Australia’s reputation as a welcoming multicultural nation has taken a beating in recent months, with a rise in anti-Semitic activities—from graffiti and vandalism on Jewish-owned businesses to two attacks on Melbourne synagogues.
While there have been many noisy but largely peaceful protests in Australian cities against Israeli attacks on Gaza, the most recent violence was a fire lit at the doors of the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, a historic Orthodox congregation, on July 4 while families and children were inside celebrating the Shabbat meal.
No one was hurt, but the attack has shaken Australia’s Jews and the wider community.
Australia’s Anglican bishops issued a statement in February, after several incidents in Sydney and Melbourne, condemning “abhorrent and completely unacceptable” hate speech and violence directed at Jewish communities.
“We call on all Australians to stand against the vilification which we have seen recently and work to enhance the peace, justice, and harmony that Jewish Australians, like all Australians, are entitled to expect,” they wrote.
Melbourne has Australia’s largest Jewish community, 50,000 people, or around one percent of the city’s population. The city has a proud record of interfaith initiatives, and Bishop Philip Huggins, an area bishop in the Diocese of Melbourne, has been active in those ventures for decades.
Recently returned from the UN climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, he reflected on scars he saw there of synagogue burnings in the 1930s.
“The attack on a synagogue has this terrible association with the start of and the reality of the Holocaust, and Melbourne in particular became home to people who got as far away as they possibly could from the location of the Holocaust,” he told The Living Church.
“For them, this re-evokes those worst of times and the reasons for why they came here.”
Attacks on places of worship are particularly vicious, he said, because they are places of comfort, of solace, of spiritual communion.
“They carry the memories—family memories from childhood—through marriages, burials, and the like. They are profoundly important to people’s well-being, so an attack on one amplifies to everybody the importance of their places of worship and therefore we stand alongside each other,” the bishop said.
St. Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, across the road from the synagogue, has reached out to its neighbors, offering to contribute to the repair of the doors.
The Rev. Michael Bowie, the church’s vicar, told The Living Church that the synagogue has enjoyed good relations with St Peter’s for at least a century.
After the firebombing, more than 200 people booked to attend the weekly Shabbat dinner, beyond the synagogue’s capacity, and St Peter’s offered to host the meal in their larger hall, after the kitchen was rendered kosher.
“We gladly did it and it was acknowledged by all present to be an extraordinary occasion,” he said, and there is support for making it an annual celebration.
Huggins says a number of Melbourne parishes are holding Shabbat meals or meetings with local Jewish communities to learn from one another, and to offer friendship at a stressful time.
What is critical, he said, is for Australians to hold on to the social compact that leaves the problems of the world outside.
“People came as a consequence of seeking refuge, seeking safety, because of things happening in their country of origin.
“The last thing they wanted to do is replicate that or perpetuate anything like that in this country called Australia, and that has been part of a mindset and a wisdom that has sustained our ability to create a multicultural, multifaith society.
“The tragedy of October 7 and what happened thereafter has been in this social media era—it has made it more problematic to keep that kind of principle intact and it’s understandable when we see what’s going on—but it’s simply unhelpful,” he said.
Bishop Garry Weatherill, the Anglican Church of Australia’s acting primate, issued a statement last week praying for peace and justice for all human beings made in the image of God.
He tried to clarify the difference between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.
“While outrage at the way Israel is treating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians may be justified, anti-Semitic violence against ordinary faithful Jewish worshipers is always wrong and can only lead to increased violence,” he said.
“As Australians, we long for all people to experience the stability, openness, and religious freedom we enjoy in this country.”
Robyn Douglass grew up in Sydney and Melbourne, completing a journalism cadetship at the Anglican newspaper in Victoria. In South Australia, she has worked for church, local, and national media.
