By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Crikey

15 December 2025

Last night was the first night of Hannukah. Most years, Hannukah is one of my favourite Jewish festivals. It usually coincides with the summer holidays, the weather usually holds up and most year I can choose from a smorgasbord of parties to take my kids to.

Hannukah is the festival of light. It marks the rededication of the Temple more than 2000 years ago, but more than that, it has come to symbolise the idea that light can persist even when things feel dark. Out of all Jewish festivals, it is one of the most widely celebrated, even by Jews who are not otherwise particularly observant.

So, when I came home from a Hannukah party in Melbourne, and I saw that a strikingly similar party had deliberately targeted in Sydney on Bondi Beach, and at least a dozen people were murdered while celebrating this wonderful Jewish festival, my blood ran cold. It is the worst incident of gun violence in Australia in more than thirty years. I could not believe that something of this scale had been directed at my community, in this country, on the first night of Hannukah.

Australia’s Jewish community is very tightknit, and I know some of the injured, and it feels horrific to be added to WhatsApp groups where I recognise the names of people we are being asked to pray for. It is inconceivable that a rabbi was murdered in cold blood while celebrating his faith on one of Australia’s most iconic beaches.

Jewish people make up less than one per cent of the Australian population. Most of us want to be left alone to live our ordinary lives. We go to work, raise families and worry about school fees and our mortgages. For much of my life, antisemitism in Australia was spoken about as something rare and unusual. Since October 7, that assumption has collapsed. Antisemitism in Australia has risen sharply, and my Jewish community has repeatedly said that we do not feel safe.

It already feels unfair that my life in Australia is becoming so different from the lives of non-Jewish people I know and work with. My synagogue sits behind heavy security, including an armed guard and air locking doors. My children attend Jewish schools that look like fortresses, with bollards, reinforced fencing and layers of protection that are confronting even if you are used to them. No one else worships or goes to school like this in Australia. It feels deeply wrong that this level of security has become normalised as the price of practising Judaism here.

Sometimes when I explain the security at Jewish institutions to other Australians, they look at me as though I am describing life somewhere else entirely. Sometimes I can see the unspoken thought that perhaps the Jewish community is overreacting. But 12 people killed for celebrating Hannukah on Bondi Beach shows that my community has been correct to be vigilant.

Since October 7, I’ve kept wondering whether I have a future in this country. I’m in my early 30s, I have always loved living here and I feel proud to be an Australian. Yet, if Jewish life has to take place behind heavy security and Jewish events cannot be secured, I don’t know if I want to raise kids here and live like this.

I know that most Australians are good people, and I know that many will be genuinely outraged that the Jewish community was targeted in this way. But Jews have learned, over centuries, to pay close attention to moments like this. We have often described ourselves as the canary in the coalmine. When antisemitism rises and becomes violent, it usually indicates that something is deeply wrong in a society. And Jewish history teaches us that violence like this and disturbing behaviour like this rarely stays confined to Jews alone.

Within the Jewish community, there is a growing sense that the Albanese government has been weak and ineffective in responding to antisemitism. Condemnations after the fact and additional security grants that turn Jewish institutions into even more fortified spaces do not address the underlying problem. They may be necessary in the short term, but they are not a solution. A country in which Jewish life can only exist behind walls and armed guards is not a healthy one.

I have always loved living in Australia and I have always felt proud to be Australian. For most of my life, I assumed without really thinking about it that this was the safest place in the world to raise Jewish children. But, now, after last night, that assumption feels ruptured.

The way Australia responds to what happened last night, will say a great deal about the kind of country we are becoming, and about who can feel at home here in the years to come.