Shule president’s morbid prediction came true

Southern Sydney Synagogue president George Foster has told the Royal Commission that he warned in early 2025 that if nothing was done about rising antisemitism, someone would die.

Leaders of three synagogues testified on Tuesday how their communities have been transformed by fear, describing arson, decades of attacks and a daily reality in which Jewish Australians conceal their identity to stay safe.

Adass Israel board member Benjamin Klein described how his Melbourne community had gone from one whose synagogue doors once had no locks to one preoccupied with security, in the wake of the December 2024 arson attack that destroyed the building.

He said the ultra-Orthodox community of about 300 families revolved around the synagogue. Until the early 2020s there had been no locks on the doors, no guards and no need for ties with police.

Holding back tears, he described the arson – subject to pending criminal charges – as devastating, recounting that his wife could not drive past the ruined site for six months.

To have the synagogue taken away “simply for the reason that you’re Jewish”, he said, had struck at the fabric of the community.

Klein said abuse had become a nightly occurrence, with cars driving past screaming “F Jews”. Two children from his son’s class had moved to Israel, and successful professionals were uprooting their lives because they simply did not feel safe.

Foster told the commission of his dire warning to media, which came after his synagogue was defaced with Nazi symbols in January 2025.

“Sadly, that came true,” he said.

Foster, a child of Holocaust survivors who is also the president of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants, gave evidence about more than three decades of attacks on his small synagogue, beginning with a 1991 firebombing. The atmosphere then, he said, was fundamentally different – messages of support arrived, without the overt vilification seen today.

A new fence, funded by the NSW government after Premier Chris Minns offered to pay, was completed four days after the Bondi Beach attack.

Foster, a psychiatrist, said the current climate had reactivated trauma in survivors and their descendants. “Resilience does not negate impact,” he said.

Central Synagogue chief rabbi Levi Wolff said antisemitism had become not merely an attitude but a restriction on how Jewish Australians lived.

He recounted finding a mezuzah placed anonymously in his letterbox with a note: “I am afraid to have this on my door. Please pass it on to somebody who is brave enough.”

A survey of 300 shule members found between 60 and 70 per cent had experienced antisemitic abuse, with many concealing their identity and limiting their children’s Jewish life.

Wolff said hatred left unchecked spread into classrooms and workplaces, and ultimately became violent – as it had at Bondi, where 15 people were killed.