US Jewish leader speaks after Bondi tragedy

The head of American Jewry’s peak representative body has revealed he had lunch with Rabbi Eli Schlanger and his infant son just days before the Bondi Beach massacre, having walked the same beachside pathways where the attack would unfold.

William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, told The AJN that he and his wife left Sydney just six hours before the December massacre, in which Rabbi Schlanger was killed.

“The impact on me personally has been deep and deeply moving,” Daroff said.

Daroff was in Australia at the end of last year for the J7 conference of Diaspora Jewish leaders, which convened two weeks before the attack. He said the timing of the massacre, occurring at the very first moment of Chanukah, has sent a chill through world Jewry.

“The fact that it could have been any Jew in any city, and in fact, that it literally could have been any Jew who happened to be on that beach in Bondi, I think hits closely and deeply.”