Published: 19 December 2025
Last updated: 19 December 2025
Arjuna Ben-Zion Weiss
The joy, the horror
Children playing in the park
Chasing soap bubbles
Jewish Music playing
On louds speakers
Images of Chanukah
a festival of Light
on a giant screen
The quiet ocean
blue turquoise
The blue sky
the white clouds above
eating free donuts
playing with the baby animals
screams of joy –
and then the horror
the sound of fireworks
or bursting balloons -NO!
the policemen shout
get down run
Oh my God
this is gunfire
screams of horror and panic
Crouching down
behind the plastic chairs
we were sitting on
our faces in the Earth
Shema Yisrael
Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai Echad
I pray again and
aging and again
with the bullets flying overhead
and the screams of horror
Oh my God!
This is a Pogrom in Bondi
I pray to the Earth Mother
I pray to the Sky Father
I pray for the police
Come come come
Where are you?
The bullets keep coming
The sirens arrive
Thank God they’re here!
The bullets keep coming
103 or them
In all this horror
I feel divine protection
Earth Mother, Sky Father
They are here too!
I think of my ancestors
In Eastern Europe
How often they were murdered
in Pogroms!
And yet our people survived
Then the firing stops
The silence fills the air
I look up and see
Bodies covered in blood
I see people running with First Aid
They begin to attend
to the wounded
I’m in deep shock
This couldn’t be Bondi Beach!
my sacred Dreaming place
the next day along with the police
come the flowers
hundreds of flowers
candles and stones
songs and prayers
of love and hope
I return to the place of horror
and it’s become a place
of joy again – because
Love is stronger than death!