Shmooze With the Blues hears of a year of renewal

Victoria Police and Jewish communal leaders gathered at Elwood Shule on Wednesday for the annual Shmooze With the Blues, where CSG Victoria volunteers shared a meal with the officers they work alongside.

CSG Victoria chief executive Justin Kagan said the community “went through frankly hell” in the years since October 7, and described being in Cape Town, visiting his father, when the Bondi attack occurred.

A week earlier he had been in London debriefing British colleagues on the Manchester attack.

He read out the first message he received from his CSG NSW counterpart, sent at 6.46pm Sydney time, reporting that something had happened and that police had fired shots.

In Melbourne, a Chanukah event was under way at Caulfield Racecourse and a shift handover had just taken place.

Seventy protectors coming off duty were sent back to prepare an egress plan as the event was brought to an early close, while CSG stood up its emergency operations centre. It ran 24-hour operations and street patrols for the following seven days.

Kagan said the months since had been a period of renewal, citing Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “Jewish history is not merely a story of Jews enduring catastrophes … after every disaster, Jews renew themselves.” The community was taking a leaf from Viktor Frankl’s tragic optimism, “saying yes to life in spite of everything”.

The Maccabi Junior Carnival proceeded with Victoria Police support at every event, and the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog became the largest event CSG Victoria has protected, planned in a fortnight rather than the usual three months.

Kagan, a Springbok supporter, conceded his favourite leadership book was written about the All Blacks, and drew on the Māori concept of whakapapa. “I’m not an isolated individual. I come from somewhere. I belong to something,” he said.

Senior Sergeant Rowan Epstein, re-elected chair of the Victoria Police Jewish Network, said he had been involved with the force for 16 years “and I’ve never faced discrimination”. Close to 20,000 visits to Jewish sites had been conducted under Operation Park in the more than 1000 days since October 7.

“I feel pride when I see a police car parked outside a Jewish location,” he said, invoking the teaching that Abraham’s tent was open on all four sides so that travellers approaching from any direction found an entrance waiting.

Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said Victoria Police worked “not only to keep people safe, but to ensure they feel safe”. He pointed to a new executive position for community prevention and partnerships, and gave an assurance that officers would respond immediately to antisemitic incidents.

Bush, who traces his own whakapapa to his family in New Zealand, said the concept was “an absolute parallel” with the Jewish community.

He closed on the same leadership book Kagan had reached for, and on what he said was Victoria Police’s intention for the partnership: to take what you are given and leave it better than you found it.