Rabbi Ulman’s statement closes the Royal Commission

Closing the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was Rabbi Yehoram Ulman from Chabad of Bondi, whose son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was one of the 15 people who died in the 2025 Bondi Chanukah terror attack.

Appearing this afternoon as the final witness, he read the following statement (included here in full).

Thank you Commissioner for allowing me the honour of providing a closing statement today. While Chabad of Bondi’s written submission provides our detailed reflections and recommendations, I stand before you this afternoon and speak from my heart, as a father, and as a rabbi of the Chabad of Bondi community for forty years.

At the heart of the Chanukah story is a decision to return. More than two thousand years ago, after a period when Jewish practice had been outlawed, the Jewish people returned to their Temple in Jerusalem (of which the Western Wall was a part) and found it desecrated. They cleared the Temple. They rebuilt the altar. And then they lit the Menorah – a symbol of the ‘Eternal Light’, being G-d’s unending presence.

The miracle of Chanukah is that only a single jar of pure oil could be found in the desecrated temple; only enough for one day and yet, it burned for eight days until more oil could be sourced. But before there was this miracle, there was a choice: to return, to rebuild, and to bring light back to a place that had known darkness.