The killing of at least 15 people by two gunmen at a Sydney, Australia, Chanukah party on Dec. 14 has left Baltimore-area Jewish leaders shocked and appalled – but not deterred from publicly celebrating the holiday, which began Sunday.
One note of defiance came from Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan, director of the Maryland Region for Chabad-Lubavitch. “We will never permit our enemies to dampen or mitigate our celebrations or our work,” he said in a Baltimore Jewish Times interview. “So as tragic and painful as the events are, and we feel it very much, we will definitely continue with our work. Not only continue, but we will increase it and seek to do more,” he said.
Rabbi Elchonon Lisbon of Baltimore’s Chabad of Park Heights said that at a Chanukah event this week he will speak about the story of the holiday itself as motivation for the Jewish community to keep going.
“[The Maccabees] saw the destruction of the Temple, and they didn’t cower. We’re going to build and we’re going to fight,” he said.
A statement from the Baltimore Jewish Council and The Associated urged members of the Jewish community to “stand up” and not hide their identity. “We must not allow hate to interfere with living our lives as Jews,” they said.
The BJC and The Associated said there were no known specific threats against local Jewish institutions but added, “we are closely coordinating with our partners in law enforcement to remain vigilant. On this sad day, we are once again reminded of the important task ahead not only to protect our community but to build relationships and educate our partners about the rise of antisemitism and hate.”
Rabbi Elchonon Chaikin, CEO of Cheder Chabad of Baltimore, feels like this attack ripped at the fabric of Jewish safety everywhere, not just in Australia.
“I feel totally violated. And when a person is violated, they don’t feel safe. They feel like someone’s invaded their personal innocence and safety. And that’s, of course, thousands of miles away, and your whole sense of stability and safety is rocked and violated.”
Chabad sources said one of those killed was Eli Schlanger, a U.K-born rabbi who had worked and lived in Sydney for 18 years. Rabbi Kaplan said he met Schlanger earlier this year when the Australia-based rabbi traveled to the United States.
Kaplan said he doesn’t remember much about the interaction, but that the tragedy hits close to home all the same.
Horror in Australia
Australian authorities said that along with the 15 killed, more than 40 others were wounded when the two gunmen opened fire on the crowd at Bondi Beach in Sydney. The attack targeted hundreds gathered to mark the first night of Chanukah with a seaside menorah lighting and party sponsored by the Chabad of Bondi.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation named the alleged shooters as Sajid Akram, 50, who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police, and Naveed Akram, 24, who was hospitalized in critical condition.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Naveed Akram first came to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization in October 2019 and was under investigation for six months, but there was an assessment that he posed no ongoing threat.
However, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the younger Akram was closely connected to an Islamic State cell member now serving seven years in jail for planning an IS insurgency.
Witnesses say chaos broke out when the crowd heard the sounds of shots being fired and began fleeing.
“Hundreds of people were gathered. It’s a family event,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told a Sydney radio station. “They heard, like, dozens of popping sounds. And people just started running, running over barricades, grabbing their children. It was mayhem.”
At a news conference on Sunday evening, Dec. 14, the Australian prime minister declared the attack a terrorist incident. “This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians, on the first day of Chanukah, which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith,” he said. He called the shootings “an act of evil antisemitism, terrorism, that has struck the heart of our nation.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Australian government was partly to blame for the deadly shootings. “Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia,” Netanyahu said Sunday during a ceremony in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.
Australia has historically been seen as a safe place for the country’s approximately 115,000 Jews, but the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said it recorded more than 1,600 antisemitic incidents nationwide in the year ending in September 2025, several times the average seen in the years before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society and become part of the mainstream, where it is normalized and allowed to fester and spread, gaining ground at universities, in arts and culture spaces, in the health sector, in the workplace and elsewhere,” the report said. “In such an environment, Jews have legitimate concerns for their physical safety and future.”
Chaikin said the incident in Sydney will only serve to bring Jews everywhere closer together.
“While this sounds cliche, and it’s been said hundreds of times before, for every tragic event, we know that we are now facing a great darkness, and the way to combat darkness is not to push it away, but to add in light. And that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.
