Reflections After Bondi Beach from David Bryfman

This is Adapting, the future of Jewish education, a podcast from the Jewish Education Project, where we explore the big questions, challenges and successes that define Jewish education. I'm David Briefman. Hi everybody, and I am recording today's episode of Adapting on December 18th, 2025. This is an episode that I really didn't want to record, don't want to record, and somewhere deep down I knew that I needed to record it. So firstly, a few apologies. The first one is apologies for the microphone, I happen to be on the road in Miami, so I'm without my regular equipment, second apology. There's no guest today, you're stuck just with me. Time zones were difficult, but in the end of the day I also decided that I just needed to say a few things on behalf of myself and in the name of the work that we're doing for the field of Jewish education, and I wanted to take a bit of the rawness away from some of my dear friends and colleagues in Australia, and you'll see that I'm probably unable to do that. And again, it's taken a while to do this because I think today is the first morning that I've woken up, actually able to get some coherent thoughts about what took place on Bondi Beach last Sunday, the first night of Hanukkah, and it's taken me a few conversations with friends and colleagues and maybe a couple of rides on the peloton bike to be able to sort through some thoughts. So here goes. The first is a bit about context about Australia, and my family's story is not unique, but it's important to share because it is emblematic of what is Australian Jewry in so many ways. So my dad's family came to Australia in the 1930s from Poland. They proverbially or they really saw the writing on the wall and decided to get to Australia as quickly as they could when they saw the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Poland. My mum's family survived, or those that did survive, the Holocaust, my grandfather was a partisan fighter, my grandmother from Latvia, survived some ghettos and stood-off concentration camp, and they met in a displaced persons camp in foreign vault in Germany. We were in 1946, my late mother was born, and the story goes that they were given a choice at the time and the family story condenses the time. There was a relatively short amount of time when they and a few other of their survivors' friends had a decision to make to go either at that stage, to the United States, to what was then Palestine or to Australia, and they chose to go to Australia because it was clearly the furthest place from Europe that they could possibly imagine. The Australian Jewish community, approximately 125,000 people, most of whom live in Melbourne and Sydney, most of whom came to Australia after the Holocaust and established themselves a community there, rich and full of Jewish culture, Jewish education, Jewish religious, cultural life, the communities had an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union and from South Africa as well as other countries, including Israel. And it's always been the lucky country, and I say lucky country, not because it's the Australian attitude of like it's all fair and good on your mate and everything's good, but it was a place where Jews could prosper and Jews could really thrive in all aspects of society. Bondi Beach, for those that don't know, not Bondi, as I've heard some American commentators call it. Bondi Beach is an icon. Everyone goes to everyone knows it. It's where you take tourists, but it's also where you go yourself. I've been there with my friends and my family. I lived in Sydney for a couple of years, even though I grew up in Melbourne. And Bondi really became important to me or special for me. In the 2000s, Sydney Olympics, they erected an outdoor beach volleyball court on the beach. Look, it's just the place where people go and eat fish and chips and enjoy, especially during summertime. And there's a famous walk that people do from one beach to another beach, or depending how long you want to go. They're from Brontida Bondi or from Kujida Bondi, and it's just one of the most beautiful places in the world. And to wake up on Sunday morning and American time to hear what had happened, it was a shock is an understatement. So the immediate reaction was going to WhatsApp, going to text and just find all my friends. I knew my family was safe, but my friends and by extension, their families. And the threads began and they kept on going and it was like eerily remissing of waking up on October 7th and scrolling and waiting for names and people to check in with you. And that feeling is strange in so many ways, especially when it brings back those awful memories. And one by one, my friends checked in with me and thanked goodness. They were all safe and accounted for, although it took 24 hours to get back to me. And one friend tells me about someone they knew who was killed, and another friend tells me about his son's friend being shot. And then their names come out. And names are a really interesting thing in Jewish life. We have an attachment to names. We have this affinity I've told the story once before when I used to go to the movies with my grandmother. She would stay there until the very end of the movie because she insisted on watching all of the credits scroll through so she could identify the names of fellow Jews who she saw in those credits. But this is clearly different because the inevitability of knowing a name and knowing a family on that list of names it scrolled out from Bondi Beach. It was all too eerie and 15 souls lost and dozens wounded and still accounted for and the memory of just refreshing the newspaper online every hour to see a new name added. That was only four days ago. Australia, my friends, my colleagues, they're in shock, they're in mourning, they're sad. I was on a call yesterday with a couple of them and there were clearly tears and more tears being held back. People are being buried almost literally as we record right now. And there's also simultaneously this rush to action, especially by adults who want to try and make sense and make meaning of what took place. There's a lot of political tension, a lot of people blaming the current federal government for allowing the incitement that's taken place over the last two years to lead up to the inevitability of what took place at Bondi. People are saying that the magnitude of the event that took place there was unfathomable but it wasn't shocking. There was an aura of real inevitability about it. People are writing statements, people are rushing to condemn, politicians are making statements, there are some in the community already calling for increases in Alia, some in Israel are also calling for increases in Alia. And there's also this huge, huge push for Jews to stand up and be proud and be counted and go out and light the menorah on mass and be a light until the nations will be bright, shine that line brighter than ever before. So I want to dedicate the remainder of this podcast to educators after all that's who adapting was intended for. And I want to remind everyone listening here for the purpose of education is not for adults to clone more young people to be exactly like themselves. You might want that, you might desire that at its core education is about allowing young people especially to reach their own enduring conclusions to develop their own set of skills and knowledge and behaviors and values so that they can internalize them to help make them into the people that they are supposed to be. So for all of those things that adults are out there advocating and wanting right now that's one set of rules or one set of circumstances that are important but when you're talking about kids especially there's a different set of rules in play and here are just a few points that I want to make. The first is that Australia is now entering into summer vacation for many schoolers out already and this was the first Sunday of the holidays. It's summertime everyone's out teachers are out schools out and it's probably the biggest reminder for everybody here that parents and families are still or still need to be the number one educators in every kid's life. You can outsource as much of it as you want but at the end of the day parents are the ones who have the ultimate responsibility of raising their children. The second point I want to make is that the number one responsibility for us as educators and adults and parents has to be the health and safety and well being of our kids. And if they're going through emotions right now and surely many of them are they're scared they're upset they might be angry please please don't overlook their emotions and just tell them nope we're going out there tonight to light the Hanukia because that's what we as Jews do. We need to stand up and be proud now I get that I really to get that raw reaction but please please please I implore I beg of you listen to those kids first here what they have to say and if they're scared they're scared for a reason. It's not normal that the first thing that my children asked me when we go to a public Jewish event is how many police are going to be on site. It is not normal that when we walk into a Jewish building we need to have our bags checked and go through security apparatus in order to get into a building. It is not normal the first thing I do when I enter into a Jewish space is look for the emergency exits. This is not normal and we shouldn't expect our kids to just adapt as if it was the third thing. And here I just urge you all to understand that I'm talking about something when it is developmentally appropriate that our kids need to understand that there is evil in the world and there's actually categorical evil. There's no justification no excuses no ifs and or buts no matter what anybody says we can't hide that from our kids we shouldn't shield them from the knowledge that there are evil people in the world. And that just adds to their fear and their scaryness all of those things but we can't shelter our kids from the reality of the world in which we live. But second to that point it does not mean that all people are evil. It really doesn't mean that all people are evil and the temptation to lump people together goes against everything that we as educators know is right in the world. There are no benefits of gains to be made in terms of racial or other religious types of stereotyping to condemn entire people for the actions of a few. And here I have to maintain some sort of faith that there is a really really really silent majority in the world especially right now in Australia who are absolutely categorically condemning what took place from both within and outside the Islamic community and yet there is evil in the world. And fourth there's also heroism in the world. They're not just good people in the world. They're a great people in the world. By now you've all seen the images of Ahmed El Ahmed who literally risked his life to disarm one of the terrorists but there were countless of other people inside in Bondi. Countless of other people have been inside in other communities around the world as well. In the case of Australia I want to shout out to the surf lifesavers, you got off the beach to help and rescue and bring first aid to victims. To the community security group, the Jewish volunteers who were out there, to the police force who might have been under demand on the day but the detectives who shot named and apprehended and killed their salons. There are true heroes in the world. We need to really raise their profile and tell our kids that there is goodness and that in evil goodness just does emerge. For educators out there, for parents out there, I know what you do. When tragedy emerges, you put on your educator, your parent hats straight away, you go into crisis mode, you know exactly what you need to do. I saw the first day after pandemic, I saw the first day after October 70, you go into emergency mode to be there for your kids and that's exactly why we love respect and honor you every single day and you should do so even more. But educators out there, especially today Jewish educators out there, in Sydney, in America, all around the world, take care of yourselves, please. You cannot become the best versions of your educator cells unless you first and foremost, take care of yourselves and what does that mean? It means that you need to mourn, you need to grieve, you like me, need to process. But you can't be expected to get out there in front of your students without having done all that work for yourself. So I know my good friends in Australia who are now gone into leadership mode, crisis mode, they probably haven't slept in five days now, please go for a walk with yourself, go talk to somebody, do something, just take care of yourself, get some sleep. I know exactly what we do in these moments, but taking care of yourselves is a critical, critical mission of what it means to be an educator, especially today at the moments of crisis. And the last point that I want to make is, it's hard. My week began last week with the privilege and distinct honor of being on stage with Rachel Goldberg, Poland, and John Poland, in front of 2,000 people in New York City that the parents of deceased hostage Hirsch Goldberg, and what an honor was to hear from them. And Rachel commanded us that evening, she commanded us to have hope, because there's no other option, she said. And she and others have made the distinction between optimism and hope, optimism being the belief the world can be a better place, hope, the active, active capacity of making the world a better place. And that, my friends, my colleagues, educators out there, is almost a definition of a good education, because every time that you walk into that classroom, you walk into that summer camp, you walk into that youth movement, that early childhood center, that Jewish community center, you go in there with the belief, the knowledge that you can make the world a better place, one soul at a time. And that's why I refer to our work now as the pedagogy of hope, not because we want or believe the world can be better, but because we're actively in the pursuit of making the world a better place. For those of you listening to today's episode, with the last few days of Hanukkah remaining, I wish you all a hug or rim some air, a festival of lights now more than ever, find that light to shine in this world. My deepest sympathies and doleances, go to the families of those of the killed and reforcially ma, a speedy recovery to those engine in last weeks, massacre and bondage beach in my home, my other home, Australia. Today's episode of Adapting was produced by Reena Cohen Schwartz and Tina Nusselbaum, the random repeaters, the shows executive producer of myself, Karen Cummins and Nessa Lieben. A show is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media and I'm particularly share the amount today because of the rapid turnaround that today's episode had in turn being able to be put out there into the world. And also for their encouragement and inviting me to present today's episode of Adapting. Share this one with a friend, share with a colleague, share with someone who you think is in need of healing or a bit of support. As I said, it's the episode of Adapting that I never ever dreamt of or wanted to actually record even though there is some sort of inevitability about it. Thank you as always for listening today, thank you for our great sponsor, UJF Generation for making this possible and to find out about some of the resources that we have to help you as educators get through these difficult times. Please go on to our website, jewishedproject.org and then you can see some of the materials that we have to help educators deal with times like this. Thank you. For these conversations matter to you, consider making a donation to help us keep them going. Every gift supports the future of Jewish education and helps us keep asking the big questions. Visit jewishedproject.org/donate to contribute today. That's jewishedproject.org/donate. Thank you very much.