Never tear us apart: a New Year reflection

For generations, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, has called my people to Teshuva, Tfilla, and Tzedakah, Repentance, Prayer and Charity.  I vividly remember many long days in my youth growing up in Melbourne on long September days where private prayer at Shira would suddenly surge into the communal harmony filled with joy and tears between Shacharit and Yizkor. In those rooms, mentors of mine like Mark Baker and Debbie Maisel (z”l) mastered the alchemy of the sermon: they knew exactly how to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable.

It is a world away from the secular New Year of December 31, which usually arrives as a riot of noise, a sensory blitz of heavy drinking, thumping bass, and the pyrotechnic thunder over our capital cities.

But at the end of 2025, in the wake of the Chanukah Massacre at our most beloved beach, the rhythm broke. By the Sydney Harbour Bridge, home to perhaps the most iconic fireworks display on the planet, the atmosphere changed. At 11:00 PM, in the middle of the crowds and the music, the foreshore fell into a profound, collective silence. As I watched the live stream on the ABC from my home in Jerusalem, I observed that it wasn't the kind of silence that feels empty; it was the kind that feels heavy with shared grief. Thousands of phones were raised toward the sky, not to capture a spectacle, but to serve as small beacons of light for the victims we lost at Bondi.

I rarely get emotional when watching New Years coverage in the middle of the day, but this moment really stayed with me.

When the silence finally broke, it wasn't with a bang, but with the haunting, spacious notes of Never Tear Us Apart performed by Matt Corby.

In 2025, this ballad topped the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs with over 2.6 million votes. Technically, it’s a steady 97 beats per minute in C Major, written in a waltz-like 6/8 time signature. But its true power lies in the dramatic silences written into its DNA.