Rabbi Eli Schlanger (my rabbi) organized a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Bondi is home to Eli’s Chabad synagogue and has been an idyllic haven for Jews since the early 20th century. Jewish restaurants and social clubs sit alongside tattoo parlors, Italian pizza bars, and chic boutiques. It’s a magnet for people from every corner of the globe, and it was Eli’s backyard.
Given today’s climate of vicious antisemitism, he would have known there were some risks in being so identifiably Jewish in a public place—so much so, he had organized both police and additional security for the event. But when I once asked him if he was afraid of being an out and proud Jew, he simply said, “When they hate us, we don’t hide, we don’t cower, we become even more Jewish.”
That day, I’d been having lunch with friends. That prior engagement kept my husband, Rowan, and me from attending the ceremony at Bondi (and probably saved our lives). At 7:00 p.m. on the group chat for the lunch, we were in a text fest thanking the hosts when Katrina, one of the guests and a journalist, texted: “Gunshots at Bondi Beach. Lots of sirens and choppers en route.”
We raced to turn on the television. Rowan, in his usual calm way, soothing me saying, “Surely not, don’t jump to the worst conclusions, Eli will be okay,” but I was already shaking, and tears were streaming down my face.
Without confirmation of the slain, I put on the group chat: “Oh God could be MY rabbi.”
By 8:00 p.m., I received a message from a friend from the Melbourne Jewish community. She sent a photo of Eli with the headline “Breaking News. Rabbi Eli Schlanger has been identified as one of the victims in the massacre at a Chanukah event at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.”
I didn’t sleep much, but I woke up in the morning knowing that Eli’s legacy, his mission to bring light and love to the world, would not die with him. Through the hours of conversations, he had prepared me to be his torch-bearer.
“Eli, from the moment you married Chaya you became a son to us as much as she’s our daughter. And you became everything to me, my hands, my head, my heart, my feet," I remember him saying. "I relied on you for everything. You’re my son, my friend, my confidant.”
I feel immensely lucky to have met Rabbi Eli Schlanger. He left behind a beautiful young wife and five glorious children. Their baby will never know his father.
Eli would hate me to dwell on sad things, in fact, he would have only wanted me to focus on the light.
This excerpt was adapted with permission from CONVERSATIONS WITH MY RABBI: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World by Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Nikki Goldstein.
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