By Jordan Baker
Sometimes, in public, children from Jewish schools cover the emblem on their blazer with their hands. Many no longer travel to class by bus; it’s too conspicuous. Their fearful parents drive them instead. On days when worry is highest, some are kept at home.
When asked by well-meaning strangers what they received from Santa, children used to reply that they celebrated Chanukah, not Christmas. “This year, they were nervous to respond,” said one mother. “They looked at me silently.”
As threats to Sydney’s Jewish community escalate, Rabbi Benjamin Elton from The Great Synagogue has been advised to vary his daily route between home and work. He won’t be cowed by shadowy criminals, but this is a sensible precaution. He has a wife and children to think about.
Rabbi Rafi Kaiserblueth says Australia is a welcoming place.Credit: Janie Barrett
“You’re nervous going to sleep, nervous waking up, nervous checking your phone,” says Elton. “That’s what it means to be psychologically terrorising a whole community.”
Anxiety has been high for months as antisemitic attacks intensified from graffiti to arson. Community leaders have been in close contact with authorities, but none were forewarned about the shock to come on Wednesday that police had discovered a cache of mining explosives, enough to blast a colossal hole in a Sydney street.
They were accompanied by a note, earmarking them for two Jewish organisations. If they’d gone off, they would have killed indiscriminately.
Police had known about the explosives, discovered in a caravan in the north-west suburb of Dural, for 10 days when Jewish leaders found out from a newspaper leak. For many who had worked closely with police and government, the shock was tinged with anger and betrayal; why was a threat so huge kept so quiet when so much was at stake?
Rabbi Nochum Schapiro in the Masada College synagogue.Credit: Steven Siewert
Police and the politicians scrambled to brief them, saying they’d tried to keep it all quiet (tactics such as surveillance work best when suspects don’t know they’re being watched) and hadn’t anticipated the leak. Discussions went late into the night in a bid to reassure the community that the information was withheld only because the threat had been contained.
Some in the community were still angry. “I think they should have told us earlier – before it hit the media – because the impact on the community then could have been managed,” said Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “There’s frustration at the seeming inability of the authorities to bring this under control.”
But others put their faith in the judgment of law enforcement. “I am not a security expert,” said Rabbi Rafi Kaiserblueth, from the Emanuel Synagogue. “It is not my place to question how to conduct a police investigation, like it’s not their place to question how I conduct a wedding. I trust in what they are doing until I have a reason not to.”
On Thursday morning, as Sydney woke to news of three more graffiti attacks preaching hatred – including one at a school – the Jewish community was forced to adjust to a new reality: that the threat had escalated from the sinister to the unthinkable.
“[Families] returned for the new academic year today to find their school walls covered in more antisemitic graffiti, the morning after they found out about the caravan full of explosives, and after many of them had not slept because of police helicopters circling over their houses all night long,” said Lynda Ben-Menashe, the president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia.
Rabbi Nochum Schapiro, of St Ives’ Chabad North Shore, said some of his congregants were so afraid that they considered leaving Australia. “There’s a gnawing fear of what this country is coming to. Is this really something we should consider in Australia – is this a place we should think we’re not safe in? These kinds of questions, people are starting to ask,” he said.
Terrorism is designed to terrify, and one of the most frightening elements of the attacks is that the community still has no inkling of who is behind it. The methods used in the attacks have a sinister sophistication. There have been cloned number plates, firebombed evidence, the apparent hiring of low-level criminals to do grunt work – all hallmarks of organised crime.
As Wertheim put it, “there’s been arrests made, but we’ve only got the puppets. Until we know who the puppet masters are, and what their motives are, it’s impossible to point the finger with any degree of certainty about who’s responsible.”
Rabbi Benjamin Elton from The Great SynagogueCredit: Brendan Esposito
Elton describes these hidden ringleaders as cowards. “They’re targeting children, they do things late at night, and they do not do it themselves,” he said. “When people hide in the shadows, they always make themselves more menacing. We’re not hiding. We keep on showing confidence and pride.”
Elton does not expect the ceasefire in the Middle East will ease likelihood of attacks in Sydney. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” he said. “This is not about Israel. The language is Jews, Jews, Jews.
“This is Jew hatred, and there’s nothing even pretending to be political or about foreign policy in what we’re seeing now.”
But he urges optimism. Support has been strong. The dedication of the police, he says, shows “confidence and grit that’s encouraging”.
Rabbi Kaiserbleuth, too, describes Australia as a fundamentally welcoming place. The anxiety is real, and justifiable; the Jewish people have “a long institutional memory,” he says, and a horrendous history of persecution. “We know in the past where this has ended.”
But “this is not that. We have the full support of the state. We live in a fundamentally good community surrounded by decent people who are shocked by this.”
With Sally Rawsthorne
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