How does one talk to Hashem after Bondi?

How does one talk to G-d after Bondi?

How does one talk to a G-d who could allow such evil?

A G-d who could allow families to be ripped apart, children to be traumatised for life and intense fear to spread amongst His people.

How?

And yet, how could one not turn to G-d?

Let me explain.

If everything happened by mere chance or coincidence, then what would be the point?

Are we saying that everything that happened was random? That these people were murdered at Bondi Beach randomly?

For me, it’s a no-brainer. I choose to have G-d in my life.

Let’s just say that G-d didn’t exist. Okay. Then what?

Then I was randomly at Bondi Beach. I was randomly lying on top of my baby, trying to protect him. I was randomly hearing those pounding gunshots. And people were just randomly murdered?

That doesn’t sit well with me.

For me, I would rather believe than not believe. Because with belief and trust in G-d comes some meaning and purpose.

Not that I can defend G-d. No, far from it. I’m not G-d’s defence lawyer.

And I’m angry at G-d.

Heck yeah, I’m angry at G-d.

But how do I speak to Him?

For me, there is no other choice but to speak to G-d. Because if I didn’t have G-d in my life, I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be a proud and empowered Jew. I would be a depressed, miserable and awfully sad human being.

Because if all the calamities and tragedies that have befallen me and my people, and even the personal challenges I faced before Bondi, simply happened randomly and by chance, how would I find meaning in any of it?

For me, I need G-d in order to find meaning and purpose.

For those who perhaps are triggered by the term G-d, you can call it, the universe, a higher power, it doesn’t really matter, for me it ultimately is G-d.

I recently heard something powerful from Rabbi Doron Perez, who lost his son Daniel on the 7^th of October. His family went through unimaginable horror. Daniel was killed defending Kibbutz Nahal Oz, while his other son, Yonatan, was shot and injured on the same day. The family spent 163 days believing that Daniel may have been alive and held hostage before the IDF confirmed that he had been killed on 7 October. His body was taken into Gaza and remained there for two years before finally being returned to Israel for burial in October 2025.

A literal horror story. The worst and most intense pain for any parent to go through.

And yet, Rabbi Perez says that he still has joy, simcha, in his life.

How?

He explained that the Hebrew letters of simcha, joy, are the same Hebrew letters as the Hebrew word machshava, thought.

For Rabbi Perez, he chooses to change his outlook and perception of life. He chooses to see the blessings, to look at the glass half full rather than half empty.

Wow, just wow. And it made me realise just how much our lives are controlled by our thoughts, our perspective, our outlook on life.

This reminds me of another story.

A man who was severely depressed and struggling at work wrote a letter to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He outlined all the pain and sorrow in his life and described just how terrible everything felt.

Somewhere in the letter, he happened to mention that he had children.

The Rebbe responded:

“Hundreds and thousands of people pray every day to be blessed with children, and would give everything they own to have a single child, but have not as of yet merited this… But you, the recipient of this blessing, don’t recognise the wealth and happiness in the blessings you have, and write twice in your letter that you haven’t experienced any good in life!” (Igrot Kodesh, Volume 12, page 270).

This person had become so consumed by what was wrong that they could no longer recognise the tremendous blessing G-d had already given them.

And for those who may be unaware, the Rebbe himself was never granted the blessing of children.

In the rest of the letter, the Rebbe also gave him advice, wished him well and said that he would pray for him. He wasn’t dismissing the man’s pain; the pain was real.

But the blessings were real too.

A blessing of children, of continuing one’s legacy, of creating, a blessing that can never be taken for granted.

So, to continue my thought process, how do I talk to G-d after Bondi?

It’s tough. I’m not going to lie.

Because yes, I trust G-d. And yes, I know that everything is directed and orchestrated by G-d, I know that with every fibre of my being.

But it’s still going to be tough.

I’m going to be in shul, hearing Kaddish being said by a son who lost his father. I’m going to be in shul with people saying Yizkor for parents they should never have lost in this way.

Bondi surrounds me.

And I don’t just mean because I live in Bondi. This was a Chabad event, and as someone who is Chabad myself, I am so intimately connected to this community.

These are my people.

These are the faces I see all the time.

So, I’m going to be heartbroken. More than heartbroken, I’m going to be angry at G-d. Deeply, intensely angry at Him.

That is what will be happening in my heart.

And yet, my mind will be telling me that this is the Divine will of G-d.

There will be a disconnect between my heart and my mind. And I actually think that is a healthy disconnect, because I am human at the end of the day.

If I don’t have empathy for my fellow Jews, my fellow brethren, then who am I?

In fact, I think G-d wants me to have these feelings, because they show that I care. They show that I am genuinely sad and heartbroken for those who lost their loved ones.

When I see another Jew broken, it breaks me too.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, known as the Kotzker Rebbe, famously taught:

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”

And truly there nothing is.

And yet, although I understand this teaching, I have always struggled with it.

Why do we need broken hearts?

Why, G-d?

Why do we need to be so broken in order to connect to You?

Why do we have to reach the depths of despair before we can truly feel You?

Why can’t life simply be good?

Why can’t we experience open and revealed blessings?

Why do we have to endure such horror, hell and tragedy in order to connect?

Why is it that we tell the story of Jews who were travelling in a cattle car from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka, singing the words:

Ani ma’amin b’emunah shleimah b’viat HaMashiach. V’af al pi sheyitmahme’ah, im kol zeh achakeh lo, achakeh lo, bechol yom sheyavo, Ani ma’amin.

“I believe with complete faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though He may delay, nevertheless, I await his coming every day.”

These words are based upon the twelfth of the Rambam’s (Maimonides) Thirteen Principles of Faith.

But why, G-d?

Perhaps Chassidut would explain that, at these moments, the pintele Yid is revealed. It is the deepest, most essential Jewish point within us, within our souls. When we reach the depths of despair, we somehow tap into that inner G-dliness.

Perhaps that is why even Jews who call themselves atheists may say the Shema before they die.

Something inside their soul knows.

Which reminds me of Peter Meagher, HY”D, one of the slain victims at bondi Bondi.

Peter, was officially a practising Catholic. Yet do you know what one of the final acts of his life was?

He put on tefillin, the black leather boxes containing sacred Torah passages that Jewish men place on their arm and head. Peter was at Chabad of Bondi, taking photos. In fact, he took two photographs of me. One was of me with my baby, Meir, and the other was of me with my friend Tova.

He spent so much time taking those photographs and made me move a few different times to different angles, because the lighting wasn’t right. I even remember feeling slightly frustrated, thinking, “Who cares?”

But Peter cared about every detail.

There were Chabad bachurim there, young rabbinical students from America who had come for the year. Together with Rabbi Eli Schlanger HY”D, they were on a mission to light up the world with mitzvot and were putting tefillin on all the Jewish men there.

They approached Peter and asked, “Excuse me, are you Jewish?”

Peter responded, “Well, not really. My mothers, mother is Jewish.”

The boys replied excitedly, “Hello! You’re a Jew. Let’s put on tefillin.”

At first, Peter said, “No, no, it’s all right.”

But after some persistent encouragement from those Chabad boys, what other choice did he have?

And so, Peter put on tefillin.

Little did he know, and little did any of us know, that approximately 20 minutes later, the shooting would begin.

Holy, holy Peter would be murdered al kiddush Hashem, sanctifying G-d’s name.

Peter was raised Catholic, had not married a Jew and was buried in a Catholic cemetery. Yet one of his final acts on this earth was to put on tefillin. The power of the soul, the pintle yid.

It is eerie. I think about it often.

But, I still keep returning to this notion that we need to suffer in order to connect to G-d.

It feels twisted, it feels unfair, and perhaps almost sadistic. I don’t know, and I don’t like it, but maybe, during the most difficult moments, it is only then when the masks and layers we wear throughout our lives suddenly fall away.

We all build layers around our true selves, and can lose touch with who we really are. They come from our environment, our community, our jobs, the expectations placed upon us and the standards we try to maintain.

And sometimes, beneath all those layers, we forget what is truly important.

Perhaps, its times like these, these wake up calls that shake our inner soul.

The Alter Rebbe teaches in Chapter Two of Tanya that the Jewish soul is a chelek Eloka mima’al mamash, literally “a part of G-d Above”. A piece of infinity inside of us. And every time we perform a mitzvah, we light up that soul.

And sadly, when tragedy befalls us as a people, we suddenly remember what is important. We remember what truly matters.

It is that concept of the “October 8 Jew”.

There is a certain power that tragedy can awaken. Perhaps only tragedy can reveal something so deep, although I desperately wish it didn’t have to.

So, honestly, how am I going to pray to G-d on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

I don’t know.

Will it be challenging? Probably. Perhaps, it’ll be exactly as you all are reading this, and that’s okay, because at least I am connecting, I am having dialogue with G-d, I am choosing to be in a relationship with Him.

As the late Dr. Edith Eger, Holocaust survivor, psychologist and author of The Choice, taught, we cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond.

And for me, the choice is clear.

I would rather live a life with G-d in it than without Him.

I would rather feel connected to G-d than disconnected from Him.

And so, I actively choose to be in a relationship with Hashem.

Because for me, there is no other way.

But it is a relationship. There are ups and downs. It is complicated. Sometimes I feel close to G-d, and sometimes I feel angry and distant.

But as my mother always says:

“If you treat a relationship casually, there will be a casualty.”

I don’t want my relationship with G-d to be casual.

I want it to be mindful and intimate. I want to invest in it. I want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, recognise all the blessings in my life and choose to see the blessings alongside the pain. And so, I will, but it will be hard. It definitely will.

I don’t know exactly what my prayers will look like this Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Perhaps they will be filled with love. Perhaps they will be filled with anger.

Most likely, they will contain both.

But I will still be there.

I will still be talking.

I will still be choosing the relationship.

And I pray, with all my heart, that this year will be a revealed and sweet year for everyone, both individually and collectively, for us as a people.

The past year, 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic violence in the Jewish Diaspora in more than 30 years, we are living through history and not in a positive sense.

It has been a tough year, a really, really heavy year.

So, I pray that this Rosh Hashanah, we are all inscribed and sealed for a genuinely sweet new year, in the book of life!

A year of open and revealed blessings.

A year in which families are whole, children feel safe and Jewish people everywhere can live proudly without fear.

And what I truly pray for with all my heart and soul, that G-d finally bring the ultimate redemption, with the coming of Mashiach, now!

Shana Tova,

Chavi

Chavi Block-Israel is the founder of The Empowered Jew.