in Elizabeth Street is one of Sydney’s best-known Jewish sites and is metres from two significant hotels, a Sydney University city campus, and the Wesley Mission.
Benjamin Elton, the chief rabbi at the synagogue, described the news as distressing but said he was grateful to the police for thwarting the plan. Security was tight, and services would continue as normal. “We continue to function as the active, busy, warm synagogue that we are,” he told the Herald.
At the synagogue’s Saturday service, he will talk about “many people who hate [Jewish people] and want to do us harm” over history, from Pharoah to those responsible for recent attacks, “who skulk around in the middle of the night and defame Jews on the walls of schools and daycare centres”.
He will thank those who come to the service. “It would have been easier to be cautious and stay at home, but it is much more important to be proud, to be defiant and unbowed,” he will say.
The Jewish Museum, on busy Darlinghurst Road, was the other institution on the list discovered in the caravan. It’s home to thousands of artefacts from the Holocaust – letters, photographs, prisoners’ clothes – and Australian Jewish history, as well as the sanctum of remembrance. The museum declined to comment.
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