We have lost the ability to disagree without turning on each other

In the past four months I've had an interesting insight into our Australian Jewish community, and I've come to the conclusion that the Jews of Australia are not okay.

I've been a writer for several years now, since I landed an internship at the American Tablet magazine in 2020, writing about our community for both local and international media. So in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi attack, it was not completely surprising that my email inbox detonated. Contacts I had built over five years, editors, radio producers, people I had pitched once and never heard from again, all suddenly wanted the same thing: an Australian Jewish voice, and quickly.

The worst terrorist attack our country had ever seen became, for me, the most professionally intense period of my life. In the days following the attack I wrote almost a dozen articles, appeared on major global Jewish podcasts, and gave interviews to radio stations in the United States, London, Canada and locally.

I hardly slept at all, and I kept talking, writing, explaining, trying to give shape to what people were feeling, and to say clearly that the warning signs had been there, that the Australian government's response to antisemitism had been weak and ineffective, and that massacre had not come out of nowhere.

Afterwards, the response from within our community was overwhelming. Messages poured in from people I loved, from those I barely knew and from others I hadn't spoken to in decades. In the weeks and months that followed Bondi, people stopped me in the street, in shul, at events, to thank me for using my voice to speak to the world's media, for articulating what so many were feeling but couldn't find the words to say. It was bigger than anything I had ever experienced, and even today, people still stop me to say thank you.