By Alex Crowe
Students at a Melbourne Jewish school have been told not to wear their uniforms in the CBD due to fear of reprisal, as educators increase security in response to a wave of antisemitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.
The targeting of a Sydney daycare centre has heightened anxiety among a community already on edge, exacerbated for some by Victoria Police’s failure to make arrests over the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea late last year.
Chabad of St Kilda Rabbi Effy Block said despite the “taskforce of 50 cops sitting in a room trying to work on the case”, very few perpetrators involved in the recent spate of incidents targeting Jewish homes and businesses had been arrested.
Rabbi Effy Block’s home and car were graffitied with antisemitic messages in St Kilda last year.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Block, who runs the education facility near Melbourne’s Jewish heartland, said his home and car were vandalised with antisemitic graffiti in November, which included the message “Jews kill babies”. He said he reported the incident to police, who took pictures, but no arrests had been made.
Chabad of St Kilda has responded by updating its CCTV cameras and installing an intercom security system.
Australian Council of Jewish Schools executive director Len Hain said the organisation’s member schools had taken similar precautions.
“The events that are taking place now for school going back next week is very different to and has escalated from the time when school finished in December,” he said.
“Tension is much higher now.”
Mount Scopus Memorial College, which employs armed guards at each of its three Melbourne campuses, increased the security levy it charges families to $1150 in 2025 in response to “significantly increased vigilance around security in the current climate”.
The Jewish school’s Burwood campus was daubed with antisemitic graffiti in May, despite reportedly increasing its monthly spend on guarding primary and secondary facilities by $40,000 since October 7, 2023.
Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Opposition education spokesperson Jess Wilson told the Victorian parliament the school had spent $1.2 million on security costs in the first six months of 2024, including $50,000 on CCTV and tracking of its school buses.
Principal Dan Sztrajt, who did not want to speak about security operational matters due to safety concerns for students, called what happened at Adass Israel “an absolute disaster”.
“Unfortunately, one of our campuses is very close to that synagogue, which again contributed to the feeling of significant anxiety around the safety of the community,” he said.
“The targeted attacks that have been happening in Sydney have continued to fuel this sense that there is certainly a strong level of antisemitism out there, a level that most Jews in the community have never seen.”
Jewish schoolchildren have recently reported incidences of abuse on public transport, including five girls from Beth Rivkah Ladies College who told police they were verbally abused by two men on a tram near Balaclava in November, and two boys from Yesodei HaTorah College who reported being verbally abused and assaulted at Caulfield train station in September.
Sztrajt said antisemitism had also been directed at public school students, which had led to a number of families opting to move to Mount Scopus.
The principal of another Melbourne Jewish school, who asked not to be named because of safety concerns, said students were required to change out of their uniform on excursion days to hide their faith.
He said the schools’ use of armed guards, a parent security group and a specialist security adviser was necessary to secure their gated community.
“It can be quite confronting to come to a school that has eight to 10 feet fencing and that has armed and uniformed guards at the gate … and very sad for school to have to do, but it is also an essential reality,” the principal said.
Since October 7, 2023, the federal government has announced $57.5 million for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to improve security at Jewish sites, including schools and preschools.
Beth Rivkah Colleges, Leibler Yavneh College, Mount Scopus and Adass Israel School are among about a dozen Victorian Jewish schools to have received grants through a separate $50 million Securing Faith‑Based Places program.
The Melbourne principal, whose school has also been awarded funding, said he had read commentary online about the attacks being “false flag operations so Jews can apply for money”.
“When you think of that as an antisemitic stereotype, it is just disgusting,” he said.
Premier Jacinta Allan and federal Labor MP Josh Burns – whose St Kilda office was vandalised last year – joined calls this week from Jewish groups to end the weekly pro-Palestine protests through the CBD.
For Rabbi Block, the link between the demonstrations taking place each Sunday and the targeting of Jewish schools and institutions is clear.
“I do see a correlation between the protests and these hateful acts of violence towards the Jewish community,” he said.
“There’s a fine line between the right to protest and inciting violence, which has no place in Australia.”
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