Teary eyed on Bondi: a young artist’s response to tragedy    

Since the Bondi massacre of Jews on the first night of Chanukah, 14 December 2025, we at the Sydney’s Great Synagogue have received many messages of love and support from the wider community. They came from neighbours, tourists, schoolchildren, regional church groups, and individuals who felt compelled to reach out.

Flowers, handwritten cards, small objects, Israeli flags, candles, poems, biblical verses, phone calls, and emails—each one a gesture of solidarity. As time passes, such responses inevitably fade. The flowers dry and are carefully preserved, the messages are archived, and the objects morph into museum artefacts, and public attention shifts elsewhere.

All the more unexpected, then, was a recent email.

It came from a young student in Townsville, Queensland: “Dear The Great Synagogue of Sydney, I would like to propose the donation of my artwork to you.” Attached was an image of a striking painting titled teary eyed on Bondi.

Intrigued, I telephoned the same day: Hayden Bourne, born in 2011, is a secondary school student and an emerging young artist. What struck me immediately was that Hayden is not Jewish. He lives far from Sydney and has no direct connection to our community. Yet, like so many others across Australia, he felt compelled to respond, in his very own way, to what had happened.

When asked to describe his work, he wrote:

"My painting is a painful reflection on the last moments of some Bondi victims’ lives. I wanted to show the fine line between life and death. I wanted it to feel raw and unkept. The eyes, as people say, are the gateway to the soul, and I felt no better way to reach people than that."