These are thoughts I never used to carry. Now they travel with me the way my keys do – automatically, without my permission.
The violence at Bondi hit me in a way I didn’t expect. In 2019, I was there, invited to screen one of my films and speak, hosted by a Jewish charity. I even let myself imagine emigrating to Australia, drawn to what looked like a quiet, easy life. But I also knew the truth: I wouldn’t leave while my mother is still here.
So I went to the gathering without her.
And it was more powerful than I expected.
There was security everywhere – private guards, local police. I was grateful to see them. I hated that we needed them. This is what it means now to gather as Jews in open, public spaces: to weigh safety against visibility, to calculate risk before joy.
And yet people came anyway. They stood shoulder to shoulder anyway. They sang anyway. They chose community anyway.
I kept thinking: This is what resilience looks like now. Not a speech. Not a slogan. A decision. A presence.
Gayle pushing her mother in her wheelchair[Missing Credit]
Our rabbi spoke; brilliant in that rare way that never feels showy. He weaves history with the present moment, Jewish wisdom with human vulnerability, and somehow makes the heavy feel bearable: not by minimising it, but by giving it meaning. Beyond the pulpit, he’s a connector in the deepest sense of the word. He sees who is standing alone, who is new, who needs to be folded in, and he quietly makes that happen. He gathers people. He reminds us we belong to one another.
There were other speakers too – religious leaders of other faiths, members of local government – none of them Jewish, all of them present. All of them supportive. All of them remorseful for the rise in antisemitism that is no longer subtle and no longer rare.
Then a singer from South Africa took the stage. When he began the Hebrew songs, something in me cracked open. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been holding until I heard those words in that melody, surrounded by people who weren’t afraid to be there. My heart was so full it ached. For a moment, I felt what I haven’t felt in a long time: held.
I have a community now that I never had before. I’m not alone in this.
And then the uninvited and unsettling thought: did it really take this to bring me back to my roots, to bring me home?
I wasn’t raised observant. Most of my friends have always been from all over the world – different cultures, religions, languages, backgrounds. People used to say I had my own United Nations. I was attracted to difference. I believed decency was contagious.
But then October 7 happened and my life changed.
And so have my friendships.
I lost friends – not to death, but to something strangely similar. A disappearance, a withdrawal, a refusal to see what it means to be Jewish right now. I never expected that people who speak passionately about justice would suddenly have no language, no empathy, no curiosity when it came to Jews. That was the shock: not disagreement, the absence of care. And in that emptiness, I gained new friends. People who didn’t need it explained. People who didn’t negotiate with my fear. People who simply said: I’m here.
As someone who has been on the liberal left for much of my life, and whose friends have largely been on it too, I never expected this. The map of my community has shifted, and I didn’t ask it to.
And my mother was right. If something had happened at that gathering, it would have been hard for me to get out quickly with her. Hard to protect her while pushing a wheelchair across grass. This is the part people don’t always understand about “be brave”. Courage gets complicated when you are responsible for someone else’s body.
Which is why my Jewishness right now lives in a tension I never used to know: I refuse to hide, and I am also careful. I want to be visible, and I am also aware of the cost of visibility, not just for me, but for the people I love.
For the first time in my life, I am wearing a Star of David.
This concerns my mother.
The funny thing is, I “look” stereotypically Jewish, and people have often identified me as such: the curly hair, the bump on my nose, the inflection. For years, my mother wanted me to change all of it, and I resented her for that.
Now I understand what she was really asking for. She grew up in a time when relatives changed their last names just to find work. When “fitting in” wasn’t vanity – it was survival.
I won’t hide. I have nothing to hide. And yet, I am also responsible for someone I love who cannot move quickly, who cannot run, who cannot protect herself.
Not long ago, I found an old electric menorah my mother used in my childhood and dusted it off. When I was young, we placed it in the window during Chanukah – bright and public – like the way we admire Christmas lights. It was never a provocation. It was a quiet offering. A glow that said: We’re here.
This year, we didn’t put it in the window. We made that decision together. Quietly. Without debate. A small, painful compromise between pride and prudence.
I hate that this is where we are.
But I also know this: Jewish history is not a history of disappearing. It’s a history of endurance. Of rebuilding. Of carrying tradition forward, sometimes in celebration, sometimes in secrecy, always with a stubborn devotion to life.
And that endurance lives in me now – not as something I chose, but as something I inherited. A refusal to let fear or bitterness shape everything. A boundary around my soul: you don’t get to take everything. I can be angry and still be grateful. I can be frightened and still bring joy. I can mourn what I’ve lost and still protect what’s good. I can acknowledge the darkness without letting it dictate the shape of my days.
We keep showing up. We keep finding one another. We keep singing, even with security at the edges. We keep passing the light hand to hand.
The light doesn’t need permission to exist.
It just needs someone willing to guard it.
And I am.
Gayle Kirschenbaum’s film Look At Us Now, Mother! premiered on Netflix. Her debut memoir is Bullied to Besties: A Daughter’s Journey to Forgiveness
