The Australian Jewish community was shocked by a brazen arson attack on the country’s most active Orthodox shul, Adass Yisrael, early Friday morning, an assault later termed a terrorist act by the authorities. The largest beis midrash in the shul complex, the Sefardishe shul, was torched by two men who broke into the premises just after 4:00 a.m., poured flammable liquid inside, spread it with brooms over the floor and walls, and set it alight. At the time, two people were learning in the shul. The arsonists left the rest of the complex untouched. However, the entire structure of the Sefardishe shul was destroyed, despite the heroic efforts of 65 firefighters to extinguish the blaze.
Yumi Friedman, a local resident and business owner, was learning in the building at the time of the attack. When he heard loud banging and glass shattering, he ran out the back door, rushed to his store around the corner and called the police. Meanwhile, another chasidishe yungerman in the building ran to the beis midrash and flung open the door. He saw two men spreading what smelled like gasoline over the floor and walls, and he screamed at them to get out. Surprised, the intruders escaped through the window they had shattered to gain access to the shul, but they threw in a flaming torch, which set the room ablaze. That beis midrash and part of the adjoining social hall were gutted. Nevertheless, this yungerman (who escaped unharmed) likely saved the shul complex from further damage, as the fire did not spread to the other batei midrash.
By that time Friedman had returned to the shul, but when he tried to open the door, it was so hot that he burned his hand. He heard the explosive sounds of the fire roaring behind the doors and fled the premises.
Members of the Melbourne kehillah said nothing as devastating as this had ever happened in the history of their community, which was founded by a group of Holocaust survivors from Austria in the war’s aftermath. “I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said Benyomin Klein, a kehillah board member.
The fire has devastated the community, said Yumi Rosenbaum, a local askan. “This shul is the shul I grew up in,” he said, still in shock over the destruction. “From before its inception in 1945, my grandfather was the first baal tefillah, the shochet and mohel of the then-fledgling kehillah. Four generations later, this shul and kehillah are still a central part of our lives.”
Sky News host Sharri Markson was allowed access to the burned shul on Monday, and she described the damage as total.
“You can by no means see the extent of the damage until you go inside,” she said. “It has been utterly destroyed. A room once filled with people studying, praying and children and families. It has been destroyed.” The shul, she added, was “burned to smithereens.”
The only thing that was not destroyed in that beis midrash was the metal safe within the aron kodesh. Klein said that while the fire raged all around it, it didn’t penetrate it. “To our relief the sifrei Torah were not burned and suffered only minor damage.”He said that some of the sifrei Torah will need a few yerios replaced due to smoke and water damage, but quick action saved them.
Amid the devastation, the community is also rallying behind the rays of light that shine in. For example, there is a shiur each Thursday night on the Ohr Hachayim Hakadosh. The person who arranges it each week—he sets up the chairs and purchases refreshments—decided on a whim this past Thursday to take his tefillin bag and put it in his car. All the other tashmishei kedushah in that area were, sadly, destroyed.
“I think,” he told community members afterward, “that my tefillin were saved in the zechus of the Ohr Hachayim Hakadosh.”
The attack took place during a heat wave, and firefighters, police officers and Hatzalah volunteers were operating in the sweltering, 90-degree weather. In addition, a large contingent of the country’s media was present.
Klein recalled a poignant moment when a member of the kehillah went to a supermarket and bought water, crackers and some cool dips for the emergency responders.
“A cameraman from one of the television stations turned around to me and said, ‘You see? This is how the Jewish community behaves. This is why we believe the Jewish community is so special.’ We’re a very small part of Melbourne, but he said he knew that this is how Jewish people behave.”
The yungerman who surprised the intruders was unable to identify the arsonists, because they were wearing hoodies with large “Covid-style” black masks covering the lower part of their faces, but he told the police they had “olive-brown skin,” Klein said. The country’s counterterrorism center and the Victoria State Police currently have a large team conducting an investigation into the attack, which came as pro-Palestinian protests have erupted outside shuls across Melbourne each weekend, sometimes leading to violence.
The community has been angered that the left-wing governments of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victoria State Premier Jacinta Allan have done little to protect them.
Albanese, who visited the shul on Tuesday, further inflamed the situation when in his initial reaction to the attack he refused to call it an act of terrorism, merely referring to it as “deplorable.” He later backed off partially, telling reporters at an event on Sunday that his “personal perspective” was that the incident was an act of terrorism.
“Terrorism is something that is aimed at creating fear in the community,” Albanese, a Labor leader who had been an active pro-Palestinian protester before entering politics, said, “and the atrocities that occurred in the synagogue in Melbourne clearly were designed to create fear in the community, and therefore from my personal perspective certainly fulfill that definition of terrorism.”
He explained that he could not call it a terror attack until the country’s counterterrorism service and Victoria Police discuss it. “The protocols are that the state jurisdictions, who have the lead on this through Victoria Police, will make an assessment and a recommendation,” he said, adding that there has been a “worrying” rise of anti-Semitism in Australia.
Earlier in the day, opposition leader Peter Dutton, the head of the Conservative Party, criticized Albanese’s response to the rising tide of hatred.
To read more, subscribe to Ami
