‘Our hearts are broken into pieces, but we’re standing tall’, Chief Rabbi tells Sydney community

— Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) December 20, 2025

At a service attended by political leaders, dignitaries and members of the Jewish community – and during which Jewish leaders called for a federal royal commission into the Bondi terror attack – the Chief Rabbi appealed to the dignity of the Jewish people in the face of hostility.

“Nothing will ever stop us from occupying a public place to declare to the world that Jews are a blessing for all of humankind,” he said. “We’re proud of who we’re about, so should you. And ultimately, God will guarantee that Am Yisrael Chai: the Jewish people will live on forever.”

A crowd of up to 15,000 people gathered at Bondi on Sunday in a commemoration marking one week since the attack on the first day of Chanukah, and held a minute’s silence at 6.47pm, the time the onslaught began.

The service at Central Synagogue was the Chief Rabbi’s first stop on his visit to Sydney to pay tribute to the victims of the attack, among them 10-year-old Matilda, whose funeral he attended on Thursday.

Mourners attend the memorial held for the victims of a shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 21, 2025 (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

In his address, the Chief Rabbi deplored the way hateful rhetoric – including the “demonisation of the world’s only Jewish state” – contributed to both the attack on Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur and the massacre at Bondi Beach, and called on authorities to tackle such language before it “becomes translated into hate crime”.

"The vile, poisonous statements and comments coming through millions of comments on a daily basis [online] are destabilising our societies and are encouraging people to believe the outright lies spoken about the state of Israel, Jews, and Judaism,” he said.

"Hateful extremism is a threat not just to Jews in this world, it's a threat to the very values which underpin our civilisation. And therefore, what happened on Bondi Beach is not merely a Jewish issue: it's something for all of Australia in the same way as Heaton Park was for the whole of the UK.”

The Chief Rabbi concluded on a message of hope for the Jewish people, saying: “We pray to God at this time that the light of Chanukah, which is an inspiration for us to always destroy darkness in our lives, will enable the Jewish people once again to see light: the light of peace, the light of happiness, the light of security.”